The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Growing Talent with Bijal Shah, CEO of Guild
Join Eloy Ortiz-Oakley for an interesting conversation with Bijal Shah, the trailblazing CEO of Guild, as we unravel the company's transformative journey in reshaping talent development. Want to uncover how a mailroom employee discovered their true potential as a pharmacy technician? This episode reveals the secret sauce behind Guild's innovative coaching services that unlock hidden talents and align them with career dreams, including the embrace of generative AI to stay ahead in today's fast-paced market. Bijal Shah shares her groundbreaking vision for Guild, illustrating how strategic educational partnerships are crucial in keeping employees and employers competitive.
Explore the pressing challenges of today's workforce, from the shortage of skilled workers to the critical need for upskilling, particularly in sectors like healthcare and manufacturing. Discover how Guild is stepping up to the plate, working hand-in-hand with local and state governments to create personalized pathways for economic mobility, bridging the skills gap, and fostering continuous learning nationwide. As we spotlight Colorado's forward-thinking workforce development initiatives, learn how Guild’s unique marketplace model is poised to transform regions lacking academic infrastructure. Whether you're an employer or an education provider, this episode is your gateway to understanding how Guild is unlocking opportunities and redefining the future of work in America.
www.guild.com
www.4leggedmedia.com
eloy@4leggedmedia.com
Hi, I'm Eloy Ortiz-Oakley and welcome back to the Rent Podcast, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode I talk with Bijal Shah, ceo of Guild. Guild provides education, skilling and talent mobility solutions for some of America's largest employers. I talk with Bijal about her plans for Guild and the recent changes the company has experienced. So with that backdrop, bijal, welcome to the Rant Podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, it's great to have you and appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule. I know you have a lot going on at Guild. Guild has a lot going on in the marketplace and we will get into that. But first, you've been with the company since 2018. First as its chief product officer and now as CEO. Tell us about your journey with Guild and how the company has evolved over the years.
Speaker 2:I've played quite a few different roles at Guild over my time.
Speaker 2:I've been here for roughly six years, as you mentioned, and the company has evolved significantly during that time. I did start off owning product and analytics inside of the company but as the company continued to grow, I took on a variety of different roles across our marketplace and our business. We also went from being a business focused on providing traditional tuition assistance and education assistance and kind of disrupting the tuition reimbursement market to now very much looking at ourselves as how do we help employers find the latent talent inside of their organization and really develop and skill them and help them find new opportunities inside that same organization, and so have very much taken focus and a shift evolving over time, just based on our employers' needs to help ensure that they can find that talent and grow that talent inside their organization.
Speaker 1:Well, that is a's set in between the employer and the education provider finding opportunities to upskill, reskill or help employees gain that educational opportunities. Where do you see yourself in the marketplace now? You mentioned helping employers find talent within. How do you help your employers find the talent and then how do you provide those employees the upskilling opportunity that you just mentioned?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so still the same ethos behind the business we want to help unlock opportunity for America's workforce.
Speaker 2:The way that we go about doing that is providing education and skilling, as you mentioned, and so we actually work with employees inside of employers to better understand their starting point, what their skill sets are today, what their interests are, go forward and then what opportunities might exist inside of the employer.
Speaker 2:And we use that information to try and understand, therefore, what's the right next step for that specific individual inside of their organization. So, as an example, we had a woman who worked inside the mailroom inside of one of our health systems that we work with very closely, and she has been working in that mailroom for over 20 years and she knew that she wanted to do more and that she wanted to be patient-facing. So we got an understanding of what her skills were, what she already knew, where there might be opportunities for her and then, more specifically, what the employer needed in terms of allied health roles, and she went from being a mailroom attendant to actually being a farm tech that focused on compounding inside of a pharmacy. And so those are the types of pathways that we're trying to help employees unlock, in alignment with what employers need, but ensuring that we are actually providing the pathways and the skills along the way and the support services required to be able to get from point A to point B, to point C, to point D.
Speaker 1:Well, what you just mentioned is really what Americans across this country want to have the opportunity for, that economic mobility, regardless of where they're starting out with an employer. They see themselves wanting more, wanting to have a career, a career path that really provides them the economic opportunity that they're seeking. How do you work with the employee to find that right pathway?
Speaker 2:A lot of it is. You know, we have coaching services, so we have pre-enrollment coaching services as well as coaching services as someone persists in their program. And we use those services to help ask questions around what is the individual interested in, what are they hoping to get out of their life or their career, what types of things excite them, what types of things do they believe they're good at, and what is their prior educational or learning history? And we use those pieces of information, call them together and then provide recommendations, either synchronously or asynchronously, back to the user so they have a sense for what the possibilities might be like inside of their organization.
