Mark Grovic, Founder of New Markets Venture Partners on the Future of Skills-Based Hiring

– Mark Grovic

Actionable data for hiring managers is KEY! “If I summarize conversations I’ve had with Chief Human Resource Officers at big companies, they tell me that if you have a company that can really help us find, evaluate and onboard non-traditional applicants, that would be terrific.”

On this episode of On Work and Revolution, I sit down with Mark Grovic, founder of New Markets Venture Partners. We cover a lot of bases, but one of the areas we dissect is skills-based hiring. While we know that hiring based on relevant skills is a better way to go, the behaviour shift around both degree stuffing and degree snobbery is slow to change. Why is that?

We dig into that and the following topics:

✓ the state of investment in the edtech and workforce sector
✓ why there is a slow adoption in innovative practices like skills-based hiring
✓ how doubling down on fundamentals during crisis can help you come out stronger on the other side

About our guest, Mark Grovic:

Mark Grovic co-founded New Markets Venture Partners in 2003 and is a General Partner. Mark serves or has served on the Board of Directors for American Prison Data Systems, Credly (acquired by NYSE: PSO), Fishtree (acquired by Follett), Galvanize (acquired by NYSE: LRN), Graduation Alliance (acquired by KKR Global Impact), Orchestro (formerly Vision Chain, acquired by E2open), Think Through Learning (acquired by Imagine Learning), MediaSolv (acquired by Nasdaq: TASR), Lightningcast (acquired by NYSE: TWX), Moodlerooms (acquired by Blackboard) and Workspace.com. Mark also serves or has served as a board observer for Aldagen (acquired by NASDAQ: CMXI), American Honors College, Andera (acquired by NASDAQ: EPAY), App Academy, Appfluent (acquired by NASDAQ: ATTU), BioSET (acquired by Ferring Pharmaceuticals), Mantra Health, Mashable, Noodle Partners, Overture Technologies, PAIRIN, Paratek Microwave (acquired by NASDAQ: RIMM), and Questar Assessment (acquired by ETS). Mark also co-founded LifeJourney, an online educational company that allows students to test drive real life careers in specific corporations.

Mark has been investing in high growth companies since 1992. Prior to New Markets, Mark was a Portfolio Manager for the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds (SEAF), a $200 million managed emerging market venture capital company, Director of Estonia-based Baltic Small Equity Fund, a Co-Founder and Principal of the Templeton Emerging Europe Fund, as Principal of Templeton Direct Advisors, and a Portfolio Manager of Private Equities at the Calvert Group.

Mark is a Senior Advisor to University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), advising on corporate development and entrepreneurship, and was a Professor at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, where he taught Ethics, New Venture Finance, and an award-winning Private Equity Clinic for 18 years. Previously, he was VC-in-Residence at the Smith School and Deputy Director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. He has earned three awards for his instruction at UMD and at Howard University, plus a fellowship awarded for the innovative use of technology in the classroom.

Mark helped to found and served as Board Director of the Baltimore Chapter of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), is Board Chair at Emerson Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C. and serves on the board of Partners for College Affordability and the Public Trust. He is a member of the Industry Advisory Council for the American Public University System and of the Innovation Advisory Board for the Lumina Foundation. Mark is also a member of the Washington Baltimore chapter of the Young Presidents Organization.

Mark graduated with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in political economies and received a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University, where his focus was in international, tax, and corporate law. Mark has also completed graduate work in accounting and finance at George Washington University and Pace University, and completed the Private Equity and Venture Capital Executive Program at Harvard Business School. He received a certificate in teaching entrepreneurship from the Babson Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators. Mark lives in Silver Spring, MD with his wife and two children and is a mediocre musician and triathlete.

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