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Tag: hiring

  • 40 is the new 50: Millennial jobseekers are giving their resumes a facelift by hiding years of experience to land jobs | Fortune

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    Jobseekers in their 30s and 40s have begun slimming down their resumes to reflect only the past 10 years of experience and limiting their public work history on LinkedIn and professional websites, according to Business Insider.  

    Online resume advice gurus are also encouraging middle-aged jobseekers to hide clues that could give away their age. It can be tricky when many companies require applicants to share their college graduation year, but it has become a survival tactic for mid-career employees trying to avoid appearing too inexperienced or too experienced.

    Even the AARP recommends “age-proofing” your resume. They also suggest focusing on the past 10 years of your career and getting rid of signs that inadvertently reveal one’s age like an @aol.com or @yahoo.com email addresses. 

    About 90% of workers over 40 say they’ve experienced ageism, according to a 2024 survey by Resume Now. Research shows that AI can exacerbate discrimination on the basis of race and gender in the hiring process, and hiring platform Workday is being sued for its screening technology that allegedly discriminates against candidates by age. The company has repeatedly denied the allegations.

    Leverage your experience 

    Author and New York University Stern School of Business professor Suzy Welch shared some advice for older jobseekers on her podcast Becoming You in November. 

    While she didn’t mention anything about hiding your age, she said the key to winning over hiring managers is proving you can match younger candidates’ stamina and cultural fluency while showing off your industry know-how. 

    She encouraged people of all ages to form so-called “irregular relationships” and get comfortable speaking with younger and older people who could be potential coworkers. For older candidates, understanding younger people can convince hiring managers that you’re a good “cultural fit.”

    “[Gen Z and young millennials] have a totally different language. They care about totally different things. They have a totally different sense of humor,” she said. 

    Welch also advised more experienced candidates to stop focusing on past experiences in interviews and look towards the future. 

    “Your currency is your currency,” she said, adding that keeping up with market, industry and geopolitical trends is a must for older candidates. “You have to prove that your currency is forward thinking. It’s out ahead. And that’s true of everybody, but the onus is much higher on the oldsters.” 

    She explained that it’s easier for hiring to assume that older candidates are stuck in their ways and less likely to adapt to a new company. “What they’re afraid of is your wealth of knowledge about what’s been.” 

    Welch urged jobseekers to articulate what they can do that younger people can’t do. Naturally, older candidates are better at recognizing patterns because they have more experience, which makes making decisions easier, she said. 

     “You can navigate a crisis because you have been through so many. If you’ve been around in the workplace, you’ve seen hard times,” she said. 

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    Jacqueline Munis

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  • Acquisition.com CEO says leaders ‘have it backwards’ when it comes to hiring: She says she hires for emotional intelligence over technical skills. | Fortune

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    Now more than ever, it’s difficult to know what makes candidates in a competitive labor market. While layoffs and unemployment remain low at the start of this year, jobseekers face an uphill battle as AI eliminates entry-level roles and employers added just 50,000 jobs in December. One founder says more than technical skills, being a good person is the quality that makes job candidates more appealing to hire.  

    Leila Hormozi, founder and CEO of Acquistion.com, said she learned her guiding principle for hiring from the Ritz-Carlton. Their philosophy is: “We don’t hire people who know how to make beds. We hire people that are good people,” she said in a video on Instagram to her 1.2 million followers.

    “Our process was to hire the right people. Not just hire people but select people and then orient them, not just put them to work but orient them to our thinking,” said Ritz Carlton Hotel Company cofounder Horst Schulze, reflecting on how the global chain developed their high standard, in a 2019 interview with Chief Executive.

    Hormozi says she echoes this philosophy: “I want to hire people who have the natural traits that I just need to give them the technical skills.” Hormozi cofounded Acquisition.com with her husband, Alex, in 2021. Before starting the private investment and advisory firm, Hormozi worked as personal trainer and launched fitness companies Gym Launch and Prestige Labs, and a software company ALAN. By 28, her net worth passed $100 million, she says. Acquisition.com now has a $200M+ portfolio and partners with companies to scale and grow business.  

    “Your business is only as strong as the people you pick to lead it. The fastest way to destroy your business is to hire the wrong people.” Hormozi wrote in a caption on Instagram.

    Some leaders “have it backwards,” she added. “People overvalue technical skills and undervalue social and emotional skills.” 

    As AI masters technical skills used in administrative, human resources, finance, and logistics jobs, soft skills such as adaptability and creative and analytical thinking are growing in demand, according to research from LinkedIn. People with strong foundational skills, such as collaboration, adaptability, and basic math skills typically learn faster and acquire more complex skills over time, one 2025 Harvard study about about long-term performance and advancement shows. 

    Other business leaders share Hormozi’s philosophy.

    “My advice to people would be critical thinking, learn skills, learn your EQ [emotional quotient], learn how to be good in a meeting, how to communicate, how to write,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said last month. “You’ll have plenty of jobs.”  

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also long advocated for empathy and emotional intelligence as foundational skills in the workplace. 

    “IQ has a place, but it’s not the only thing that is needed in the world,” Nadella said in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner in November. “And I’ve always felt at least as leaders, if you just have IQ without EQ, it’s just a waste of IQ.”

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    Jacqueline Munis

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  • Hiring a chief AI officer: Compensation, recruitment, candidates, responsibility

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    AI is now large enough to justify a dedicated seat in the C-suite.  Demand for this leadership position is being led by three groups, Praneet Franklin, senior partner and AI practice lead at recruitment firm Search Services, told FinAi News:  Boards and CEOs want single accountability for AI risk and ROI;  Regulators and auditors want clear governance; and  Business unit leaders […]

    The post Hiring a chief AI officer: Compensation, recruitment, candidates, responsibility appeared first on FinAi News.

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • With crime down, Prince William Co. Police Chief Newsham looks ahead – WTOP News

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    Chief Peter Newsham says crime is down in Prince William County, but staffing and recruitment remain key challenges heading into 2026.

    Having seen a 11% decrease in overall crime and an almost 20% reduction in violent crime during his five years in office, Prince William County Police Chief Peter Newsham spoke with WTOP about his department’s focus for 2026 and the many factors that contribute to a safe community.

    “We pay very close attention to crime and we’ve had a lot of success,” said Newsham. “If you look at our homicide rate, you have 100% closure on our cases this year. It’ll be five years since I’ve been here, where we’ve only had one homicide that has remained open.”

    Hiring affects crime rate

    While the crime numbers are coming down, having officers in the community is a huge crime prevention tool. Newsham notes that there has been a slight decrease in the number of applicants looking to become police officers.

    “There’s a shrinking pool of folks that are available to work in law enforcement,” said Newsham. “We are competing with federal agencies are offering these pretty significant signing bonuses, and they’re hiring lots of law enforcement on the federal side, so I think that’s impacting our pool of applicants.”

    “Prince William County is in pretty good shape with vacancies less than 12%, but with over 500,000 residents, you’ve got make sure you have enough police officers to provide an adequate police service,” said Newsham.

    Community shapes the plan

    Every two years, the Prince William County Police Department is required to do a satisfaction survey with the community to maintain its national accreditation.

    “It’s a random survey, and it touches all of the different diverse groups that we have in the county and our satisfaction rating, our department satisfaction rate about 96% which is something we’re very, very proud of,” said Newsham. “People are not afraid to talk to us at this department.”

    “People who do this work are really, really phenomenal people. They operate under some very, very difficult circumstances, and they go out there every single day and they’re out there helping people,” said Newsham.

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    LaDawn Black

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  • Your COO is Your Most Important Hire

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    Every business reaches a point where vision and hustle aren’t enough to sustain growth. For years, I powered our companies forward through instinct, long hours, and sheer force of will. But as we scaled, the pressure shifted. My calendar was packed, decisions bottlenecked around me, and the pace that once energized me started to weigh me down. I was leading, but I was also juggling—too many decisions, too many details, too many fires.

    That’s when I realized something I wish I had understood earlier: A CEO can have all the vision in the world, but without the right operator beside him or her, that vision eventually stalls.

    For me, that operator was also the person who knows me better than anyone: My wife, Jaime Pfeffer, stepped in as COO.

    Where the CEO role started to crack

    Before Jaime joined the company, I was carrying an invisible load that only showed up in hindsight. I didn’t think of it as being overwhelmed—I told myself it was just part of building something. But looking back, I was:

    • Making decisions too quickly because I didn’t have time to slow down.
    • Staying up at night mentally running through operational gaps.
    • Feeling guilty that I couldn’t give every team the attention they deserved.
    • Sensing that the business was growing faster than my experience and talents could support.

