Skills-First Hiring is reshaping how we think about talent, and creator content is helping accelerate that shift. At the Ad Council, we believe the messenger is just as important as the message—and through Creators for Good, our in-house talent engagement arm, we continue to innovate and redefine the role creators and trusted messengers play in our industry.
The idea is pretty simple: Creators can do more than influence what we buy—they can influence how we work.
In a recent conversation at Advertising Week New York, I sat down with our incredible partners at Opportunity@Work, LinkedIn and small business owner and creator LaShana Lewis to discuss how creator content best practices can be applied to the B2B space on key issues like Skills-First Hiring. Thanks to these incredible partners, our award-winning "Tear the Paper Ceiling" campaign has become a blueprint for how best practices for creator content can be leveraged, while also unlocking competitive advantages for employers and STARs—workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes, rather than a bachelor’s degree.
In the end, this conversation reminded me of the critical role that first-person storytelling and creator content can have in shifting industry norms, driving B2B impact and reshaping what opportunity looks like today.
Let's get into it!
Lui de Armas: Chris, let’s start with you. Can you set the scene for us? What is the Paper Ceiling, what is Skills-First Hiring, and why are they important?
Chris Francica: The Paper Ceiling is the barrier that separates workers with skills from employers who are looking for workers with skills, and nowadays, you hear both these groups talking past each other. Candidates are trying to climb the ladder but can’t quite figure out how to do that. And you also have companies saying that they can’t find the right people for these roles–that there’s a talent gap. A skills gap, if you will.
And yet the standards are so high. If you don’t have a bachelor’s degree, you’re out. If you haven’t worked at this set of companies, or don’t know this specific person, or haven’t gone to this narrow swath of schools, you’re out.
It’s important to remember that a college degree is one way of many to build skills. There’s a dozen good reasons why someone may not have gone to college and you can’t just throw out the skills they’ve built outside of a bachelor's degree.
Skills-First Hiring and “Tear the Paper Ceiling” introduce a new set of values that says “the skills you have matter more than where you got them.” The group that is impacted by this mindset the most are STARs. They build skills through routes like community college, military service, and most often, through on-the-job experience.
The issue lies in the fact that in the 2010s, 70% of newly created jobs required a bachelor’s degree, while only 50% of the workforce has a bachelor’s degree. It will take a STAR 30 years to earn the day-one salary of a degree holder.
To sum this all up, Skills-First Hiring is a practice that says: start with skills as the first layer of qualification.
LdA: LaShana, we just saw a glimpse of your story in the creative, but can you tell us more about what brings you to this conversation, and what “Tearing the Paper Ceiling” means to you?
LaShana Lewis: A lot of why this campaign matters to me, and why I got involved goes back to what Chris was saying. It took me a long time to get to where I am. I did a few years of college, and for financial reasons and others, I didn’t finish. This was when computers and computer science were still new. I was trying to get into the industry but was facing a lot of difficulties, because of resources and availability. I grew up in poverty, so I didn’t have a lot of people or places to go to get to where I wanted to go. But, I still had all of these skills and was going out to try and get a job. The first thing they asked was if I had a bachelor’s degree? Well, no. But I know how to build a website. That struggle led to me finally realizing that barrier, the Paper Ceiling, was what was always going to stand in my way.
I was able to actually get an apprenticeship and the way that I ultimately proved myself was literally just working in the environment and showing them what I could do. Within two months of my apprenticeship, I got a full-time job in tech for the first time. But that took me almost 20 years since leaving college to even get to that point.
I got involved with Opportunity@Work back in 2015 with the Tech Hire Initiative, and since then I’ve been using my voice and telling my story. And almost every time I get off a stage, somebody says, “I know a STAR. Tell me more about this campaign and what can be done.”
LdA: Carrie, we’ve been so lucky to partner with LinkedIn closely on our Skills-First Hiring efforts for years. What insights can you share around the competitive advantage for small businesses who are hiring STARs?
Carrie Narla: First and foremost, LinkedIn is incredibly honored to partner with Opportunity@Work and to participate in the “Tear the Paper Ceiling” campaign. It’s so incredibly aligned with our mission of providing economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. As for the advantages of hiring STAR employees, I think it really goes back to the basics. When you align talented candidates with the day-to-day responsibilities they’ll be performing, you can achieve higher employee performance and higher employee retention rates.
And it’s important to point out that this is really starting to catch on systemically. At LinkedIn, just in the past two years, we’ve seen a double digit increase in the number of job postings that don’t require a four year degree. We’re starting to see the Skills-First Hiring approach start to make its way into the system.
LdA: Chris, we’ve worked with a number of different STARs, like LaShana, to tell their stories first-hand as creators on the “Tear the Paper Ceiling” campaign. That has evolved to include social flights with micro- and macro-influencers, promoted LinkedIn content and now a podcast. What is the value of incorporating different types of trusted messengers in campaign storytelling, and how does this impact reach and authenticity?
CF: Well we’re in the business of changing minds. You need allies to be able to do that. It’s important for us to go out and get reach, followers, virality, but it’s equally important for us to over time build a bench of diverse voices from people with different types of expertise that can speak to similar narratives. Over time, these narratives will become the dominant thing our target audience, employers, are hearing. When we work with B2B creators, through programs like Creators for Good, their content appeals directly to employers. Giving a microphone to each of the 70 million STARs in the US wouldn’t matter if employers aren’t willing to hire them. So, in working with STARs like LaShana, as well as creators like Timm Chiusano, we can broaden the reach of the message.
LdA: For many B2B creators and thought leaders, it’s no secret LinkedIn is the place to be. What trends are you seeing on the platform that could help small businesses make a big impression with engaging content?
CN: Well, from a content perspective, people really want to hear from real people, telling real stories. Whether you’re a founder, an employee, a STAR, a creator–people want to hear that realness—that authenticity is really what’s going to move the needle.
From a content perspective, this isn’t new. Video is growing two times faster than any other content type on the platform. And video watch time is up 36% year over year on LinkedIn. So really, video is such a perfect match with real authentic storytelling.