In this episode, HireReach’s Project Manager Marlene Brostrom talks about the benefits of the skills-based hiring model, the ways employers make hiring decisions, and how to reduce bias in the hiring process.

Marlene Brostrom is a Project Manager at West Michigan Works! where she oversees, plans and directs various aspects of the HireReach program including program design.

Marlene is a Certified Business Solutions Professional with over 10 years of experience managing and delivering programs in workforce and community development.. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of People Analytics:

• How to make the hiring process more efficient and effective.
• What a skills-based hiring model looks like.
• What’s been causing changes in the labor market.
• The ways employers make hiring decisions.
• The importance of qualifications when getting hired.
• How skills-based hiring helps reduce bias.
• Interviewing techniques to avoid bad hires.
• The partnership between HR and talent acquisition.
• How to leverage your organizational culture.

Resources:

• HireReach
• West Michigan Works!
• Opportunity@Work
• StaffGeek

Connect with Marlene Brostrom:

• LinkedIn

Connect with the host:

• Lindsay Patton on LinkedIn
• Lindsay Patton by Email

Quotables:

• 1:08 - “Skills-based hiring is a good quick high-level term to explain what it is but it’s essentially helping employees with the decision of selecting talent using skills as a way to assess and measure people and really help the organization understand what makes a good fit for their workforce, for their jobs.”
• 07:50 - “Harvard Business Review shared that 60 percent of the US workforce does not have a 4-year degree, 76 percent of black workers do not have a degree, 83 percent of Latin Ex workers do not have a 4-year degree, and 81 percent of rural workers do not have a degree and that’s really important to say there’s all these people that have different backgrounds, different learning experience that may still have the skills needed to do the job but by employers not fully looking at their job description and keeping that college degree on there because that’s what they’ve done, you’re eliminating a huge pool of people.”
• 13:05 - “People can get overwhelmed, I always use the analogy for weight loss I don’t know why it fascinates me but we all know there are certain things you need to do to lose weight, you’ve got to work out, you should track your food, drink water, sleep but sometimes that can feel overwhelming so even any baby steps you can take so we always say with the hiring process a couple of things is to go it doesn’t have to happen overnight continuous improvement is a journey maybe make some baby steps.”