Speaker 1:That's great, and those are the kinds of stories that we all want to hear about is how those employees got that opportunity. So I appreciate the work that you're leading there. At Guild, back in April, you took over for the founding CEO, rachel Romer. Many of us on this end know Rachel as the chief evangelist for Guild. She really got people excited about your model. So, since she stepped down as CEO and now that Guild is really a much more mature company than when she got this thing started with the help of many of your team members, how are you thinking about positioning Guild in the marketplace? You mentioned some of that already, but as you go forward, how are you thinking about that positioning? And, with the push for generative AI and the use of technology now on both the employer side and the education provider side, how are you thinking about, or how has AI influenced your trajectory or your plans for the future?
Speaker 2:Sure, One of the biggest things we think about at Guild is how we use our marketplace to help employers and their employees continue to stay relevant as the job market and the market evolves.
Speaker 2:And so one of the things I'm most proud of is, in the last year, we actually launched AI programming inside of our marketplace by working with a bunch of the learning institutions that are already partners of Guild learning institutions that are already partners of Guild. Also by bringing on new partners that are super innovative in how they think about teaching AI, how they think about helping people understand the applications of AI inside of their organizations. And so that is one of the beauties of Guild is that we are a marketplace business and therefore, because we're not creating the content ourselves as the market needs evolve, we have the ability to go find the best providers in the space and being the best and brightest to bear inside of our marketplace to help organizations evolve. And when I think about the impact AI is going to have, you're already seeing it today.
Speaker 2:You know the half-life of skills has gone from five to seven years to two to five years, and that piece is going to continue to increase, and so we have to really think about what skills are going to persist for our employees but, honestly, more broadly, for our workforce and for broader society, as we think about the impacts of AI, and so we spend a lot of time internally asking ourselves those questions, talking with researchers at institutions who are very focused on understanding the impacts of AI and what it means for the workforce to try and understand. What are those resilient skills that we can be offering employees, like things like problem solving, the ability to design and develop frameworks, the ability to actually connect with another human and have empathy. Those are the types of things that we believe are going to continue to persist, and so how do we make sure we have the right programming to allow for that to happen? As the workforce evolves I think at a faster pace than any of us have seen in prior history?
Speaker 1:Well, it's certainly progressing at a fast pace. I mean, I think everyone in the marketplace feels that. Now I know that employers like Walmart were very big and influential in your beginnings. Who are some of your newest employers that you're working with, and can you describe some of their needs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we started off very much, I think, focused on retail and what I would describe as a quick service a quick service base as the organization and Guild has evolved.
Speaker 2:Actually, our fastest growing sectors are financial services, healthcare, as well as manufacturing, and when you think about some of the needs of those specific industries, they have very bifurcated workforces. Those workforces tend to need different things. The impact of AI inside of those organizations is clear. They have a lot of frontline workers or folks who are in front of patients. They are on production lines trying to work alongside technology to help create the best experience for the end user, and so, when we think about where we started versus where we're going, we are very focused on industries that actually have a need for a lot of talent, but there isn't enough talent on the market today to service the needs of those industries because of how quickly those industries are evolving, and so our offerings have also had to evolve to meet the demands of those industries.
Speaker 2:We have way more allied health content in our marketplace. We are working with our healthcare employers to do last mile facilitation of hands-on training that these employees need in order to actually get certified, to move into roles like phlebotomy, to become a medical tech, to be able to take on medical assistance jobs, and so we are very focused on trying to ensure that we don't just stop at some point in terms of delivering that education, but again that we can work and use our marketplace and bring to bear the ability to actually get people the hands-on learning they need to move into new opportunities. That is also true for places like manufacturing. When you think about high-tech manufacturing and manufacturing. Coming back to the US, one of the biggest needs are skilled trades and the ability to actually help people get the hands-on training they need so that when they show up for their first day of work and when they embark on their new opportunity, they have already had some practical application of those skill sets inside the workforce.
Speaker 1:You talk a lot about that employee experience and as you're thinking about upskilling them. So, for example, the example you mentioned earlier about the mailroom person who got a chance to get into a farm tech Do you allow them to think about their next step beyond that, and how do you think about personalizing that education journey for that employee?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we work really closely with the employer and we started doing this roughly two years ago. So we work really closely with the employer and we sit down with them and say what is a logical pathway for your employees to embark on if they're really interested in becoming a nurse? How do we go from them having a non-patient care job into something that would help them eventually become a nurse, and what are the right pathways and how we break down the steps to getting from where they are to actually becoming that nurse? And so, at PharmTech, as an example, if they are interested in becoming a nurse, the next steps would be like great. What does it take to get from being that farm tech to getting your associates in nursing, to getting your backers in nursing, to then being able to get the certification you need to become a nurse inside of your organization? And so we really do sit down with each of the organizations that we work with.
