IBM’s Ginni Rometty on Skill-Building and Success

For years, employers have used university degrees as a major
requirement for hiring. But, for many jobs, success depends more on
skills -- and the ability to adapt and learn -- than on
piece-of-paper credentials. Ginni Rometty, former chairman and
CEO of IBM, realized this early on -- first by watching her mother
and other female relatives support their families and later by
seeing what it took to rise to the top in her own career. At the
helm of IBM from 2012 to 2020, she pushed the company to adopt
skills-first recruitment and development practices, and now she's
encouraging other organizations to do the same through her work at
the non-profit OneTen. Rometty is coauthor of the HBR article “The
New-Collar Workforce,” and the book Good Power: Leading Positive
Change in Our Lives, Work, and World.