The myth of the “perfect” candidate
Raise your hand if, during his darkest days, you believed Robert Downey Jr. was the perfect choice to play Iron Man, the savior of the Marvel universe. If you did, I salute you. But most people didn’t—and that’s the point.
In hiring, as in Hollywood, we rarely see people for who they can become. We focus on who they were. The Iron Man story is fictional, but the bias it exposes is very real. Every day, employers overlook potential because they rely on filters that favor credentials over character, experience over effort, and past over possibility. Robert Downey Jr.’s résumé, no matter how much AI he used to polish it, would likely be screened out today.
A real-life example is me: Joshua Johnson, formerly known as Inmate #305178.
Eight months after my release from incarceration, I began an apprenticeship. By most modern recruiting standards, I would have been screened out immediately: 27 years old, barely a high school graduate, a felony conviction, and only two jobs—one from a prison work-release program and the other loading construction tools onto semi-trailers. No degree. No credentials. Nothing that said “hire this guy.”
And yet, someone did. Someone looked beyond the process and saw potential. What they gained wasn’t a risk; it was a return. I became the “perfect” candidate not because I met every qualification, but because I maximized every opportunity offered to me.
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That experience taught me something simple but profound: potential doesn’t show up on paper. Yet most hiring systems are still designed to find perfection, not potential.
The real barrier isn’t skills, it’s vision
Job descriptions read like wish lists. Algorithms filter out risk. Interviews reward polish instead of promise. When we define “qualified” by degrees, titles, or spotless histories, we don’t just miss talent—we manufacture scarcity.
Our greatest workforce challenge isn’t a skills gap; it’s a vision gap. Until we learn to see people for who they can become, we’ll continue to mistake readiness for ability and overlook the very talent that could transform our organizations.
Competence is built, not bought
Too many employers are still chasing a myth—the belief that a perfect candidate exists somewhere, waiting to be discovered with the right degree and flawless résumé. That mindset costs organizations productivity, innovation, and loyalty.
For decades, hiring systems were built for exclusion. Automated tools scan for degrees and credentials as proxies for competence. But competence isn’t conferred by a diploma; it’s developed through experience.
Apprenticeship bridges the gap between knowledge and application. It’s not a shortcut or an alternative. It’s a proven approach to building skill, loyalty, and leadership. Apprentices earn while they learn, applying classroom instruction to real-world performance and aligning their development directly with an employer’s culture and needs.
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When employers hire apprentices, they’re not taking a chance. They’re making a strategic investment.
Apprenticeship graduates stay longer, perform stronger, and bring a deeper sense of ownership to their work—especially those from nontraditional or justice-impacted backgrounds who were simply waiting for a chance to prove themselves.
As someone who has led workforce and apprenticeship strategies from the state to the national level, I can say this with certainty: transformative outcomes happen when employers stop waiting for talent to appear and start building it themselves.
The bias toward credentials: A barrier to inclusion
Let’s be honest: degree inflation has become one of the quietest forms of exclusion in today’s labor market. I can personally attest to it as a former executive without a college degree navigating a market that often equates education with worth.
I often wonder what would have happened if Walsh Construction—the company that first hired me—had required a four-year degree. My entire trajectory might have been derailed. Replace Walsh with nearly any employer in America, and you’ll see the same missed opportunity replicated at scale.
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Requiring degrees for roles that can be learned through experience or technical training locks out millions of capable workers, disproportionately affecting underrepresented and justice-impacted individuals. It rewards access, not ability.
Even apprenticeship programs designed to expand opportunity can mirror the same inequities they were meant to solve. In some youth cohorts, White apprentices make up more than 60 percent of participants while Black apprentices remain below 10 percent, and wage disparities persist. Those numbers aren’t just statistics; they’re symptoms of systems built to find talent, not develop it.
But that’s not a failure of apprenticeship—it’s a failure of imagination.
When designed intentionally, apprenticeship dismantles bias by redefining what “qualified” means. It says potential and performance matter more than pedigree.
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When we open doors to learning by doing, we don’t just diversify our workforce; we diversify our leadership pipeline.
Equity without competence is tokenism. Apprenticeship ensures that equity and excellence coexist, one built from the other.
The workforce challenge isn’t a lack of talent; it’s a lack of imagination
Across every sector, employers echo the same concern: “We can’t find qualified workers.” But the problem isn’t a shortage of talent. It’s a shortage of imagination.
