Bert Bean, CEO of Insight Global, a privately held national staffing and services company, called on employers attending The Wall Street Journal’s Jobs Summit last week to focus less on college degree and job experience and more on training and development to help collectively expand the talent pool in a still highly competitive job market.

“We’ve cooked things like college degree into how we hire people in large part because we’re afraid to take a chance on somebody, and I would encourage all employers to work together to be part of the solution to expand the labor market,” Bean said. “At Insight Global, we fundamentally believe that people can learn things, and I think you can really set yourself up for success by investing a lot more in training and development—it allows you to dip into talent pools you’ve never been able to dip in before.”

Insight Global was a presenting sponsor of “WSJ Jobs Summit: Succeed in the Search,” a recent virtual event where business and staffing leaders shared their insights on the job market in the era of “The Great Reshuffle” and offered their advice on turning a hot job market into a competitive advantage.

Bean spoke at a workshop titled, “The New Winning Formula: Recruitment and Retention in 2022.” Taking questions from a moderator and the audience, Bean emphasized the importance of culture to attract and retain employees, observing that employers use the term “culture” a lot but don’t always understand it. “We use culture as a causation for success at Insight Global,” he said. “Culture is the habits that get formed around a company’s values, and as leaders, we really need to know how to message those values through the organization so that people can understand what success is, align with those values and model their behavior around them.”

The full-day event was kicked off with a special appearance by Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, who took questions about the U.S. economic outlook and its implications for the labor market, inflation and central-bank policies. Interactive workshops and interviews covered everything from how to navigate career-enhancing opportunities to mastering remote work to forging a new career path through entrepreneurship. In addition to Bean, attendees heard from employers, job and workplace experts, career coaches and Journal reporters.

A recording of Bean’s interview, moderated by Lori Theodore, head of talent acquisition at Dow Jones, is available at https://vimeo.com/700316566/a9a3aa9f9c.

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