When I sat down with Krista DiGiacomo, who owns an Express Employment Professionals office in Vancouver, Washington, I wanted a ground-level read on a labor market that feels confusing from almost every angle. Employers say they can’t find the right people. Candidates say they can’t find the right opportunities. Colleges are still sending graduates into the workforce with degrees that carry real financial weight. At the same time, skilled trades employers are desperate for talent.
What emerged from our conversation wasn’t a complaint about younger workers, higher education, or the economy in general. It was something more useful than that: a clearer picture of where the disconnect actually lives and what leaders can do about it.
Krista told me, “I have never seen the market like it is right now in the 24 years I’ve been in this business.” That’s a striking statement from someone who has spent more than two decades close to hiring realities. Rather than watching this from a distance, she’s hearing from employers every day, meeting candidates every day, and seeing what happens when expectations on both sides don’t line up.
Her conclusion was simple and important: “We’re experiencing a huge skills gap.” But as our conversation unfolded, it became clear that the phrase “skills gap” doesn’t mean what many leaders think it means.
The skills gap starts with the basics
When organizations talk about the skills gap, they often mean technical expertise. They mean certifications, systems knowledge, or the ability to step into a role with minimal training. Those things matter, of course. But Krista was quick to point out that the shortage runs deeper.
She sees the gap in “both soft skills as well as hard skills.” And when she defined soft skills, she didn’t reach for abstract language about executive presence or strategic thinking. She got very practical: “punctuality, attendance, the things that you would think are obvious.” She added that her team has seen “a huge uptick in attendance issues and just reliability really since COVID.”
That observation matters because it reframes the problem. Many employers are still trying to solve a pipeline issue when part of the challenge is consistency and readiness. They want people who can do the work, but they also need people who can get to work consistently, navigate daily responsibilities, and sustain trust. Krista connected that reality to practical barriers many workers face, including transportation and childcare. In many cases, these issues are the difference between someone succeeding in a job and someone cycling back into unemployment.
The hard skills gap is real, too. Krista mentioned things like reading a tape measure, reading blueprints, and managing a budget. These aren’t glamorous capabilities, but they are foundational. And for many employers, especially in industrial, skilled trades, and operational roles, the absence of those skills creates real friction.
The important point for leaders is this: if your hiring strategy assumes the market is full of job-ready talent that simply hasn’t found your posting yet, you may be solving the wrong problem. The issue may be more fundamental. You may be hiring into a labor market where reliability, work readiness, and practical competence can’t be taken for granted.
College still has value, but the signal has weakened
I didn’t want my conversation with Krista to turn into a lazy critique of college. There’s still plenty of value in higher education. I told her that when I look back, college helped me grow up. It taught me responsibility. It gave me life experience. I even met my wife there.
Krista agreed. She wasn’t arguing that college has no place. In fact, she shared that her own son is considering a four-year institution. But she was clear that the market signal attached to a bachelor’s degree has changed. In her words, “I don’t think a college degree is nearly what it was 15, 20, 25 years ago.”
Krista said she often pushes back when clients include a bachelor’s degree requirement in a job description. Her question is straightforward: is it truly necessary, or is it there because “it just has always been on the template”? In many organizations, degree requirements have become inherited filters rather than intentional decisions.
She put the bigger issue even more bluntly: “Schools are teaching theory versus practical application. So that four-year degree just doesn’t mean what it once did.”
That doesn’t mean college graduates have nothing to offer. But it does mean that employers should be more honest about what they’re actually screening for. Too often, a degree gets used as a proxy for discipline, commitment, communication, or trainability. But a proxy is still a shortcut, and shortcuts can hide strong candidates while letting weak ones through.
I suspect that’s part of why degree inflation lingered for so long. Employers wanted a clean filtering mechanism, and the degree requirement became a convenient stand-in for a more nuanced assessment. But as labor shortages intensify and talent pathways diversify, that shortcut is getting more expensive.
If leaders are serious about widening access to talent, they need to interrogate the old assumptions built into their hiring systems. Not symbolically, but practically. Why is this requirement here? What capability does it represent? How else could we assess it?
We’ve oversold one path and underexposed the others
For years, many of us absorbed the same message: the four-year degree is the right path, maybe even the only respectable one. That message shaped parenting decisions, school counseling, employer expectations, and student identity. But the problem is that the labor market no longer supports such a narrow story.
Krista believes we need to “change that narrative,” and she said it starts at the dinner table. I think she’s right. Kids absorb what adults celebrate. If every signal they receive tells them that success means going to a four-year college and landing a white-collar knowledge job, then trades, technical careers, and apprenticeship pathways will always feel like second-tier options, no matter how strong the pay or demand.
That’s a serious mistake.
During our conversation, we talked about electricians, plumbers, welders, and builders not as backup plans, but as economically durable careers. Krista made the point plainly: you can make “just as much money, if not more so” in these paths, often without graduating with “an unbelievable amount of debt.”
That tradeoff should be front and center in career conversations, but too often it isn’t. Students are handed aspiration without enough exposure. They hear about influence, branding, content, startups, and personal platforms. Meanwhile, they may never meet someone who can explain what a skilled trades career actually looks like, what it pays, how it progresses, or why it matters.