    I’ve always believed in pushing through challenges, but even the strongest founders hit a ceiling. Mine became obvious: I was doing too much, and the business needed more than I could give alone.

    Why vision needs a counterpart

    As we expanded into new areas, dealt with high interest rates, and began exploring new verticals like energy infrastructure, the complexity multiplied. I was still moving fast, but the organization couldn’t always move with me. What we needed wasn’t more speed: it was structure, rhythm, and someone dedicated to building the operational backbone.

    Jaime brought that immediately.

    What a COO brings to the mix

    The best COOs don’t just run operations. They bring the stability, clarity, and cohesion that allow a CEO to lead at a higher level.

    Jaime brought three qualities that changed our trajectory.

    1. She turned raw pace into aligned progress.
    Where I drive forward quickly, Jaime brings everyone along with intention. She created systems that replaced improvisation with consistency—communication rhythms, decision pathways, and simple structures that helped people know what to expect and how to move.

    2. She added emotional intelligence where it mattered most.
    Growth can create tension. Jaime instinctively brought people together, repaired silos, and built trust. She made the organization feel more grounded and more connected, even during challenging times.

    3. She created space I didn’t realize I needed.
    By taking ownership of operational complexity, she gave me room to breathe. I could think again. Plan again. Focus on the future without feeling pulled backward by daily fires. That shift changed not just the business, but how I showed up as a leader.

    The unique dynamic of a husband–wife, CEO–COO team

    Mixing marriage and business can sound risky, but when the dynamic is right, it becomes a genuine advantage. Here are two benefits of a husband-wife, CEO-COO team:

    1. Trust accelerates everything.

    There are no politics between us, no posturing, no hesitation. Alignment is instant, and decisions move faster because our values and priorities are shared.

    2. We see challenges from different but complementary angles.

    I think in terms of expansion and possibility. Jaime sees systems, stability, and team cohesion. That combination creates better decisions—and a calmer, healthier company.

    Our partnership works not because we’re spouses, but because we’re complementary operators who share a life outside the office.

    Turning real control over to anyone is difficult. Turning it over to your spouse forces you to confront your own ego and insecurities. Empowering Jaime didn’t diminish my role; it strengthened it. It gave me back clarity, purpose, and the room to lead instead of manage.

    Most importantly, it gave the business the stability and focus it needed to keep growing.

    Traits of a transformative COO

    Whether your COO is your spouse or not, the best partnerships share the same traits:

    A great COO is a force multiplier

    Today’s environment demands operational discipline. With Jaime as COO, our company is more resilient, more aligned, and better prepared for what’s ahead.

    A COO doesn’t just run operations—he or she elevates the CEO, the culture, and the entire team.

    Leadership isn’t about carrying everything.

    It’s about finding the partner who helps everyone rise—sometimes in business, and sometimes in life.

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    Gideon Pfeffer

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  • How to Address Bias Against Older Workers

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    It can start small—a joke about retirement, a skipped invite to a new client project, or a hiring manager saying we want “digital natives.” 

    One comment might be easy to overlook, and while not every frustrating moment is ageism, over time, these subtle patterns can add up to something bigger: age bias at work.

    According to Resume Now’s Age Disrespect Report, 90 percent of workers over 50 say they’ve faced discrimination because of their age. 

    For many professionals, that bias shows up as earning less than younger colleagues in the same role, being excluded from challenging assignments, feeling pressured to retire, or even being targeted during layoffs.

    Age doesn’t have to be a career setback. With the right tools, and a clear understanding of your rights, older professionals can navigate bias, advocate for themselves, and stay competitive in the workplace. 

    Employers also play a key role by addressing ageism and building more inclusive teams.

    To learn how to navigate the issue, I spoke with resume Now’s career expert Keith Spencer, and Florida employment rights lawyer Brett Kaplan on the most effective ways to address ageism head-on.

    The extended deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 19, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Alyshia Hull

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  • Recent Weak Job Figures May Mask an Even Worse Employment Outlook

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    People have long found ways to draw different conclusions from the same set of statistics — diverging interpretations that are even more common in these divided times. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to read recent employment data without inferring that they reflect an apparently stalling labor market that has sent the the unemployment rate to 4.6 percent — the highest since September 2021.

    Economists say that fear is based on indications that despite signs of expanding economic growth, the weakening employment outlook is getting worse. Those concerns rose this week when the latest government data showed employers added only 64,000 new jobs in November. That was less than a third of the average 186,000 monthly hiring rate in 2024, and followed anemic recruitment activity since May. It also came on the heels of a 105,000 headcount decline in October.

    Those numbers reflected businesses remaining wary of uncertainties stemming from import tariffs, mass deportations, and other disruptive government policies. As those doubts about the economy’s health spread, companies adopted the cautious practice of maintaining, rather than expanding staff levels. Indeed, while those no-hiring strategies slowed job creation rates to almost zero, employers’ refusal to undertake mass firings has also helped keep the employment situation stable in recent months.

    But that now may be changing.

    November’s 4.6 percent unemployment rate was an increase from 4.4 percent in September — the last time official figures were published — and considerably higher than 4.1 percent a year ago. It also marks the highest jobless level in more than four years. And even as that key metric has risen, other factors have also started troubling economists.

    For starters, wage growth advanced by only 3.5 percent in November compared to the same month last year. While the latest official figures showed inflation slowed to 2.7 percent in November, the average monthly rate has hovered around 3 percent in 2025. That has meant households already facing an affordability crisis have seen prices increase almost at pace with their incomes. That situation doesn’t look likely to change soon.

    The reason for that goes back to the weak job numbers. With company hiring virtually stalled, and employee quit rates at a five-year low, business aren’t under pressure to increase pay levels to attract or retain workers. And with wage levels flattening, the number of people who’ve have taken on second or third jobs just to get by has risen to its highest level in nearly 25 years.

    According to Laura Ullrich, director of economic research in North America for job posting site Indeed’s Hiring Lab research unit, those negative employment statistics are now outweighing broader economic growth that some experts think may reach about 2 percent for 2025.

    “(I)t still paints a sobering picture of a job market that may officially be turning frigid after a prolonged cooling period,” wrote Ullrich in an analysis of the October and November employment numbers.

    Moreover, Ullrich noted that as has been the case for the past half year, specific sectors — especially healthcare, leisure and hospitality, and construction businesses — have been responsible for most new jobs created. By contrast, the majority of other industries — notably manufacturing, tech, and transportation — have held headcounts stable, or cut them.

    Should those few actively hiring sectors join the others in halting large-scale recruitment, the overall jobs picture and unemployment rate risk swiftly turning bleaker. Yet even businesses reporting higher recruitment may not be doing that at the paces statistics indicate.

    As Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell noted earlier this month, current methods for gathering government employment data may generate “overstatement in these numbers.” That means companies that now appear to hiring be actively may be doing so at lower levels than official numbers suggest — meaning the labor market may be sputtering even more than some economists fear.

    Federal agencies are planning to swap those data collection practices for more accurate alternatives early next year, which should provide increasingly accurate job readings. But Ullrich warns that switch to more precise tools could result in today’s feeble employment numbers being revised even further downward to reflect the true state of the labor market.

    “Until we observe the new methodology and updated payroll estimates, we should remain guarded in our interpretation of these data,” Ullrich wrote of the recent job numbers. “In a best-case world, the labor market continues its languid growth, with a small set of sectors generating a very large percentage of jobs. However, it is also possible that we have lost jobs in many of the months this year, and future revisions will present an even bleaker view. “

    The extended deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 19, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • Employee Holiday Wishes Include More Money and New Jobs. Here’s How to Handle It

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    Though holiday season spirits are usually merry and bright, concerns about the economy and labor market are leaving many people feeling a lot gloomier. In addition to surveys reflecting how tough it has become to land a new job, a huge majority of employees questioned also said their current work doesn’t pay enough to keep up with the cost of living. Business owners should know their companies aren’t the only ones pulled by economic riptides.

    A recently released poll of 1,200 employees by job posting platform Monster found a whopping 95 percent of respondents reporting their “wage has not kept up with inflation,” and no longer covers their fixed living costs. Only 9 percent of those participants said they’d received a raise in recent months to help them keep pace with rising prices. That led 75 percent of workers questioned saying they’d cut out nonessential expenses — up from 64 percent this time last year — and 42 percent saying they’d taken on debt to finance spending they had made.