Speaker 2:Not all pathways are the same. Inside of employers we do notice similar pathways. We also bring best practices to our employer partners on what we've seen across the industry. To get tactical and practical with our employer partners on, here are 10 pathways. Here's what it looks like to get from point A to point B. On those pathways, let's talk about what will work inside of your organization, what the barriers will be, what issues you'll face, whether you have the right spots and opportunities for people to get on the hands-on learning that they need, or whether we need to go find that elsewhere to help support your employee population.
Speaker 1:Why do you think it's essential for employers today to invest in skills building and to collaborate with partners to develop talent internally?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if I take a step back and I just look at the broader workforce inside the United States, you know, even if you took the unemployment rate today and you took all of the individuals who are unemployed and then you looked at the number of open jobs in this country, so there's roughly 8 million open jobs. There's roughly 6.8 million unemployed people. Even if those people were unemployed had the exact skill sets to get into those 8 million jobs you'd still have 1.2 million open jobs inside this country.
Speaker 2:So if you combine that with the fact that you are seeing a rapid change in skills and the need for skills for the future, combined with what is happening with immigration inside this country and then a large population of boomers who are retiring, we just don't have the workforce to power the future of what this country needs.
Speaker 2:We just don't have the workforce to power the future of what this country needs. Neither do we have the number of people that we need, nor do we have the actual skills we need to be able to power that future no-transcript that exist inside this country. I fundamentally believe that a lot of those tensions are due to a lack of opportunity inside this country and people not have skills to get the jobs they need to be able to actually put food on the table for their families, to be able to find those pathways that provide, you know, self-confidence and motivation and the ability to feel good about yourself. And so I think it's so important, not just for employers, but I think, for us as a country, to be talking about how. And so I think it's so important, not just for employers, but I think, for us as a country, to be talking about? How do we help people get the skills they need and how do we teach them how to be continuous learners so that they can continue to evolve as our workforce evolves quite rapidly?
Speaker 1:Well, I think you hit the nail right on the head. It's about opportunity in this country and people are very frustrated that they don't feel like they have opportunities. So I think the more that employers can partner with you, find ways to support those employees, give them opportunity within their own company, I think would go a long way in this country to help heal some of the divide Now. Heal some of the divide Now. I'm old enough to have seen Guild's growth over the years and I will admit that even my daughter participated in a Guild partnership. She was working at Disney several years ago and participated in Disney Aspire, one of the employers that you've worked with, one of the programs that you helped support and during those early years it was all about sort of a pathway toward a bachelor's degree. You've mentioned some of the upskilling opportunities in this conversation. What kind of partners are you looking for now? And I guess let me ask you this what do your education partners look like today? What do your education partners look like today.
Speaker 2:So we work with a wide variety of education partners. I personally deeply still believe in the value of the bachelor's degree. It is less about the degree and more about the ability to learn and master multiple different disciplines. That is what I think the beauty of a degree is. It teaches you about how to think deeply. It teaches you about how to think deeply. It teaches you about how to learn for the sake of learning. It teaches you about persistence and grit and a whole bunch of things that I think are really important.
Speaker 2:However, I also believe that, as the economy has evolved and as America has evolved, I believe that, more importantly, we need to break things down into more components, more bite-sized components for people to be able to consume and to be able to get certificates along the way and to be able to stack the things they're doing in a way that eventually gets them to a pathway towards a degree.
Speaker 2:And so we do service and have a wide variety of learning partners inside of our marketplace, everything from finishing your high school diploma all the way through going through a boot camp on cybersecurity to being able to become a farm tech, as I mentioned before, or phlebotomist. We also have high skills in manufacturing that we offer. In manufacturing that we offer, you know, there's a new fluid dynamics class that we offer inside of GILS for those trying to better understand how you combine production manufacturing with thinking about high tech, and so we have evolved quite rapidly in terms of what we offer inside of our marketplace, and not every employer takes advantage of everything that's there, but we are trying to ensure that people are getting the skills they need now to be able to continue to evolve and meet the needs of the workforce for the future.
Speaker 1:You recently announced a new acquisition. Guild recently acquired Nomadic Learning. Tell us about that acquisition and how does Nomadic's capabilities complement the work that you're doing with employers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the biggest questions employers were asking us and have been asking us for a while is is there a way to take what Guild does, but to put it in a cohorted learning capability?
