mobile-menu-icon
GM Authority

GM Dropping Four-Year Degree Requirement For Employment

GM has dropped the four-year college degree requirement for many jobs and will instead transition to skills-based hiring practices for certain roles, Tammy Golden, GM’s executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion, told Automotive News in a recent interview.

Golden, who is also the Detroit-based automaker’s head of workforce strategy, explained to AN how the automaker has implemented a new three-pronged approach to its hiring practices. The first step involves a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, which is part of GM’s vision to become the most inclusive company in the world, while the second focuses on workplace innovation and removing biases that may impact an employee’s experience on the job. The third step is workforce design, which focuses on creating clear pathways for employees to join the company that may not have four-year degrees, but have relevant real-world experience.

“From a soft skills perspective, we really needed people who can connect with people,” Golden told AN. “When you focus on what’s required of the job versus, say, a four-year degree, as your ticket in, it allows you the opportunity to open the aperture to another pool of talent.”

Golden also said that GM that nearly half of the 500 team leaders it has hired in recent months are from “underrepresented categories,” in the auto industry, including women and people of color. By dropping the four-year degree requirement, the automaker now has a larger talent pool of potential candidates to select from when hiring, which will help it achieve its diversity, equity and inclusion goals and also expand its workforce in a meaningful way.

GM CEO Mary Barra said in 2020 that she wants the automaker to be “the most inclusive company in the world,” through way of hiring practices, representation and partnering with diverse media. The automaker also donated $4 million to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 2020 and set up a dedicated Inclusion Advisory Board to promote inclusion and racial justice within its ranks.

Subscribe to GM Authority for more GM business news, GM employment news, GM diversity news, and around-the-clock GM news coverage.

Sam loves to write and has a passion for auto racing, karting and performance driving of all types.

Subscribe to GM Authority

For around-the-clock GM news coverage

We'll send you one email per day with the latest GM news. It's totally free.

Comments

  1. This is great news!

    Hopefully more and more companies/organizations will follow suit. Perhaps hospitals can drop the requirement of graduating from medical school for all nurses and doctors. I’d also like to see all airlines drop the requirement for pilots to graduate from flight school with their pilot’s license.

    Hiring people based solely on their race, ethnicity or sexual orientation is much more important than hiring based upon someone’s educational and occupational experience credentials.

    Wow…

    Reply
    1. You don’t have to have a degree to work at GM. Look at Mary. She has one and she is terrible.

      Reply
    2. GM will suffer heavily and be under management before too long. When you focus hires from 20% of the hiring pool. You only get 20% of the top talent…. And the other 80 goes to you competition. GM will go under, be bankrupt, and receive new management who will go back to being colorblind and hiring people by skills and competency alone.

      Reply
    3. GM can talk inclusion all they want, but if you are over 50, you simply will not be hired.

      Reply
      1. You may have a chance if you are a woman or a man that comes to the interview dressed in drag.

        Reply
    4. Just look at the awful job that the new White House press secretary is doing. That’s what this hiring policy will get you.

      Reply
    5. GM CEO Mary Barra is just following Biden’s rulebook. They say they are not racist, but then they turn around and hire you just because of your skin color. Uh, last time I checked, that is being 100% Racist.

      Reply
  2. Truth be told, College Degrees are not viable options for majority of households in America today. The value of a degree has plummeted. Many graduates find themselves with jobs pertaining to nothing remotely close to what they’ve studied. I’d rather an employee be personable, knowledgeably on a variety of topics, than be a know it all in one category. The education system teaches you based on a series of pathways, not on real world outcomes and possibilities.

    A Degree is worthless unless you’re a Lawyer or working in a specialty field of study such as Neural Surgeon, or other careers within a medical/scientific field.

    Reply
    1. Many degrees are useless. Humanities especially. To say they all are is foolish.

      Reply
    2. A college degree is supposed to show that you’ve developed critical thinking skills, so a prospective employer knows you can figure out how to create new products–and, of course, solve existing problems. College is not supposed to be a glorified vo-tech, where you learn how to duplicate today’s procedures–knowledge that will likely be out of date by graduation.

      Reply
    3. Yes some degrees value is questionable, but the new GM criteria for employment is even more questionable.

      Reply
  3. Damn, I am in the 4th year for my Gender Studies Degree and now GM drops this bomb on me now? Well I guess I will have to use that degree to get a job at Starbucks.

    Reply
    1. Get you a job at GM if you have the next best idea….

      Reply
    2. When I was growing up, ‘gender studies’ meant looking at my friend’s Playboy magazine in between ping-pong games.

      Hard game to play when something’s trying to occupy the table…

      Reply
      1. I had an advanced degree, I was with the friends sister, ignoring him as he whined about playing ping pong.

