Introducing skill passports

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Read time: 2.5 minutes

Good Afternoon Party People! 🎉

PARTY PLAN 🎉

📜 Skill passports

🤖 Are company leaders trained in AI?

🤨 Weird flex

And, of course, MEMES!

MEME OF THE DAY

HIRING

Skill Passports

At Canva, employees are judged, promoted, and hired based on “skills passports” instead of college degrees. An executive at Canva says the passport “isn’t necessarily a physical thing’” but rather a conceptual term the company uses to assess employees.

(Yes Canva, the hyper-growth startup that aids in design work)

Canva has always taken a skills-first approach to hiring, and even removed four-year degree requirements from job postings a few years ago. Before it was cool!

Canva uses an internal mobility program called the Pathways Program to help workers find other opportunities within the company.

When hiring for a new role, internal and external candidates are given a “challenge” or assignment designed to test their competency in the role, regardless of other job titles or years of experience.

Since it launched in 2022, there have been 250 internal moves. According to an HR executive at Canva, the company has received 300,000 applications for its open jobs this year alone.

Finally, a company that’s hiring the right way!

AI

Are Company Leaders Being Trained in AI?

More and more workers and job seekers are being trained in AI to keep up with the demands of the workforce.

But are company leaders keeping up?

According to a recent survey done by General Assembly, the answer is no.

58% of directors and vice presidents in the U.S. and U.K. said they’ve never attended an artificial intelligence training or course. Additionally, only 42% said they're confident they know how to use simple AI tools without compromising data.

More than 1 in 4 said they’re not confident at all. Lucky for them, they can just outsource it, right?

Well, when it came to hiring vendors that use AI, 39% of company leaders said they didn’t even have the knowledge to make those decisions.

46% of directors and VPs admitted their companies don’t have any sort of AI usage policy. Weird considering nearly 80% said they expect AI to replace some of their employees within the next 10 years.

WORKPLACE

Weird Flex

In an attempt to navigate an anti-LGBT hate incident involving an employee, a CEO told his company that his mentor was a member of the KKK.

Super weird flex, and also bad timing, and also wtf?? Here’s the backstory:

Last summer, an employee at cloud services company Digital Ocean posted a meme on LinkedIn regarding his employer changing the logo to rainbow colors during Pride Month. The fallout of the employee sparked an all-hands meeting where the CEO, Yancey Spruill, addressed everyone in the company. During the meeting, he explained that his former mentor was a member of the KKK, which he said shows how employees can work together despite holding different beliefs.

The CEO’s comments led to widespread outrage among employees on Slack and even prompted a formal open letter and an employee walkout. Digital Ocean is a huge, publicly traded company that has become particularly important with the rise of AI.

Spruill went on to explain an anecdote from his time working at a chemical company called Corning in the 1980s in which he came to be close with a colleague who was in the KKK. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t talk his way out of what he admitted. He eventually apologized for his remarks and left the company shortly after.

Will this go down as the worst meeting of all time?

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