Jobs for the Future Associate Vice President Lili Allen recently published a piece in Training Industry saying that the “baseline skills” young people acquire in entry-level jobs can serve as an important foundation of successful careers that lead to opportunities for economic advancement.

To make that possible, she writes, employers and talent managers should design career pathways that focus on the acquisition of transferable skills on the job, not in long-term education and training programs.

“With the right kind of support, [baseline skills] can be transferred and transformed,” she writes. “Employers and talent managers must help young workers build on their existing skills so they can leapfrog from low-wage work to higher-paying jobs that can advance their careers.”