Our systems are designed to find talent, not develop it. I often think about my hometown team, the Milwaukee Brewers, and how they’ve quietly built one of the strongest farm systems in Major League Baseball. They identify promising athletes who may not be stars yet but have raw potential. As they develop those players, they strengthen the organization’s foundation.
The same is true for the Green Bay Packers, who have built championship-caliber teams by finding overlooked talent in later rounds of the NFL draft. What others call “high risk,” they see as high potential because they trust their process—a culture built on development, mentorship, and belief.
That kind of vision isn’t accidental. It’s organizational. It’s what happens when leadership empowers recruiters and talent scouts to think differently, to see beyond the obvious, and to trust that the organization will back their decisions.
That’s the mindset our workforce systems need. Instead of searching for “perfect” candidates through degree requirements and keyword filters, we should be building environments that help people grow into greatness.
Forward-thinking employers are already changing the narrative. They’re no longer competing for the same small pool of credentialed candidates. They’re creating pipelines through apprenticeship and earn-and-learn models. They’re shifting from recruitment to cultivation.
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The organizations that will win the future are those that value curiosity over credentials, grit over perfection, and potential over pedigree.
Apprenticeship as a strategic solution
Apprenticeship isn’t charity; it’s strategy. It aligns workforce development with business outcomes and builds a culture of learning that fuels long-term growth.
Here’s how apprenticeship strengthens organizations:
- Talent Alignment: Training is tailored to your tools, systems, and standards—not a generic curriculum.
- Retention: Apprentices stay longer because they see a pathway, not just a paycheck.
- Equity and Access: Apprenticeship removes unnecessary barriers and unlocks loyalty from individuals who bring lived experience and innovation.
- Return on Investment: For every dollar invested, apprenticeship delivers measurable productivity gains and lower recruitment costs.
Many employers worry about investing in employees who might leave. But as the great Karen Morgan, former State Director of Apprenticeship for Wisconsin, once said:
“What happens if you don’t provide training to your underperforming employees—and they stay?”
That is what it means to shift from a reactive to a proactive talent model.
From policy to practice: The national shift
Apprenticeship has become one of the most powerful levers in workforce innovation. States are embedding it into regional and statewide workforce plans. Industries are using federal investments to scale it into new sectors like clean energy and cybersecurity. Employers are forming collaboratives to share data and design standards.
We’re witnessing a cultural shift from compliance to creativity, where apprenticeship is no longer a checkbox but a cornerstone of competitive strategy.
But this transformation will only go as far as employers are willing to take it. Public policy can open the door, but only employers can walk through it.
The leadership mindset shift
Leading in this new era of workforce transformation requires courage—the courage to challenge outdated norms, to see potential where others see risk, and to believe that your next great employee might not fit the mold.
When employers embrace apprenticeship, they send a message: We believe in developing people, not just recruiting them. That mindset doesn’t just strengthen organizations; it revitalizes communities. It bridges the gap between education and employment and builds local ecosystems where opportunity is earned through effort, not exclusion.
For leaders seeking to drive both performance and purpose, apprenticeship is one of the most strategic levers available.
The call to action: Hire for potential, not perfection
The best time to build your talent pipeline was five years ago. The second-best time is today.
If you’re an employer, stop waiting for perfect and start with potential. Launch one pilot apprenticeship cohort or partnership. You don’t need to overhaul your system; you just need to begin.
- Identify a department with high turnover or recruitment challenges.
- Partner with your local workforce board, community college, or state apprenticeship office.
- Engage community-based organizations that serve underrepresented populations.
- Design a pilot that combines classroom learning with structured mentorship.
Then measure what happens when you stop chasing perfection and start building potential. You’ll discover that the best candidates aren’t found—they’re built.
The myth of the “perfect” candidate has held back too many employers for too long. Perfection isn’t the goal; progress is.
The real measure of leadership isn’t how well you find ready-made talent but how intentionally you develop it. Workforce development isn’t a program; it’s a promise—a promise that opportunity and excellence can coexist when employers invest in people and in systems designed to help them grow.
Apprenticeship is one of many levers that bring that promise to life. So are mentorship, upskilling, reskilling, and other earn-and-learn pathways that turn potential into performance. Together, they form the foundation of a workforce strategy built on inclusion, innovation, and impact.
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When employers stop treating workforce development as an expense and start viewing it as an investment, they don’t just fill positions—they build the future.
The future doesn’t belong to those waiting for perfect candidates to arrive. It belongs to those willing to develop them.
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