November 24, 2025
Career coaches who take a skills-first approach to providing advice and guidance to jobseekers can expand career opportunities for people with records of arrest, conviction, or incarceration.
At Jobs for the Future, we’re committed to promoting fair chance employment practices to create more opportunities for people with records to pursue quality jobs—and expanding the talent pipeline for employers who have had trouble filling jobs.
Through our Center for Justice & Economic Advancement, we work with employers to show them that hiring people with records of arrest, conviction, or incarceration can deliver strategic advantages, and we help them integrate fair chance hiring into their HR playbooks. In this work, one thing is clear: A skills-first approach to talent management is essential to the success of a fair chance hiring plan.
Skills-first talent management means making decisions about who to hire and who to promote based on what people can do, not solely on the degrees or credentials they’ve earned or the job titles they’ve had in the past.
It’s a shift from credentials to capabilities. For people with records, that shift can be transformative.
Through the work of the Rework America Alliance, we help employers transition to skills-first practices. But that’s only one half of the equation. It’s also important to help workers themselves understand how to take a skills-first approach to job-hunting. And that’s especially important for jobseekers who have been incarcerated, many of whom may lack college degrees or have gaps in their resumes.
That’s why we’re calling on career navigation professionals at workforce development boards, community organizations, and nonprofits to adopt a skills-first approach to career coaching.
Skills-based career coaching empowers jobseekers with records to see themselves as well-qualified workers who are capable contributing to a company’s success and instills in them the confidence to pursue quality jobs.
Skills-first career coaching is an approach in which career navigation practitioners encourage jobseekers to take a self-confident, proactive stance in the labor market even though many job postings are seeking applicants with degrees, credentials, or job titles they don’t have. Skills-based coaching leads with “What can you do?” instead of “What jobs have you held?” or “Where did you go to school?”
This approach can be beneficial for people who have been incarcerated or have records of arrest, because they often face a web of restrictive regulations that exclude them from, or limit their access to, certain career paths and educational opportunities. Here’s a look at three ways skills-first coaching can open up career pathways for people with records.
More than 60% of U.S. workers don’t have a bachelor’s degree, and while many major employers are removing degree requirements from their job postings, the shift to full acceptance of skills-based hiring has been slow, according to the Wall Street Journal. This shuts out millions of talented workers who have acquired skills and knowledge outside of formal K-12 or postsecondary educational settings, perhaps on the job or through short-term training programs or other lived experiences such as volunteer work—before, during or after incarceration.
Skills-based coaching teaches jobseekers to look past degree requirements and focus on the skills employers actually need. When job postings require a bachelor’s degree, coaches can train jobseekers to identify the underlying competencies (such as communication, problem-solving, or project management capabilities) required to succeed in a particular job and think about ways to demonstrate to employers that they’ve developed these skills through their unique experiences.
People with records often face rejection and internalize negative messages about their worth. Skills-based coaching guides jobseekers to shift their mindset by focusing first and foremost on their competencies, creativity, and capabilities.
This approach inspires people to emphasize their strengths instead of fixating on gaps or barriers they may face. This enables them to construct new personal narratives that are centered on how they can contribute now and in the future, rather than dwelling on something that happened in the past.
People who have recently been released from incarceration often face many challenges as they seek to secure stable housing and transportation, rejoin their families and communities, seek care for health needs that may have gone unaddressed, and learn to use the technologies that they will need in many jobs and in their everyday lives.
Skills-based coaching acknowledges these realities while helping jobseekers realize that, in the process of overcoming these challenges, they’ve developed resilience, adaptability, problem-solving capabilities, and other durable skills that will help them succeed in many different jobs.
Across the United States, more than 70 million people have a record of arrest, conviction, or incarceration. These individuals already face numerous regulatory barriers that limit their access to quality jobs, and degree requirements add one more hurdle for many of them.
Businesses that adopt fair chance hiring policies built on skills-first approaches to talent management have much to gain by creating opportunities for people who are often excluded from candidate pools. Data shows that people with records represent a talented and reliable workforce. Consider these benefits:
Skills-first hiring talent management policies enable employers to remove unnecessary barriers in hiring and advancement practices and evaluate workers and job applicants based on their proven skills and capabilities.
At the same time, skills-based career coaching empowers jobseekers with records to see themselves as well-qualified workers who are capable of contributing to a company’s success and instills in them the confidence to pursue quality jobs knowing that they’ll be able to clearly and articulately tell employers what they’re capable of doing and show evidence of what they’ve already accomplished.
Broad adoption of skill-first talent management policies can play an important role in enabling JFF to achieve the bold goal we’ve embraced as our North Star: By 2033, 75 million Americans facing barriers to economic advancement will have quality jobs.
Career coaches trained to take a skills-based approach in their work with jobseekers can play a critical role in making that vision a reality.
The Rework America Alliance provides training and resources to help career coaches across the country adopt or strengthen skills-first coaching and career development practices. To learn more, visit the Rework America Alliance website and explore training opportunities through the Rework America Alliance network.
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