Speaker 2:and to allow us to take a group of our employees who we've identified, or who raised their hand and say they're interested, and help them get along a journey together, and to help create community and the ability for them to learn, as well as to be able to provide specific information that is relevant to me as the employer that I think our employees need to know, and so we didn't have that offering in-house at Guild. We focused on providing and bringing the best marketplace to bear, and so we don't think about learning content or learning journeys in that way. However, nomadic has built a phenomenal product, with engagement rates above 89%. They have really great feedback on the outcomes of their cohorted learning programs, as well as on their ability to help people actually master the skills that they need by going through their content, and so we're super excited to bring them in-house and to have them be a part of Guild Families so we could continue to build out the suite of products and capabilities that we offer to our employer partners and, more specifically, their employees.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned a lot of the evolution, a lot of what you've got going on today, how you're positioning yourself as you think about the environment here in the country and I know you mentioned a little bit of this is your strategy focused on finding those employers? Do you have a strategy by state or by region in this country, and are there some states that you feel that you're working in are doing better than others in terms of working with the employers, working with the education providers, providing the right regulatory environment to make this work? Do you have any thoughts about how this is working across the country?
Speaker 2:So, to answer the first part of your question, we are just entering the foray of working directly with what I would describe as local and state governments.
Speaker 2:That hasn't historically been a place where Guild has spent time. However, as we've been able to bring a marketplace approach to the solution or to solving the problem we are trying to solve, we've been approached by more and more state and local governments to figure out how they could use something like Guild to get their populations inside of their cities and states from again from point A to point B. We historically have not played in that space, but we are now testing strategies for how we could do that well and making sure we can really deliver on the value prop of what the you know, on the pain point of what the state and local governments are feeling, and so we're feeling our way into. That is what I would say. And local governments are feeling, and so we're feeling our way into. That is what I would say. In terms of places where we've seen innovation, I actually think if you look across the country, there are a lot of cities and states who are doing really innovative things in workforce development.
Speaker 2:I'm based in Colorado. There is a lot of innovative stuff happening in Colorado to help drive workforce development and partnership between community college, local colleges, national colleges as well, as you know, other types of technical trade institutions and the state as well as the city of Denver, and so I think you can look across the country for pockets of and areas of the country where folks are doing a really great job. I think if there isn't the academic infrastructure inside of a state or inside of a city in particular, it becomes a lot harder for those states to be able to create and crack how to do this well, and that is a place, I believe, where Guild can partner with those cities and states.
Speaker 1:Bijal, what's next for Guild? Where would you like to see the company over the next, say, five years? What's the thinking today?
Speaker 2:When I think about the future for Guild.
Speaker 2:So, first and foremost, our mission is to unlock opportunity for America's workforce.
Speaker 2:Our job is to understand where those opportunities exist and to help bring to bear at scale the places where we can help meet employees and or individuals and help get them upskilled and reskilled for the future of work.
Speaker 2:And so, when I think about where Guild is headed, we are very much focused on industries that have large skilled gaps or shortages, because those tend to be the places where there is a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 2:We are focused on employers who really believe in continuous learning and investing in their employees to help them continue to persist and find new opportunities. And, as I mentioned, we are now focused on other parts of the country or other places where we believe there's opportunity for us to help match supply and demand and help individuals who are looking to find work and find opportunities understand what skills they need and how to match them to employers who have opportunities for those individuals. And so I hope you see Guild continue to evolve in terms of the players we work with in the space, continuing to show and prove and demonstrate outcomes for the work that we do, continuing to bring the most innovative learning to bear inside of our country and making sure that people get that last mile of learning what I think of, that hands-on learning that they need to do their jobs, that's what I think about, all in service of unlocking opportunity inside of America.
Speaker 1:So if an employer or an education provider are listening to this and they're interested in connecting with Guild, how will they do that? How do they find you or how do you find them?
Speaker 2:It goes both ways. So when employers or we notice there are skills gaps or needs inside of our marketplace that we can't bring to bear, we reach out to learning institutions. You can also reach out to us. You can learn more at guildcom For employer partners. Same thing If you're an employer partner who's looking at how you want to unlock talent we think of it as latent talent inside of your organization and you want to make sure you're investing in your employees for the future and that you're giving them opportunities that they might not have had elsewhere, please reach out and you can find more information on our website and get in touch with us that way.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, we'll also provide your web address in this episode, down at the bottom in the comment section. Listen, I know you've got a lot going on, so I really do appreciate you taking the time to come on, talk to us about GIL, talk to us about its evolution, where you're headed and how you're thinking about leading the company into the future. So, bijal, thank you for being on the RAND podcast and appreciate your leadership in the marketplace.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me Eloy.
Speaker 1:All right, well, thanks for joining me everyone. I hope you've enjoyed my conversation with Bijal Shah, ceo of Guild. Her and her team are leading upskilling, the upskilling of thousands of employees across America, partnering with some of the largest employers in America. Thanks everyone for joining me here on the Rant Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the like button, continue to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and hit subscribe on this YouTube channel. We'll be back with you shortly with another great episode.