    In response to that financial pinch, 56 percent of poll participants said they’d begun looking for higher paying work to stay above water. Yet at the same time nearly 70 percent of respondents acknowledged it has gotten harder to find new opportunities — up from 57 percent last year. Meanwhile, another 50 percent said they worried about losing the jobs they have, as employers cut costs and reconfigure workforces. The reduced headcounts and increased workloads can amplify feelings of burnout and hurt productivity.

    Those concerns are backed up results of other surveys. For example, 49 percent of employees answering a poll by remote and hybrid work posting platform Flexjobs said they were worried being laid off. Moreover, 26 percent of those respondents said fears about losing their jobs were higher than they were just six months ago.

    But that doesn’t mean participants — many of whom complained of burnout, blocked career advancement, or pay levels outstripped by inflation — are enthusiastic about the jobs they have. Fully 93 percent of participants said they’d be eager to ditch current employers for more fulfilling opportunities or increased pay, but acknowledged under acute financial pressures made them stay put.

    A similar willingness to seek jobs paying above cost of living levels voiced in the Monster survey led authors of the report on its findings to warn employers that those attitudes may eventually affect staff stability if left unaddressed.

    “With nearly all workers reporting that their wages are not keeping pace with inflation, the cost-of-living crisis is redefining both financial stability and career choice,” the report noted, warning the survey’s results underlined a “disconnect between wages and economic reality” today.

    “Employees are increasingly open to leaving jobs for higher pay, while financial stress is contributing to lower productivity and higher burnout,” the report continued. “For employers, this signals an urgent need to revisit compensation strategies, benefits, and support systems — or risk losing talent to competitors.”

    There is a caveat in that, however — and it’s a big one for employers.

    Company hiring rates have been virtually flat since May. And despite the most recent data in August showing the unemployment rate was a relatively low 4.3 percent, anemic job creation has most employees hanging on tightly to keep work they have. Trading up for higher wages or better career opportunities is no longer an option for most people.

    Meanwhile, if the labor market looks grim for workers who already have jobs, it’s even more foreboding for people entering the labor market, especially recent college graduates and students preparing to pocket their diplomas.

    According to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, companies that have been slashing entry-level positions and using artificial intelligence tools to perform those work tasks iaren’t expecting to reverse course soon.

    The organization’s poll found “employers are projecting just a 1.6 percent increase in hiring for the Class of 2026 when compared to the Class of 2025,” a report on the results said. As a result, 51 percent of business respondents evaluated the current labor market for those younger job hunters as either poor or fair — the highest level since 2020 when 65 percent participants described it that way.

    As a result, a lot of people may be putting finding a new job, or hanging on to the one they have, at the very top of their holiday wish lists, but without being terribly confident they’ll get what they want.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • The Time I Brought My Lunch to a Job Interview

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    I was a supervisor in a manufacturing plant. When a colleague was promoted to manager in another department, he wanted me to work for him.

    I hesitated. One, it would be a lateral move. Two, I had started at the bottom of my current department, and had the skills and experience to show for it. But I liked him, knew he would give me plenty of latitude as long as I got results, and decided adding a different functional area to my resume might make me a better candidate for promotion. 

    So I thought for a few seconds, and said yes.

    Then he told me I had to interview for the job: not with him, which itself would have been a waste of time since we had worked together for year, but with a team of shop-floor employees.

    That seemed only a little less of a waste of time. While I was a huge supporter of employee empowerment, being interviewed by the people who would report to me seemed odd. For better or worse, especially since in the past I had worked with every person on the panel, I was a known quantity. 

    To me, it was a case of you either want me, or don’t.  

    “What could they possibly ask me?” I said. He shrugged.

    “Honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s part of the process. So please do it.”

    Since working for a Fortune 500 company meant I was no stranger to doing things for show, I grudgingly agreed. 

    On the morning of the interview, one of my production lines had a major equipment breakdown. Then an employee injured himself. Then another crew had a mechanical problem, which I was able to help fix. But by the time I crawled out from under the equipment, it was nearly one o’clock. I was almost late to my “interview” and hadn’t had a chance to eat.

    So I took my lunch with me.

    When I sat down, I apologized for being a minute late, summarized my morning, and asked if they minded if I ate my lunch during the interview. I figured they would understand and maybe even appreciate that I was the kind of supervisor who put productivity first, and was happy to jump in. I didn’t know it at the time, but a study published in Journal of Business and Psychology backs up that assumption: 84 percent of respondents wanted a boss who helped them get things done, a boss with functional skills and task-oriented behaviors.

    Clearly they weren’t part of the 84 percent, because I didn’t get the job.

    Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten my lunch during the interview. (Or maybe I should have offered them half my sandwich, as Richard Branson once did for me.)

    But that’s probably not the reason they didn’t choose me. I wanted the job, but I didn’t want the job. I was agreeable, but I wasn’t eager, especially because the whole “interview” thing felt pointless. Every question implicitly assessed how I would be to work for and whether their values, which appeared to be a relaxed work environment where results weren’t stressed, aligned with mine. (They didn’t.) 

    Not that interviews conducted by people who will report to you can’t be effective. Soft skills are important, and research shows great bosses tend to score highly on those traits. But without a foundation of hard skills — without the ability to do the job, and the ability to help the people you lead not just do their jobs but steadily improve their capabilities — those soft skills can largely be wasted. 

    As the researchers write, “If your boss could do your job, you’re more likely to be happy at work.”

    This panel of employees? They didn’t assess whether I could do the job. They assessed whether I would “let them be them,” and not in a good way.

    Whether rightly or wrongly, though, the interview felt like a waste of time, and that’s the real point of this story. 

    Plenty of businesses hold multiple rounds of interviews: first with the person in charge of creating a short-list, then with a supervisor, then with other employees, and finally with the business owner.

    While that sounds thorough and comprehensive, a multiple-round process can feel off-putting to the candidate. Similar interview questions — especially the dumber interview questions — tend to get asked. The same behavioral interview prompts get floated.

    Eventually, the candidate starts to feel like a known quantity, one you either want or don’t want. 

    At that point you stop getting their best, and you might end up missing out on what could have been a outstanding employee.

    By all means, be thorough and comprehensive. But don’t create a process that works just for you. Create a process that also works for the candidate. Consider how the interview process can impact them, especially in how it feels.

    Because your interviewing process should help you identify the best candidate, but that can only happen if it ensures the best candidate will be at their best in every stage of the experience.

    The longer and more repetitive the process, the less likely that is to occur.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Jeff Haden

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  • It’s Time to Bust the ‘Talent Gap’ Myth. Leaders Must Cultivate Talent

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    Finding entry-level talent with several years of experience is a riddle that few organizations have been able to solve. In a post-pandemic and AI-driven world, there’s little room for error, much at stake, and even less time for cultivating and training would-be capable people. When you add AI-applicant tracking systems to the mix, most entry-level applicants don’t stand a chance in today’s market.  

    However, the solution to this global paradox is not as complex as it seems. A client recently came to me at the end of her hiring rope, unable to find the magical combination of an eager new hire equipped with “human skills” who also had at least three years of experience under their belt. “I can’t find this person, but we need this person, and we can’t keep going without filling this position,” she said, half in tears.  

    I posed a challenging question: Which mattered more: years of experience or the human qualities she claimed to value most—empathy, curiosity, and eagerness? If she truly believed in those traits, would she be willing to nurture them herself? She didn’t hesitate. She dropped the experience prerequisite, hired for potential, and invested her time. Months later, that same hire became a cornerstone of her team.  

    You can’t afford to filter 

    My client was reluctant to hire someone without experience. The role had evolved into a fast-paced, high-pressure position, and she worried a newcomer might falter. Her hesitation made sense—leaders naturally want to protect their teams from disruption. However, the truth is that experience doesn’t guarantee performance. It’s a person’s emotional intelligence that determines how they learn, grow, and respond to stress.  

    Think of the adage that age doesn’t equate to true wisdom. The same can be said for experience and emotional maturity. If you’re filtering out prospective team members who don’t have work experience, you may be left with a pool of candidates who have longer resumes but are short on emotional intelligence. It’s much easier to cultivate and train a new team member with the right human skills to work within your culture than to retrofit cultural alignment into someone who lacks them. 