        Reply
  4. The first step involves a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, which is part of GM’s vision to become the most inclusive company in the world,

    Translation: white males need not apply. Nevertheless this concept has been very successful. Look at the Biden administration.

    Reply
    1. This move smells of diversity pushing to fill a quota. GM started this push in the 80’s. They went bankrupt once due to this practice, and they R doomed for a second experience in bankruptcy. College, let’s one become more well rounded and proves one can fulfill a goal and assists in think maturely. in most cases. Good Luck w another poor decision while market share is spiraling downward.

      Reply
      1. If that’s what college does, the military does more. But military experience isn’t revered like a degree that might be unrelated to the job duties.

        Reply
        1. Dropping degree should not have anything to do with racial diversity & inclusion.

          The only reason should be that a degree requirement has proven unnecessary for some roles.

          Reply
    2. and White males do not need to buy anything GM makes anymore as well.

      Reply
  5. DEI is going to end up destroying this country. Amazing how many people are lining up to be sacrificed on the altar of the folks pushing this.

    Just treat everyone with respect and how YOU would want to be treated in return and the world would be a better place. It’s called “The golden rule” in the bible.
    Oh wait, “they” already are trying to destroy organized religion.

    Reply
  6. I’m curious, if this applies to “entry level” positions or at all levels across the board including executive level

    It would make sense to me that middle management and executive level positions require a 4 year degree for consideration, but not an MBA

    I guess if GM is truly serious about DEI, then no degree would required at any level. That should be interesting!

    Reply
  7. During my time at GM, HR came through and started auditing who was in what position and their credentials. Some people that never should have been “given” certain assignments and had long lost their sponsors that got them there were either downgraded or given options. But some that had no idea how anything worked were supposed to move in and make things better. Without giving away where I was, and what I did, I will say that there were times that “new” employees came in and needed a primer on functions. Even though my area was not “critical” by some standards, even a lowlife like me could recognize who should be there and who never should have been in the door. There are things that an advanced degree doesn’t provide you and other things that it covers up. IMO two of those things being enthusiasm and the other humility. An old boss had a plaque he mounted in his office and even for the crusty and ornery soul that he was, his sign said “We will always beat me”. If there was a way to include that sort of attitude as part of an advanced degree without all the bullskit that goes on these days, whatever HR department that could act in that manner would be a true asset to any corporation.

    Reply
  8. How come the NBA and the NFL don’t have diversity goals on the playing field?

    Reply
  9. What this is all about is the lack of peop,e willing to work or even show up every day.

    All companies are struggling to fill jobs as the job participation is at an all time high. Some are high rate of retirements and also many are living on assistance as it pays better than working.

    Hell there are Cities in California starting to pay their people basic incomes just for breathing.

    We have had to change our standards from people with experience to training people,e to do the job anymore.

    To be honest there are many good workers and smart workers with no degrees out there.

    GM is in need of people just like everyone else.

    Many company are thrilled to have someone show up everyday and do just a half decent job anymore.

    Reply
    1. Believe me, the job market is still very competitive.

      Reply
  10. How about build a truck that doesn’t require 3 def tank replacements in the 1st 20k miles ffs, and the parts are scarce sometimes waiting months but i see where your priorities are and its not customer satisfaction

    Reply
  11. Hey the bright side is no degree no student loans to forgive. Lot of great minds and ideas come from the guy working his way up the ladder.

    Reply
  12. Joe Biden is the worst president of all time!!!!

    Reply
  13. Let’s see if I’ve got this….GM is going to design and build their most advanced products (i.e., Ultium), do it faster than ever, and do it with people whose strongest qualifications are their skin color and gender identity. They seem to want to follow the example of the SCOTUS. What could go wrong?

    Reply
    1. If you want a job at GM, tell them, ” I am LGBQT+Whatever and throw in that you have HerpegonesyphilAIDS, and it sounds like you will have a career for life.

      Reply
      1. Tell them you are a black, transgender, Lesbian. That should get you right in the door.

        Reply
  14. GM needs new leadership.

    Reply
  15. GM has achieved its goal of inclusivity, it has included many workers residing in China and Mexico, while including me in its latest all inclusive permanent layoff group.

    Reply
  16. Pool of college degreed yes men must have been getting too small.

    Reply
  17. Donk wheels and rainbow paint jobs, can’t wait. I feel like I am living in the twilight zone WTF is going on with tthis country. We need hire on qualifications. This administration is only forcing this sh÷t down our throats to get votes.

    Reply
  18. Corporate policy junk, no doubt driven by feel-good political pressure.

    Where do skill, talent, brains, integrity, and willingness to work hard fit into this DEI automatic-hire mess?

