STARs Relevant Job Postings

Lightcast partnered with Opportunity@Work to help promote skills-based decisions in the government, enterprise, and education sectors. We each share the belief that when it comes to hiring, a person who can do the job should get the job.

"STARs Relevant" is a job posting filter that utilizes Lightcast’s models and skills intelligence in combination with Opportunity@Work’s research and analytics to help customers identify opportunities, companies, industries, and regions that prioritize capabilities over degrees in order to attract talent.

Opportunity@Work defines a STARs Relevant job as a role that provides economic mobility and is accessible to workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs). Providing this insight at the data layer supports surfacing high-value opportunities for an untapped talent pool and shifting skills-first hiring efforts into practice.

Over 70 million Americans—representing 50% of the US labor force—do not have a four-year bachelor’s degree. Instead, they learned highly valuable skills through pathways such as community college, workforce training, bootcamps, certificate programs, military service or on-the-job learning. STARs work in every field and occupation across the labor market, from travel and hospitality to retail, health care, information technology, manufacturing and more.

Opportunity@Work’s research has proven that millions of STARs possess the skills required for higher-wage work, yet, they have been systematically excluded from career advancement opportunities, held back by the “paper ceiling” – the invisible barrier of degree screens and biased algorithms that blocks their access to better jobs. The field-building research developed by Opportunity@Work now has real-world implementation through the Lightcast ecosystem.

With the STARs Relevant job posting filter, Lightcast and Opportunity@Work enable customers to lean into the skills-based economy and create a labor market that truly works for everyone.

Across the Lightcast Analyst platform (Analyst, Talent Analyst, and Developer), users can apply the STARs Relevant filter in all of the job posting reports, the same way they can filter job postings by region, occupation, salary requirements, etc.

The STARs Relevant job posting filter enable customers to analyze the skills-based economy and make more strategic decisions in a range of use-cases.

Government

Enterprise

Education

1. What does “STARs Relevant” mean?
“STARs Relevant” is a Lightcast job posting filter that helps identify opportunities, companies, industries, and regions that prioritize capabilities over degrees in order to attract talent. In Opportunity@Work’s framing, a STARs Relevant role is one that offers economic mobility and is accessible to workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs).

2. How is the STARs filter different from a simple “non-degree-required” filter?

Unlike a basic non-degree-required filter—which only shows roles where employers do not list a degree requirement—the STARs Relevant filter identifies occupations where workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) already participate and can achieve economic mobility. To qualify, a role must align with Opportunity@Work’s mobility framework, pay a median wage of at least two-thirds of the national median, and have at least 10% of the current workforce made up of STARs. This means the filter highlights roles where skills-based hiring is already demonstrated in the labor market, not just roles where a degree requirement is absent.

3. Why is the STARs Relevant filter useful?
The filter is designed to make skills-based hiring more operational and less aspirational. Rather than relying on degree requirements as a proxy for capability, it highlights roles where STARs already have access, can realistically succeed, and can gain economic mobility. That gives decision-makers more defensible data when evaluating where degree requirements may be unnecessary and where skills-based hiring is already working in practice.

4. How are Registered Nurse roles considered accessible to STARs?
Registered Nurse roles are indeed accessible to STARs. In fact, STARs make up 27% of Registered Nurses nationally. Nearly all states accept an associate’s degree as the education requirement for taking the NCLEX-RN exam, and in 2023 there were about 1 million STARs working in RN roles. Access can expand further in states that offer alternative licensure pathways or participate in the Nurse Licensure Compact, where the share of STARs in RN roles is higher than in states without those options.

5. What about Accountants and Auditors? Are those roles accessible to STARs?
Yes, STARs make up 11% of Accountants and Auditors, but access is more limited because all states require 120–150 hours of college credit to qualify for the CPA exam, which generally amounts to at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent accounting coursework. Even so, STARs do work in these roles—about 185,000 in 2023—and many may enter through adjacent career pathways rather than direct CPA licensure. Common gateway roles include Accounting or Auditing Clerk, with transferable experience often coming from occupations such as Customer Service, Receptionists and Information Clerks, Billing and Posting Clerks, Bank Tellers, and Bill and Account Collectors.

To learn more about how Opportunity@Work defines a STARs Relevant job, please the methodology article here.