    A true investment in people 

    There’s not so much a gap in talent as there is a gap in patience. Leading means investing the time to develop the people who will advance your goals, culture, ethics, and legacy. It doesn’t mean treating people as a discretionary cost. Roles have shifted, and new skills are needed for positions that were once much simpler. But skipping over a whole talent pool of people who may make your organization great is a massive mistake.  

    An entry-level position is part of the development stage and is necessary to find the people you want to lead and who want you as a leader. There’s also something to be said about building experience from the inside. The inexperienced person you hire today may be training a different entry-level hire in a few years and may, one day, become the person you choose to take your place.  

    Hiring someone who lacks experience but has all the right attributes means that you will have to invest in their development, but the payoff will be great. You have the opportunity to shape someone to be exactly the right fit for your company and culture. I can think of a few better returns on an investment.  

    It can feel like a lot of pressure to hire the perfect person, gain immediate results, and see your choice turn into profits overnight. However, that’s not how authentic eadership works. Leadership requires time, patience, and a desire to cultivate your team to uphold the organization you’ve worked so hard to build. Isn’t that the kind of legacy you want to leave behind? 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Jerry Colonna

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  • Here’s How Corporate Social Responsibility Can Create a Great Workplace

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    Talent doesn’t just follow the money—it responds to new opportunities and improved quality of life offered by new positions. In today’s competitive job market (despite recent softening), companies aren’t just promoting open roles; they’re also selling and promoting the communities where those roles exist. If housing is unaffordable, schools are under-resourced, or the communities feel unsafe, top candidates will look elsewhere—no matter how strong the salary or brand. Investing to ensure thriving communities is not just a social good strategy; it’s a strategic business strategy.

    Boston Consulting Group reported that 52 percent of job candidates would decline an attractive job offer if the location didn’t meet their expectations. And with Paychex reporting that 57 percent of business leaders list attracting and retaining talent as top priorities, sustaining healthy, livable communities and building a homegrown talent pool are imperatives.

    Despite recent news narratives and political rhetoric, this points to a greater understanding of the connections between corporate social impact programs and long-term success in strengthening employee recruitment and retention, brand loyalty, and profit margins.

    Companies no longer view investing in their communities as philanthropy.  Rather, it’s an investment in future business success.  Companies have significant opportunities to be bold and adapt to this new reality. And if they don’t, their competitors will.

    Successful corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs are aligned with business strategies, especially efforts to develop tomorrow’s workforce and strengthen communities. According to the latest CSR Insights Survey, conducted by the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP) and Your Cause from Blackbaud, 51 percent of corporate social impact professionals report increased demand for linking their programs to business value. In the same survey, respondents noted the top issue areas for social impact investments are job training/workforce development, K-12 education, and food insecurity (each scoring at 43 percent of respondents ranking as a top priority issue area for their company), followed by community revitalization (up 2 points to 36 percent) and STEM education (up 3 points to 35 percent).

    What’s behind this concentration on education and workforce issues?

    Companies are recognizing that the pipeline of future talent is at risk without their own efforts. Success depends on hooking every minnow in the pool and preparing them for a job market that is continuing to be radically reshaped by disruptive technologies. The dwindling supply of future workers and the incredibly fluid work environment reflects several widespread trends:

    First, the population is aging. As people live longer, the overall demographic is shifting towards older age groups, with younger generations making up a smaller portion of the population. And a new Baby Boom isn’t on the horizon to balance this trend. National fertility rates are at an all-time low, far below the level needed to maintain a stable population. Many young people, facing financial insecurity and a pessimistic outlook on the future, are less inclined to have children.

    Second, even if elected officials manage to bring a significant number of manufacturing jobs back to the United States — which is by no means certain — young people are neither interested in nor prepared for these positions. Despite a broader interest in trade jobs, manufacturing remains an exception. Recent news articles have noted that surveys show Gen-Z respondents have little desire for industrial roles, citing concerns over poor pay and safety.

    Third, companies are rapidly turning to machine-learning-powered applications to automate many types of work, including a large swathe of entry-level jobs.  Entry-level candidates will need to possess higher-order skills that machine-learning applications cannot handle. Job training and upskilling programs need to prepare job candidates for this future.

    In a world where disruptive technologies are redefining the workplace at lightning speed, investing in education and workforce development is no longer optional—it’s a business imperative. Companies that fail to prepare their people for this new reality risk being left behind.

    Trane Technologies, an ACCP member company, shows what it looks like to lead. For decades, the company has embedded corporate social responsibility into its long-term strategy. Today, it is doubling down with a bold approach to prepare both the workforce of today and the talent of tomorrow with the skills needed to thrive.

    Through its Sustainable Futures initiative, Trane made a $100 million investment and committed 500,000 employee volunteer hours by 2030. The initiative empowers young people and communities by expanding access to STEM and sustainability education, with a particular focus on green careers. This isn’t charity—it’s foresight. By equipping students and young learners with the skills and pathways into high-demand careers, Trane is ensuring a more resilient workforce while addressing one of society’s greatest challenges: building a sustainable future.

    Corporate social impact works best when it is aligned with business goals and community needs. Trane’s example makes the case clearly: preparing people for the jobs of tomorrow is not just good for business—it’s good for everyone.

    At its core, corporate social impact work reflects the belief that a vital society and widespread prosperity are not only ends in themselves, but also important contributors to a healthy bottom line. With a shrinking population and skills gaps looming in the future, it makes perfect sense that firms will leverage social impact programs to not only address societal problems, but also business challenges. The smartest companies won’t just respond to these challenges—they’ll lead, using social impact as a strategic tool to build stronger communities, a future-ready workforce, and long-term business value.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Andrea Wood

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  • These CEOs Scaled Up While Strengthening Company Culture During Big Pivots

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    Leaders who have scaled up their businesses know that protecting company culture is a key to successful change. At the Inc. 5000 conference, held last month in Phoenix, three leaders who have recently gone through big growth spurts shared their tips. Shuman Ghosemajumder, co-founder and CEO of the AI-powered cybersecurity firm Reken joined Kelly Johnson, founder of the advertising agency ANOVA Digital, and Ian Yang, the founder and CEO of the custom lighting design firm Gantri spoke about how they anchored their companies’ core values amid big shifts and rapid growth.

    Take Stock of Your Company Culture

    For Yang, the growth of his company Gantri was a long time coming, but it has made great leaps in a relatively short span since the pandemic. The Bay Area business, which clocks about $14.1 million in annual revenue, started out as a sustainable lighting and design firm in 2016, and this year launched a platform for designers to use Gantri’s manufacturing capabilities — including 3D printing — to bring their own products to market.

    “The process of mass-producing designs is very costly and very time-consuming, and so a lot of great designs don’t get to be brought to market and a lot of really creative, really amazing designers don’t get a chance to share their own ideas and build businesses,” Yang explained.

    As the company was growing, he consulted talent coaches, who asked the founder, “‘What do you want? What company culture do you want the company to exhibit?’ And I described all these things, and they’re like, ‘Those things are not present in your current company.’ And that realization I think was huge.”

    But with the company’s growth and diversification, “there was a difference between what the company culture was and what I wanted to be,” Yang said. “What I wanted was to empower my team was the idea of ownership, accountability, but most importantly the safety to take risks. I think with any startup, if you’re not taking risks, if you are not feeling a bit stressed about the decision you’re making, then you are not going to succeed because you’re status quo.”

    Make Hiring Decisions That Support the Culture You Want

    When Ghosemajumder, a veteran of Google’s trust and safety group, founded Reken in 2024, his aim was “building a platform to protect against scams and fraud that are enabled by AI that allows cyber criminals to be far more sophisticated than they’ve ever been before,” he said.

    Ghosemajumder said he took lessons from his long career and kept them in mind when building out Reken. “You’ve probably heard the quote from management theorist Peter Drucker, that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast,’ so whoever you hire in your organization, they’re going to dictate what your culture actually is regardless of what you tell them to do,“ he said. “You can’t hire a group of people who operate a certain way and then tell them, ‘We want you to operate in a completely different way, our culture.’ And so from the very beginning, one of the things that we did was we wrote down what we believe in as a company.”

    You want demonstrate that you’re an organization that wants to learn as much as possible, he said, because that is a conscious break from some of the know-it-all aspects of tech culture. “It actually takes a higher level of both competence and humility to say, ‘I’m open to new ideas and open to being challenged, and I want to be able to learn what’s required in this particular role,’ because that’s actually the thing that is most important in a startup.”

