Guild

Welcome.

Today, I'm excited to be talking to Bijal Shah, the CEO of Guild.

Guild is a company that's been around for a while, and I'll let Bijal tell you the history, and really pioneered the idea and the solution for reskilling and redeployment and re-education of employees long ago.

And it's gone through quite a bit of change, obviously, with the AI era.

Bijal, thank you for joining us.

Tell us a little bit about the company.

for people that don't know a lot about Guild and then your background and how you came to this responsibility.

Yeah.

I'm Paul Fain, the show's host.

All right, Guy Berger, workforce economist and residents for Guild, among other titles and laurels.

Thanks for coming on the cusp.

It's good to be here, Paul.

And I think it's a very harder track with government data because just the amount of samples that you would need.

So I really think this is the kind of thing that I'm guessing Revello does with both their job posting and the profile data, some other data providers.

And I think we look at it at Guild with the curricular people study is, how much is the skills content of task content of jobs transforming? I mean, again, I keep, I'm going to fall back on software.

We know it's changed a lot because we will do a lot less of their own coding and they spend a lot more time reviewing code produced by AI than I think understanding that, because again, to me, the changes that are going to happen within jobs are almost certainly going to be much bigger than the changes that happen across jobs or across firms.

What if the best defense against AI isn't more technology, but giving people the chance to learn again? My guest today, Bijal Shah, CEO of Guild, understands the consequences of disruption personally.

Her mother lost her job to automation, her father lost his job three times, and Bijal saw firsthand How Access to Education Changed the Trajectory of Our Own Life.

She joined Guild in 2018 and today leads a company helping some of the America's largest employers turn education and re-skilling into a real business strategy and impact.

In our conversation, we explore numerous examples, including how one healthcare organization saved $100 million by creating Better Career Pathways.

We talk about the story of a single mother who earned her degree and was promoted to VP just weeks later.

I'm Ashish Kothari, your host, and each week we'll dive deep with flourishing experts, changemakers, and executives to share best practices that can help you unlock higher performance through science-based interventions.

Let's step together into the edge of what's possible and live, work, and lead with more joy, health, love, and meaning.

Bijal, I'm so excited to have you on our Flourishing Edge podcast and tell the story of Guild and the impact it's making in the world.

That doesn't work for them anymore.

The text highlights how companies like IBM, with their Skills Gateway or Guild Education's partnerships with Target, are totally gamifying the career path.

It's structural transparency.

In these systems, an employee can log in, see an exact inventory of their current skills, and see the exact, specific capabilities they need to acquire to unlock a specific promotion.