    Reply
  19. It’s a race to see how many “diverse” and “inclusion” buzzwords a company can fit in one sentence.
    gm is blindly all-in…

    Reply
  20. GM operates in a very competitive industry that continues to rely on ingenuity and new ideas to succeed. There are industries that are static but motor vehicles is not one of them. It is ever changing and fiercely competitive.

    Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, there have been thousands of ideas and inventions and innovations that changed civilization and brought about greater productivity, communication, comfort. and infinitely better lives for all of mankind and it is still happening today. Virtually every one of those advancements has come from the minds of a very narrow subset of the population. To be a company reliant on advancement, creativity, and daring but then to exclude from employment the very people who are responsible for virtually all of history’s great invention is insane. Further, advanced education teaches critical thinking, establishing a hypothesis, testing ideas, and all the very concepts necessary for a person to challenge the status quo and change the world. Those enlightened and adaptive minds are precisely what GM needs. To establish a policy of hiring based on race alone and then to purposefully lower educational requirements so as to be able to hire more members of that race is simply unwise.

    Barra has a lofty goal that some might call noble but it’s entirely unrealistic in her industry and not based on an informed understanding of civilization. It’s perhaps like wanting to win the Super Bowl but then expecting to do it with the most diverse and inclusive team possible. One wins with the most talented and capable, not a team selected solely on race, gender, and sexuality; a team like that will lose every time.

    Reply
    1. The Super Bowl analogy is spot-on.

      Reply
  21. Funny how no body mentions the “entitlement” that many of todays “under 30” crowd are afflicted with. I actually work in the industry, and I see the “talent” coming out of prestigious institutions on a regular basis. Somehow, accurately creating a spreadsheet seems to be grounds for promotion to manager. smh. But you keep believing it’s because of the brownies or the gays, when it’s really entitled white boys from Ohio, Indiana, etc, who are awesome at shooting themselves in the foot; career wise. I used to think it was just the smartest kids in their high school, not being able to adapt to being avg or less, around other engineers; but nope, just entitlement. I deserve this, I have worked so hard already, is the mantra. smh
    The article does not mention engineers, so for those who spend their days far away from this environment, there are a lot of positions, that have required degrees, that don’t really need degrees to do. Some quality in the plant, industrial controls monitoring, etc. Things that an avg intellect can be trained to do. This is not the “that” that others make it out to be in their incessant whiny racist and homophobic rants.

    Reply
  22. If you have a degree, there are definitely better companies to work for than GM

    Reply
  23. Inclusion is job #1. Vehicles? I guess, if we have the time.

    Reply
  24. It is little wonder that Toyota, Volkswagon and Hyundai et al. are eating GM’s lunch. GM is no longer run by “car” people, but sociologists. General Motors Institute used to be a top source of automotive engineers. It is now called Kettering University where a math teacher drives a BMW.

    Reply
  25. so many college degrees today have little to no bearing o workplace so companies need to basically train them anyway
    now engineering and other degrees are needed. but GM top management has been a disaster for decades from the first year of corvair which did get fixed but damage done. the Vega, the citation, the Cimarron the bolt is the current disaster seems every decade they make a disaster some eventually fixed but japan has greatly profited by gm fails
    what really ticked me was the company who was saved by billions of tax money or in the 30t debt was first to import a china made SUV Buick Envision

    Reply
  26. Jr233 if you take the blinders off you would be able to see other manufacturers blunders.

    Reply
  27. Like other manufacturers GM can’t find suitable employees. So they must widen the pool. This will help but it won’t be sufficient. Overall manufacturers and other industries are all competing for workers from the same pool. Automation won’t solve this. To keep businesses on home soil and to continue the growth labor will need to be supplemented by foreign workers. It is inevitable.

    Reply
  28. No disrespect to anyone who has achieved Higher Learning, but some of these comments are oblivious, There are people with degrees that are dumb as a box of crayons (as well as) those without. You’ll be surprised of how many people without degrees who have the experience + knowledge of what companies like GM need. It’s the EXPERIENCE that adds to the KNOWLEDGE in the field that keeps businesses a float. Of course Knowledge + Experience = Success. You don’t hire a 4 year degree college student just because they have a degree, you hire a 4 year college student because of the experience + knowledge of the field. There are people that didn’t graduate high school that can run a business better then one that has. College Degrees does IN FACT offer better opportunities, so does that person(s) who has 5+ years in the field without a degree. The only thing that separates the differences is a piece of paper in a glass case or leather book. We get so focused on what a person have in order too vs the person with the hands on experience. Education will always be best; but we cannot rule out those who dominate the hands on experience.

    Reply

Leave a comment

Cancel