    Look for Employees With Entrepreneurial Spirit

    As ANOVA, an agency that specializes in lead generation for professional services clients such as law firms and financial advisers, hit an inflection point, Kelly Johnson suffered severe health problems in 2022. She realized that the company needed a full-time team, and also that it had to shed some smaller clients that took a disproportionate amount of time and effort, because they were holding back growth. Her days as a one-woman powerhouse were over, and that realization made all the difference as the agency took off.

    “It was at that moment that I realized I can’t do this anymore. I need to hire, I need to grow this. I’ve got a great opportunity,” that required focusing on growth clients, she said. “We just basically pivoted and focus on where we had the most experience and making the most income.”

    But building a high-growth oriented team required a certain amount of balance in the workplace and outside it, she said. “I want people to feel authentic at work,” she said. “We brought on an HR consultant that does all the pre-screening, she makes sure everyone fits together. We wanted people that have an entrepreneurial spirit and they feel like they can really own what they’re doing. [Now,] we have a great team.”

    Set the Right Tone for Your Business

    While each CEO’s path to scaling progressed differently, a common thread emerged in the discussion. When it’s time to pursue scale and growth, leaders need to take a thoughtful, hands-on approach to hiring people who can produce in a hands-off environment.

    “Organizations that are highly decentralized that are able to make decisions at the lowest possible level that are able to then reorganize themselves in order to be able to constantly shift their strategy as opposed to having to make every decision in a top down monolithic fashion,” Ghosemajumder said.

    The mix of control and autonomy creates the ideal blend for growth culture, which the Google vet pointed out is never a one-size-fits all template.

    “We have an infinite amount of LinkedIn, fortune cookie wisdom that we get on how to create culture and how to manage effectively,” he said. “And when you look at the most successful companies ever, the one thing that they have in common is that they weren’t blindly applying somebody else’s methodology to their organization.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Will Swarts

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  • Why Adam Grant Recommends Giving Bad Interview Candidates Another Shot

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    Business owners, hiring managers, and applicants have all experienced job interviews that started going south at some point, and kept grinding downward from there. But organizational psychologist Adam Grant says even recruiting exchanges that seem to offer neither side much reason to continue may hold opportunities to uncover the hidden capabilities of flub-prone candidates — if they’re handled correctly.

    The best-selling author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business underlined the hiring potentials in what otherwise appear to be no-hope job interview scenarios. Speaking at the WOBI World Business Forum in New York last week, Grant urged company owners and HR executives yearning to pull the plug on unimpressive exchanges with sputtering candidates to instead give them a second chance to demonstrate hidden capabilities. Ideally, that would involve a follow-up encounter with the struggling applicant, conducted from a different angle that they may respond better to.

    The point,t, Grant said, is for interviewing executives to identify and repurpose the very areas job candidates had been stumbling on to see if they can overcome those during a second chance. The reason that’s worthwhile, Grant said, is that research has shown “how well somebody does a job is not indicated by how the first interview goes, it’s how much growth they show from the first interview to the second,” according to CNBC’s coverage of his presentation.

    Aware that many business owners and human resources managers won’t have the scheduling flexibility to call a hapless applicant in for a second interview, Grant offered a workaround requiring far less time and organization.

    “Even if you could pause an interview halfway and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a couple of notes for you,’ and then watch the motivation and ability to grow from the first attempt to the second, that is a great window into ‘is somebody excited to get better,’ and also ‘do they have the capability to learn the skills that you’re trying to get them to excel at?’” Grant told the audience, CNBC reported.

    The key to offering that second chance, Grant explained, is giving flailing candidates a task directly related to the job they’re vying for. That will not only require both the applicant and interviewer to focus on skills the position involves. But it also creates the opportunity for potential recruits to demonstrate their capacity for bouncing back while proving abilities performing the work.

    The extra effort, Grant said, will spare employers from “missing diamonds in the rough.”

    The strategy springs from Grant’s own pre-Wharton near-miss experience, while working in advertising and hiring people for sales positions. He recounted one applicant he described as “the worst fit for sales imaginable,” particularly in refusing to make eye contact. “I didn’t know a thing about neurodivergence then,” Grant noted.

    But his reaction also overlooked a key employment detail that Grant’s boss soon reminded him about.

    “You realize this is a phone sales job, right?” the company president asked him, presumably from beneath sharply arched eyebrows. “There is no eye contact in this job.”

    As a result, Grant called the all the applicants back in and gave them a task related to the sales jobs being filled, and using a reference they’d all be familiar with: a rotten apple. The challenge was for candidates to convincingly sell Grant on the idea of buying the withering fruit.

    The person he’d scratched off his list for not making eye contact never hesitated, and promptly demonstrated his abilities for the sales job being filled.

    “This may look like a rotten apple; it’s actually an aged, antique apple,” Grant recalled of the nearly axed candidate’s second-chance presentation. “You know the saying ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away?’ Well, because of the nutrients in the aging process, you only need to eat one of these a week. And then afterwards you can plant the seeds in your backyard.”

    Though Grant said he had certain reservations about the ethics of making that exact product pitch, he wound up hiring the candidate — who became the best performer on the sales team. The experience made Grant change his thinking about recruitment beyond the valuable recruit he’d nearly written off.

    “What I learned from that story was not just that I needed to see him in action to gauge his potential… (b)ut also, I needed to give him a do-over,” Grant said before broadening that lesson further, according to CNBC. “I realized I had to reboot our hiring process. If you want to gauge somebody’s potential, the best thing you can do is actually give them a challenge that’s really part of the job and watch how they handle it.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • 2026 Will Be an Inflection Point Where Humans Meet AI  

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    I took my kids to the beach this summer. My 5-year-old turned to me with a serious look and said, “Dad, sharks are neither fishes nor mammals.” My 11-year-old responded, “Wrong, a shark is a fish. I learned that on Wild Kratts.” Then the younger child looked to settle the dispute, saying “Then let’s ask ChatGPT.” A 5-year-old said that. 

    And so it was with the rise of artificial intelligence in 2025. With generative AI, we no longer browse for knowledge. We summon it. AI is the de facto new world of knowledge. Sam Altman and Jensen Huang are now household names. Chatbots that once answered job applicants’ questions with preprogrammed responses morphed into AI agents that could think and do. 

    AI has been around for decades, yes, but it took off this year on a whole other level. Big Tech is projected to spend more than $400 billion on AI this year alone. TSMC, which makes chips that run complex AI tasks, became a trillion-dollar company. Nvidia became the first publicly traded company worth $4 trillion. So organizations have a committed, vested interest in the technology. Fandom has replaced fear. 

    AI fixed a trucking company’s driver shortage 

    A leading transportation company was facing a significant hiring challenge: Most of its driver positions work across a range of vehicles—school buses, ambulances, and delivery trucks. Each role has a unique set of federal regulations and safety requirements across numerous cities. 

    The company’s HR technology only captured a sliver of potential candidates. Hiring came down to basic chatbots and manual procedures that could not adequately support complexity. Then the company switched to an AI system for help. 

    The result? The company has fewer driver shortages now. Will there be more success stories like this in 2026? I’ll share a few predictions in a moment. 

    First, it’s worth taking one last look back on what transpired in 2025. 

    Reinforcement learning and AI 

    Reinforcement learning is fundamental to making AI work. The technology “learns” through constant interaction. Our ability to capture that interaction and drive a new layer of behavioral intelligence has never been greater than it was this year. What that means going forward is that AI models are going to become hyper-precise and verticalized by domain. 

    The models have an expanded capability to learn from our interactions, which can then be applied almost immediately to better the experience and outcomes. 

    HR managers can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines. They need to invest time to learn how the technology works and its potential impact on their operation so they can make sound, strategic decisions. 

    SaaS became service as software 

    Can every service line turn into software? It wasn’t possible before, but it is now. That’s what agents do. In the shift from software as a service to vertical enterprise AI, organizations go from thinking about software licenses to digital workers. So instead of building software, companies are building a digital workforce. Seat-based pricing becomes task-based pricing. Copilots become autopilots. Features become work outcomes. And systems of record become systems of intelligence. 

    The real opportunity with technology, of course, lies in knowing what we don’t yet know. It’s been said that a good science fiction writer could have predicted the advent of cars. A great science fiction writer, on the other hand, could have also predicted traffic congestion and fender benders. 

    What will likely happen in 2026? 

    Back to those predictions I mentioned earlier. 