As Krista put it, “We need to make it glamorous.” I like that phrasing because she wasn’t talking about spin but rather visibility. If young people don’t see the work, meet the people doing it, or understand the pride and earning potential attached to it, they’re unlikely to choose it. And that exposure gap has consequences.
CTE programs can do more than prepare students for jobs
One of the most encouraging parts of our discussion was Krista’s experience with career and technical education programs. She described high schools in her area beginning to reinvest in CTE, and she’s deeply involved in helping connect those programs with employers.
What stood out to me is that she doesn’t see CTE as a side program or a fallback track. She sees it as a practical bridge between education and labor market reality.
Krista serves on a local CTE board where employers meet quarterly with instructors to talk about where skill gaps are and where demand is growing. That kind of feedback loop is exactly what many communities have been missing. Schools can’t align students to real opportunities if they’re designing in isolation, and employers can’t complain about talent shortages if they’re absent from the systems that develop talent.
Krista also described an industrial fair that brings students and employers into the same room, where students can showcase work in areas like baking and welding. That matters because it turns abstract career ideas into something tangible. It gives students pride, employers visibility, and both groups a reason to imagine a future together.
From there, the conversation moved naturally to internships and apprenticeships. Krista explained how a local builders association is helping fund early internship wages so employers can participate without carrying all the upfront cost. That’s smart because one of the barriers to apprenticeship-style investment is that many employers don’t see immediate return. They see extra work, slower productivity, and added supervision. Shared infrastructure helps solve that.
The bigger lesson is that talent development can’t begin when a candidate submits a resume. By then, many opportunities have already been lost. Communities need earlier intervention, stronger employer involvement, and clearer pathways from classroom exposure to hands-on experience.
Employers have to stop confusing pedigree with potential
If there was one message from Krista that leaders need to take seriously, it’s that outdated hiring filters are making talent shortages worse.
She described her role as increasingly consultative, not just transactional recruiting. That means sitting down with clients and asking hard questions about what a role truly requires. If a degree is listed, why? If a candidate lacks a traditional background, what transferable skills might still make them a strong fit?
I found myself agreeing with her argument that “a piece of paper doesn’t give you that.” It doesn’t prove judgment under pressure. It doesn’t prove attendance. It doesn’t prove work ethic, adaptability, or coachability. Those qualities show up in performance, not in pedigree.
This is where employers often get stuck. They want low-risk hiring, but instead of improving how they assess talent, they rely on credentials that feel safe. The result is a narrower funnel and a weaker match to the real demands of the work.
Krista sees value in temp-to-hire and evaluation periods because they create a “working interview.” That’s a useful phrase. In many roles, especially operational ones, observing someone in action tells you more than a polished resume ever will.
For leaders, the challenge is to build hiring processes that identify capability more directly. That may mean skill demonstrations, practical exercises, trial periods, or more structured interviews. It may also mean partnering with staffing firms, schools, or industry associations that can help translate nontraditional experience into credible potential.
Staffing is becoming more human, not less
We also talked about AI, because no conversation about work seems complete without it. Krista gets asked whether AI will make the staffing industry obsolete. Her answer was clear: no. If anything, it makes the human side of the work more valuable.
She said technology has “clogged the wheel of hiring,” and I think many candidates would agree. Application systems are more automated, but not necessarily more humane. Resume screening is faster, but often less contextual. Employers can process more information while understanding less about the person behind it.
In that environment, Krista sees her team’s role shifting toward advocacy and translation. She described calling clients directly and saying, in effect, “I know this resume won’t look qualified on paper, but here’s why you need to meet this person.”
This is also a reminder that many candidates today need more than job leads. They need someone to help them recognize transferable skills, rethink career direction, and navigate a market that no longer offers clean linear progression. Krista said her team has had to “become career advisors,” helping people who’ve been laid off or stuck in long searches figure out how to pivot.
That strikes me as one of the most underappreciated shifts in the workforce right now. The real value in many people-centered businesses won’t come from processing transactions faster. It will come from helping people make better sense of uncertainty.
The lesson for leaders is broader than hiring
What I took away from my conversation with Krista is that the workforce problem in front of us isn’t a single problem. It’s a chain of disconnected assumptions.
We assumed college would remain the default path to opportunity. We assumed employers could keep using degree requirements as a shorthand for readiness. We assumed younger workers would naturally discover the trades if the pay was good enough. We assumed technology would simplify matching people to work. But those assumptions are breaking down.
The organizations that adapt best will be the ones willing to get closer to the real conditions of the labor market. They’ll question inherited job requirements. They’ll invest earlier in talent development. They’ll build stronger ties with schools, CTE programs, and community partners. They’ll make practical careers more visible. And they’ll remember that a labor market runs on human judgment, not just filters and credentials.
If we want a healthier workforce, we can’t keep waiting for someone else to produce it for us. Employers have to participate in building it.
That’s the real lesson here. The skills gap won’t close through better rhetoric alone. It will close when leaders stop treating talent as something to purchase at the end of the pipeline and start treating it as something they help shape all along the way.
Brandon Laws is a workplace culture and leadership enthusiast, host of the Transform Your Workplace podcast, and VP of Marketing and Product at Xenium HR.