Guest Commentary: Hire for Skills, Not Schools

Philadelphia is one of the top dozen cities in the country for AI-focused job openings.

Yet Philadelphia is the worst city in the country for economic mobility.

How we choose to hire for these positions and other high-wage tech jobs will be critical to determining when — or if — we shake this undesired claim.

Employers have a local source for high-quality talent, but they’ll only find it if they look beyond their personal connections, referrals and inner network and orient their search more exclusively around skills and knowledge.

I’m talking about young people who graduated high school and made an intentional decision not to enroll in college — not because they lacked direction, but because they questioned the return on investment, especially in a system where Black and Brown stud