    1. AI won’t take over the world. AI is not an end-to-end infrastructure, it’s parts to parts, so it starts somewhere and ends somewhere else. That means AI isn’t taking over everything. Humans will be needed for a long time. Some companies lay off workers thinking that AI will solve their problems, only to bring people back. Humans are still relevant. That’s why end-to-end AI won’t come to fruition today or anytime soon. 
    1. Running at the speed of AI. Humans will need to make decisions faster at scale while AI is doing the grunt work at scale. Those two things have to be in parallel. Automation works at speed and performance levels humans can’t match. Organizations may well need to create a new role: risk performance optimizer. 
    1. Intense adaptability is an employee’s most critical skill. If people are not intense about adopting or learning AI in the next 10 years, organizations will underperform. Leaders are responsible for creating an environment of learning. 
    1. Agents will become domain specific. Agents are generalized, for the most part. They will become hyperspecialized, allowing them to band together and “swarm” over a problem. For example, one agent could communicate with another—one handling interview scheduling and the other interview screening. Eventually they will swarm automatically. This ties back to why everyone has a responsibility to understand these technologies. They don’t need to be engineers, but they have to understand how they work. 

    What’s in store for next 10 years 

    A mind-blowing shift is about to occur in the next decade. Software is moving from static to dynamic, instruction to prediction, automation to agentic. We’re heading into a whole new world in which software collaborates with people. It’s like a sidekick, a teammate. Software will no longer be a tool for handling small tasks. 

    But, to reinforce an earlier point, the one thing software will never be able to do is manage tasks from start to finish. Only humans can do that. Software works in parts. An AI agent works in parts. Humans must understand and delegate the parts to work effectively. 

    That, in turn, will allow enterprises to transform software into a dynamic, living, intelligent ecosystem that can learn, grow, and optimize. What organizations used to accomplish with 50 people will be done with three people. That doesn’t negate the need for humans. Quite the opposite. Humans will play a more prominent role by delegating tasks to agents so they can focus on bigger, higher-value endeavors. 

    This will be the exciting transition in the next 10 years. Will your organization be ready? 

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Mahe Bayireddi

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  • Amid Government Shutdown ‘Fog’, Employers Are Scrutinizing Private Data for Economic Clues

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    One of several effects of the longest government shutdown in history that’s clouding our economic outlook is the shuttering of the agencies that provide economic and employment data. With that flow of information closed since September, private sector observers have stepped up with their own statistics to offer business leaders a better idea of where things are headed. But no end in sight for the federal work stoppage, the job figures released this week by a variety of companies may actually create more confusion than clarity.

    This week the government shutdown entered its second month, leaving legions of federal workers unpaid, disrupting services from air traffic control to food stamp distribution. It also continued preventing the Bureau of Labor Statistics from producing its regular monthly jobs reports. The agency’s last official data in September showed companies had pinched off recruitment to almost nothing beyond replacing departing workers. That cautious staffing strategy by businesses that have hesitated to hire since spring amid economic uncertainty meant a monthly average of only 26,750 positions were created between May through August, when just 22,000 openings were filled.

    Since that time, companies have had to rely on statistics and analyses from private sector actors as they try to figure out how the labor market and broader economy are performing. A new wave of data released this week may leave some business leaders more cross-eyed than clearsighted.

    On the positive side, payroll services company ADP said that its customers’ data indicated U.S. businesses increased headcounts by 42,000 in October. That number was a decided improvement over the 34,000 net job losses ADP reported in September, after a decrease of 3,000 in August.

    But it’s still a fraction of the average 180,000 hires per month in 2024, and even less than the 64,500 monthly average between January and May. Moreover, relatively robust hiring in the healthcare, transport, and utility sectors compensated for anemic recruitment otherwise.

    “Private employers added jobs in October for the first time since July, but hiring was modest relative to what we reported earlier this year,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson, announcing the latest monthly estimate.

    And that was the good news.

    Rival payroll services and staff management company Gusto released its October employment data for small businesses, when 5,900 jobs were lost. Worse still, that extended the decline in recruitment since a recent peak of 57,400 new hires in July, which decreased to around 19,000 in September before dipping into the red last month.

    “This marks a continuation of the broader hiring slowdown we’ve observed since the post-pandemic hiring surge of 2021, when small businesses were adding an average of 170,000 net new jobs each month,” the October 2025 Gusto Small Business Jobs Report said. “Notably, the overall pace of both hiring and terminations has slowed dramatically over the past two years — the so-called ‘Great Freeze’. Hiring for small businesses peaked at nearly 3.4 million per month in January 2022, and have since fallen by 37 percent since then.”

    Homebase, another competitor in payroll and workforce management services, used different statistics to paint the same picture of a weakening labor market.

    Its recently released “Main Street Health Report” found that what it terms “workforce participation” at the over 100,000 small businesses it studied had decreased by 2.9 percent in October — a slight improvement over the 3.5 percent headcount decline in September. That came as hiring slipped 5 percent compared to October 2024, with business activity sluggish or dropping in all sectors apart from hospitality.

    So, what should business leaders make from those different, yet largely overlapping views of company headcounts remaining flat or shrinking slightly in October?

    According to Appcast chief economist Andrew Flowers, amid the “fog” created by the absence of reliable government data during the shutdown, the best thing businesses owners can do is use the available “headlights” of private sector statistics to carefully steer themselves down the road. That may be unnerving, he said, but less dangerous than pessimists might think.

    “What data we do have in hand suggests a continual labor market slowdown, but not the bottom falling out,” Flowers said in emailed comments to Inc.

    But he also pointed to recent mass layoffs announced by Amazon, Target, UPS, IBM, and other corporations. Following those big cuts, there may be a risk that business leaders deprived of official economic and employment data could defensively replicate the headcount cutting example of bigger companies.

    “This happened in early 2023, mind you — when bad vibes about jobs were disproportionate to the underlying data,” Flowers said. “This time around we don’t have the data to guide us. (But) underlying consumer spending and business investment has been surprisingly resilient. Real-time GDP tracking estimates show Q3 to be quite strong.”

    Meaning employers, staff, and job seekers alike would be wise to buckle up and hope for the best as they make their way through the fog.

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • How New-Collar Jobs Are Shrinking the Value of Degrees in Hiring

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    Among the many workplace evolutions now in full swing is the trend among employers to place as much emphasis on the skills and experience of candidates without college degrees as they do the diplomas of university graduates. As that shift in recruitment criteria has continued, it has created new career pathways—many involving over $100,000 salaries—in so-called new-collar jobs that are enjoying increasing demand.

    The growing range of new-collar jobs is filling the gap between two traditional work categories: office workers, who were initially hired on the strength of their college degrees, and manual laborers without those diplomas. People now flourishing in ‘tweener positions, by contrast, use skills and experience they earned in technical training, certification programs, or simply by working to strengthen the knowledge and abilities that many companies are now clamoring for. That also permits new-collar hires to hit the ground running and immediately produce results for employers, who often previously needed to onboard and train recruits fresh out of universities.

    As with so many developments today, tech is driving the growth of many new-collar jobs, but it isn’t the only sector generating them. Manufacturing, engineering, and, especially, health care companies are also increasingly hiring people who may not have college degrees but do have the skills and experience to begin performing from day one.

    “These roles focus on bridging the skills gap in industries that rely on advanced technologies and specialized training,” said a recent post by Martina Mascali on job posting platform Monster. “For example, a software developer is considered a new-collar job and might acquire skills through coding bootcamps rather than a computer science degree. The key distinction is that new-collar jobs prioritize competence and capabilities over credentials.”

    Monster compiled a list of some of the booming new-collar positions, providing an idea of the varied sectors, specialties, and salaries increasingly open to people without degrees. While many of those positions sound highly technical, they are all open to self-taught candidates or people who attained required skills on the go and are ready to put them to use.

    These include cybersecurity analysts, now in high demand to protect companies from online criminals, who are fetching salaries of $85,000 to $141,000 as they do. Data analyst roles are also multiplying for people with experience with “Excel, SQL, and Tableau, as well as programming languages like Python or R… [and have] strong problem-solving abilities and an eye for spotting trends and anomalies in data,” Mascali writes, adding that those employees tend to make $64,000 to $114,000 in annual pay.

    Similarly, candidates with cloud computing experience are finding a rising number of work opportunities, most fetching between $95,000 and $160,000 annually. Even people who earned their HTML, CSS, and JavaScript chops developing websites for friends, family members, and neighbors can now export those skills to companies wanting to create state-of-the-art web platforms—and which are willing to pay $56,000 to $109,000 annually for help with that.

