S3 Ep1: Discussing America’s Upskilling Challenge with Jason Tyszko

How do you reskill 180 million American workers when AI and constant disruption keep changing what jobs require? In this episode of TalentWise, host Danny Markstein sits down with Jason Tyszko, senior vice president of policy and programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, who has spent more than a decade helping employers rethink how they find and grow talent. He explains why the old “spot market” approach to hiring stopped working, how employers can team up to build talent pipelines that deliver results, and why he wants HR to become “the new registrar.” He also offers a candid take on preparing workers for jobs no one can predict yet. He closes with a bold idea for funding upskilling: a skill savings account that works much like a health savings account, but for skills.

Insight: Hire the whole person

Skills-based hiring has become one of the most talked-about ideas in workforce development. Jason Tyszko is a fan. He just doesn’t think skills should crowd out everything else.

“An employer is hiring a person. They’re not hiring a credential. They’re not hiring a skill.” Every candidate brings a mix of experience, education, skills and the network they’ve built. Some of those matter more for certain roles. But no single piece tells the whole story. As Jason points out, you could have the right skills and the right credentials and still not get an interview if you don’t have the experience.

The bigger opportunity, in his view, is capturing all of it. Learning and employment records are digital records of what someone has learned and done, whether it happened at work, in school or in the community. They mean learning doesn’t have to happen in a classroom to count. That’s why Jason wants HR to become “the new registrar.” And with software screening so many applications now, those records need to be readable as data so nothing a candidate brings gets left behind.

Jason doesn’t see skills replacing degrees. He sees them helping both sides of the hire. Candidates can explain what they bring, and employers can say more clearly what a job actually requires.

At Markstein, we help employers define what their roles really require and tell a hiring story that reaches the right people.

This insight comes from our conversation with Jason Tyszko on Season 3 of TalentWise. He also talks about why the spot market approach to hiring stopped working and how a skill savings account could bring new money into upskilling without leaning on taxpayers.