    But not all jobs Monster listed are based only on computing skills. Mascali notes that businesses needing in-house electricians now pay between $47,000 and $78,000 in annual salaries to those employees. People who both broaden and adapt that electrical know-how into other areas find ample work as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning technicians (whose pay ranges from $36,000 to $61,000 per year), and wind turbine specialists (who earn from $49,000 to $61,000 in salary).

    And how many people currently slaving away over college textbooks and cramming for exams wouldn’t be at least a bit tempted by working as a video game tester instead? The growing number of those jobs becomes especially alluring, with Mascali noting they only require “attention to detail, patience, and a passion for gaming… [to] identify bugs and usability issues.” The pay for putting those skills to use in vetting games many college students spend hours playing for free? Between $72,000 and $124,000 annually.

    That sociology degree may start losing its luster compared to a career playing Minecraft or Pokémon Go for a living.

    Still, employers can face some challenges in hiring new-collar workers. For starters, many of those job seekers still assume companies continue favoring degree holders and therefore don’t bother applying to those roles open to them. Others may assume those positions are effectively blue-collar grunt jobs set within professional environments and look elsewhere for more promising prospects.

    To prevent this, Monster and other job posting platforms advise companies to stress the importance of skills and experience over degrees in their recruitment announcements. Businesses should also underline the critical contributions to the business those hires will provide and opportunities for advancement the positions offer.

    Another suggestion for human resource managers with new-collar jobs to fill is to visit the online networking and social-media platforms favored by people pursuing activities that hone the skills being sought—and use those platforms to initiate contact. Many hiring officials may be surprised at the receptiveness and enthusiasm they find there.

    “I love it. Modern education needs a serious overhaul,” said one contributor in response to a thread about the new-collar trend on social-media platform Reddit. “No reason for kids to go into a lifetime of debt for their sociology degree. A portfolio is way more valuable than a resume for a lot of tech jobs. Show me you can do it versus telling me where you learned how to do it.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • The Economy Seems Uncertain. Here’s Why Entrepreneurs Remain Optimistic

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    Although small company workplaces likely face margin pressures from higher costs generated by import tariffs, they’re still largely upbeat, characterized by owner optimism about their business outlook. Nevertheless, recent data shows that many entrepreneurs are using the same cautious hiring strategies as bigger firms, slowing recruiting to a crawl nationwide.

    That mix of entrepreneur confidence despite lingering concerns over the broader outlook for economic growth was captured by payroll and staff management service provider Gusto. Its recent “State of Small Business 2025” report surveyed 1,148 owners of midsized and smaller companies, most of whom remained upbeat despite the impact of import tariffs, rising costs, and higher interest rates that have made borrowing prohibitively expensive. Indeed, an impressive 87 percent of respondents said their businesses met or exceeded performance expectations this year, including 51 percent of participant who said they’d fared better than anticipated.

    Still, entrepreneurs were divided in their views of the wider economy, with exactly half of respondents describing themselves as either somewhat or very pessimistic about its direction. By contrast, only 28 percent of participants said they were somewhat or very optimistic about the economy, while 21 percent were undecided.

    Small business owners were even more tightly split about the effects of tariffs. Half described import duties imposed this year as having had more negative consequences than previously existing duties did. Surprisingly, the other 50 percent of participants said the recent levies had generated no additional impacts beyond those of previous customs levies, or had even produced positive changes.

    But there was another way the tariffs colored entrepreneurs’ perceptions. Eighty-five percent of small company owners who voiced negative views of the economy said tariffs had influenced that view, while 65 percent of respondents who said their businesses had underperformed their expectations blamed import duties at least partially for that.

    “(T)he costs of tariffs are felt by many small business owners, who told us that tariffs are creating a clear drag on margins and forcing them to rethink supply chains and possibly scale back expansion plans,” the Gusto report said. “What began in 2025 as uncertainty is now manifesting at the end of the year as real economic costs.”

    In addition to tariff costs prompting some entrepreneurs to rethink growth plans, wider doubts about the economy have also led many small business owners to embrace the minimalist hiring patterns adopted by bigger companies since the first quarter of the year.

    Around 40 percent of owner-respondents who employ one person or more said they had hired no additional new staff this year. That was often described as a check on rising costs, a precaution that many entrepreneurs attributed to tariffs and inflation. Nearly 60 percent of 2025 Gusto survey participants said higher prices had had a negative effect on their businesses — compared to 49 percent last year — leading many to become wary of adding more staff and salary expenses.

    “The smallest businesses tend to keep their headcount steady over time and hire only when an employee leaves,” the Gusto report said, noting that aligned with other aspects of national employment strategies. “The low rate of hiring among those firms suggests more workers are staying put, which is consistent with broader trends in the labor market.”

    Small business owners who have been hiring said they often filled customer-facing jobs, or other work requiring human skills that artificial intelligence applications can’t replace.

    “(A)s price increases have stressed the budgets of both businesses and consumers, small businesses who can’t easily raise prices may be investing in exceptional customer service to retain and attract customers,” the Gusto report said. “Finally, customer- and client-facing roles may be more resilient to replacement by today’s AI tools, as most of their value comes from a ‘human touch’ AI can’t replicate.”

    Another concern a majority of entrepreneurs voiced are the still relatively high interest rates that make borrowing money through bank loans too expensive. As a result, nearly 60 percent of survey respondents said they turned to alternative forms of external financing this year, with owners’ drawing from personal savings or using business credit cards cited as the most frequent forms.

    Contrary to popular belief, however, those funds were often used just to keep existing business running, and not to finance expansion plans.

    “It’s a popular assumption that small businesses primarily seek financing to grow their business,” the Gusto analysis said. “However, our survey shows financing is more often used to cover everyday expenses. This year, entrepreneurs have been most likely to use external financing to cover short-term costs or buy equipment and tools. Just 16 percent of small businesses that have received external financing this year have used it to invest in long-term growth.”

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • Business Leaders Are Looking Inward to Bridge Talent Gaps 

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    Faced with skills shortages and economic uncertainty, companies are realizing that the fastest, most resilient path forward may be found in the people they already employ.  

    One of the most striking findings from our 2025 State of Online Recruiting Report is the surge in internal hiring, which typically involves promoting a top performer or moving someone laterally. In just one year, the proportion of employers turning to their own workforces to fill open roles jumped from 16.9 percent to 42.3 percent. That’s a 150-percent increase.  

    Internal hiring offers the benefits of filling positions faster and more confidently, while keeping budgets lean. Rather than spending weeks or months searching for the perfect external candidate who might not work out anyway, you’re developing the people who are already invested in your success and understand your culture and processes.  

    But there’s more to it: The sharp uptick in employers hiring from within signals that leaders across industries are rethinking how they build and sustain talent. Essentially, you’re creating career pathways that engage and retain your workforce to succeed in the future. However, you’ll need to continually invest in your workforce’s development to ensure your best employees can step into new roles equipped with the right skills and knowledge.  

    Upskill and reskill  

    Our research also showed that 27.8 percent of employers have upskilled or reskilled current employees in the past year. This is a good sign that companies aren’t just arbitrarily promoting or moving people to avoid external recruiting costs. Whether upskilling initiatives involve formal training courses, mentorships, or on-the-job learning, the goal is to enhance performance, prepare associates for future roles, and keep your business competitive in a changing market. 

    Another trend I’m hearing from industry leaders is that upskilling and reskilling are especially valuable future-proofing strategies given the aging and retiring workforce. Training employees to assume vacant positions and take over certain tasks from retirees can be more effective than bringing in someone new to fill an experienced worker’s shoes. Once again, you’re reshaping your existing assets—your people—to meet tomorrow’s challenges.  

    Further, upskilling and reskilling can be beneficial in instances where older employees choose to remain in the workforce or delay or phase their retirement. Empowering them to learn new skills keeps them relevant, enriches their work experience, and makes your organization more agile.  

    Boomerangs and pipelines 

    A closer look at our report’s data suggests that internal hiring isn’t the only talent acquisition tactic employers are embracing that involves candidates who are right under their noses. Our survey found that 30.8 percent of companies had rehired former staff, also known as “boomerang” employees, in the past year.  

    When you bring someone back who is familiar with your company—and with whom you still have a good relationship—you can accelerate your time-to-hire. As with promoting or hiring from within, you do not have to recruit from square one. In addition, the boomerang may also return with new skills, experiences, and perspectives gained elsewhere during their hiatus, adding fresh value.  

    Aside from boomerangs, employers are also turning to their talent pipelines to quickly fill roles, with 36.9 percent of survey respondents reporting they hired from their pipeline in the past year. If you’re unfamiliar with this term, talent pipelines are commonly made up of candidates who have previously applied for jobs with your company but didn’t quite make the cut. They might have shown potential but were more suited for another type of role or narrowly missed out on the eventual hire.  

    Pipelining can also involve connecting with passive candidates from resume databases, networking events, alumni networks, referrals, and more; however, you’ll need to nurture those relationships to ensure your connections will eventually want to work for you. Think of your pipeline as your insurance policy—you always have a solid candidate pool ready on deck to meet future hiring needs.  

    Play the talent long game 

    Regardless of economic conditions, strategies like internal hiring, upskilling, and pipelining are effective ways to acquire and develop the right people. Instead of getting caught in an endless cycle of recruit-hire-replace, such approaches can help build sustainable talent ecosystems. And, if these trends continue, internal hiring and upskilling could redefine workforce development and talent management for the next decade. 

    But at the end of the day, making workforce development, work starts with hiring the right people in the first place. Don’t just hire someone to tick a box or fill an immediate gap. Once you get top-quality talent in the door, invest in their growth and guide them to best use their strengths to further your organization’s mission—and make their work meaningful and fulfilling. Ultimately, business leaders who play the talent long game will be the ones who come out on top, no matter what the labor market brings.  

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    Steve Flook

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  • Why Hiring Managers Say Many Gen-Z Workers Aren’t Prepared for the Workplace

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    You may think it’s a tired old trope to say that Gen-Z workers aren’t fitting into the workplace in the same way that older generations have, but new data from pre-employment skills testing outfit Criteria suggests that company leaders who hire new workers actually agree, to an alarming extent. 

    In fact, the California-based company’s data, from its Hiring Benchmark Report, says that of the 350 hiring managers polled for their survey, just 8 percent feel that Gen-Z workers are “well-prepared” for the modern workplace. Now, a sizable 49 percent did say Gen-Z was “somewhat” ready, but another large share—43 percent—flatly responded “no.” 

    Interestingly, Criteria’s data looked into the age breakdown of the respondents driving these stats and found that Gen-Z agrees: Just 24 percent think their own generation is ready to join the workforce. That number “falls steeply among older workers,” the report notes, suggesting older workers are more skeptical about how the youngest workers will fit in, and there’s also a note that women were, on the whole, slightly more positive about Gen-Z workers than men were.

    Perhaps more importantly, at least when it comes to data that may impact your company, fully 50 percent of the hiring professionals surveyed said they definitely think Gen-Z workers should be recruited “differently to other generations,” and a further 37 percent said they somewhat agreed with this notion. 

    The report digs into these responses, noting that Gen-Z workers are “known to be the first digital natives, having grown up with access to the Internet and smart mobile devices.” This means they have a “unique outlook,” along with a “a new approach to the world and the workplace, which may require a shift in recruitment strategies.” These modified strategies could include “mobile-first recruitment or social recruitment” methods. This part of the report marries up to a recent study that looked into how younger generations get data about their employment benefits, finding that 37 percent of Gen-Z workers have used social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and even YouTube to seek out benefits information—the highest percentage of any generation responding to the survey. This data fully underscores that Gen-Z’s thinking is indeed digital-first, and social-media-centric. 

    One criticism leveled at Gen-Z workers is that they’ve already become too reliant on AI technology, eroding their critical thinking abilities. A New York Magazine report this year asserted that basically everybody was cheating their way through college using AI—meaning that they lack certain basic skills critical to taking on duties in the typical workplace.

    But AI is also said to be impacting the entry-level roles which many Gen-Z workers would be stepping into as they leave education and enter the job market. Interestingly, Criteria’s data notes that 37 percent of hiring managers say they’re hiring mostly for entry-level roles, with industries like finance and transportation and logistics being more likely to be looking for mostly entry-level staff. The tech industry, as you may suspect, is the one least likely to say they’re recruiting entry-level workers. 

    So what’s the takeaway for you?

    It may be harder than you expect to find quality talent in the young worker applicant pool—you may have to fish harder than in the past before you catch the right candidates. And you may be best advised to avoid traditional job postings and instead look at using social platforms to recruit Gen-Z staff.

    Another takeaway from the new study is that once you have successfully selected new Gen-Z employees to join your ranks, you may have to invest a little more time and money than previously to polish their skills. Gen-Z thinks very differently about work-life balance, which may require you to offer a more flexible suite of employee benefits, and you may have to encourage them to use their own critical faculties before relying on automation software like AI.

    That said, Gen-Z’s digital-first status also could benefit your whole workforce, and maybe even teach some old dogs some new AI tricks.

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    Kit Eaton

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  • A New Forecast Sees Less Seasonal Holiday Hiring This Year. Here’s Why

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    There may be a lot less ho-ho-hoing in 2025’s holiday season hi-hi-hiring. Early evidence suggests that businesses may be planning to fill fewer jobs than usual during the last three months of the year, even as the number of people looking for those positions surges.

    The looming holiday season employment slowdown comes as national job creation has essentially flatlined since spring. The last official data before the government shutdown indicated monthly hiring rates dipped to an average of 26,750 new positions from May through August, largely because companies concerned about the economy’s health limited recruitment to replacing departing employees. Now that caution appears to have also been adopted by retailers and other businesses that typically add extra staff during the last months of the year to handle the expected boost in consumer buying.

    A report by executive outplacement company Challenger, Gray, and Christmas released in September forecasted retailers to only add 500,000 seasonal positions this year. It noted that volume would represent the lowest rate of year-end hiring since 2009. The company said those cautious staffing plans reflect the same concerns as other business owners who aren’t doing much hiring. Those worries include the impact of import tariffs, relatively high and enduring inflation rates, and potentially reduced spending by consumers whose budgets are being pinched by higher prices.

    A report by job posting platform Indeed painted a less Grinchy holiday season employment picture, but it still wasn’t terribly merry.

    An analysis by its Hiring Lab research unit found year-end employment opportunities on September 30 were just 2.7 percent higher than on the same date last year. But at the same time, the number of people seeking those positions were 27 percent greater than in September 2024, and 50 percent higher than during the same month in 2023.

    “The level of searches related to seasonal work is far above levels seen immediately before and after the pandemic,” wrote Indeed economist Cory Stahle in a recent Hiring Lab blog post. “But while searches have soared, the number of seasonal jobs available has not… This holiday hiring season will likely be highly competitive for job seekers, with fewer positions available and increased worker interest.”

    Of course, things may change over the next few weeks if retailers and other companies that rely on big year-end business ramp up their hiring plans as the holidays near. But another detail Hiring Lab discovered suggests those belated recruitment hopes may be a long shot. Its analysis found only 2.1 percent of seasonal job postings so far have stressed an urgent need for help, far lower than the 10 percent level in September 2021.

    By contrast, people looking for that work are really in need of seasonal jobs. The higher numbers of people searching for those opportunities indicate many employment seekers have learned the lessons from several months of a sluggish national employment market — and have started looking for year-end opportunities early. If so, that could be be worsening the supply and demand mismatch.

    “It’s possible that some of this shift in timing represents job seekers adjusting to a cooling labor market, longer hiring times, and less employer urgency,” Stahl wrote. “Beyond urgency, workers may also feel the need to get their foot in the door earlier because they are competing for a shrinking pool of holiday jobs… The result is a more competitive seasonal job market with fewer opportunities for a growing supply of workers.”

    Not all retailers are holding back as 2025 nears its end. Spirit Halloween said it’s recruiting as many people as it did last year, and Amazon is hiring 250,000 seasonal workers. Other big chains have said they’re adding unspecified numbers of employees to their staffs, while others declined to reveal their holiday season hiring plans.

    The upshot, Indeed’s Hiring Lab said, is that so far this year, businesses with doubts about the economy are showing similar reluctance to significantly expand headcounts in the holiday run-up as they did this summer. While that’s bad news for seasonal job seekers, it should make recruitment easier for employers who are adding year-end staff.

    “Seasonal work is still out there, but it’s not as easy to come by as it was a few years ago,” Stahl wrote. “All told, this year’s holiday season looks to be a tougher one for job seekers and a little easier for employers.”

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    Bruce Crumley

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