How to Find Work in the 21st Century. Ron McGowan
in the March 13, 2009 issue of The Globe and Mail, only 44 percent of the Canadians who were unemployed were drawing unemployment benefits. That figure in 1989 was 83 percent.
The number of weeks that people can collect benefits has become a political issue in several countries with European countries offering longer periods of eligibility than in the United States and Canada. US President Obama has faced major opposition in Congress getting approval to extend the number of weeks that the unemployed can collect unemployment benefits and that opposition continues into 2011.
Traditionally, unemployed people could expect their government to provide some training to upgrade their skills and get them back to work, but this area needs an overhaul too. If you look at the training courses offered by western countries, you’ll find lots of these for unskilled and low-skilled people but few, if any, for people at the other end of the spectrum. Well-educated and unemployed professional people and unemployed college/university graduates are not being well served by the current system, which isn’t designed to accommodate them. And the government workers who deal with unemployed people are ill suited to deal with workers of this caliber.
Challenges For Educators
The fundamental challenge for colleges and universities is that for generations they’ve been turning out employees. Now, increasingly, they will need to turn out entrepreneurs, or students who have an enterprising approach to finding work. This doesn’t mean students have to start a business when they graduate, though those who want to do this should be encouraged and given as much help as possible to succeed. It does mean that graduates must have an entrepreneurial mentality in terms of marketing themselves and meeting the needs of employers. We tend to equate anything related to entrepreneurship to be the domain of business/commerce and MBA students. We need to change that thinking and recognize that this also applies to graduates in the liberal arts, social sciences, and every other sector in post-secondary education. Like all other employment seekers, today’s graduates must acquire self-marketing skills and be right on top of what is happening in the sectors they want to work in. The key question is, who is going to teach them these skills?
The biggest weakness in the post-secondary education sector in all countries is the lack of experience in today’s workplace by those who are responsible for education policy, funding, administration, and delivery. How do these people who live in the land of the steady paycheck and traditional benefits relate to the challenges facing graduates who will make their living from contract, temporary, and part-time employment with few if any benefits, including a pension?
There’s a huge disconnect between these bureaucrats, administrators, and educators and their students in terms of their own work environment and the workplace their students are entering. That disconnect will exist into the foreseeable future.
Going forward, we must find ways to educate those already in the education system about the challenges of earning a living in today’s workplace and hire people at all levels who have this type of experience. Only then can we realistically align the educational system with the needs of today’s graduates.
The area of career counseling needs a major overhaul and more resources need to be allocated to it. This area has never been a high priority within the education system, and that has to change. While there are a few examples of innovative thinking in this area, in the main, most colleges and universities are doing a poor job of preparing their students for today’s workplace. And some of the career counselors who do recognize the need to update and improve the services they offer to their students are not getting the resources they need or the support of senior administrators.
Effective career counseling must be a part of the curriculum, not an option, as it currently is. Before they can graduate, all students must be required to take workshops and courses provided by the career counseling department that educate them about today’s workplace and show them how to succeed in it. However, this is based on the assumption that the people who are teaching these workshops and courses are themselves experienced in today’s workplace and have earned a living outside of the twentieth century, traditional, full-time-job model. We also need people in these departments who are entrepreneurial, have operated their own businesses, and can adequately prepare students who want to pursue that option. According to a January 29, 2010, report from the UK Institute of Career Guidance, the UK Government announced the creation of The Careers Profession Taskforce “to modernize and improve our careers profession and the service it offers,” and to ensure “that the next generation of careers professionals can deliver our ambition that all young people get the best advice so that they unlock their potential.”
The Taskforce will focus on the secondary school system and look at:
• The recruitment and retention of well-qualified careers professionals.
• Ensuring that the profession is diverse and reflects the make-up of the working population.
• Whether all career specialists should hold a specialist qualification.
This is the kind of bold, forward-looking initiative that all western countries’ governments should undertake, not only in the secondary school system, but in the post-secondary education system as well.
A New Era
Our ancestors must be having a good laugh as they watch us struggle to wean ourselves off the traditional, twentieth-century job. If you look at your family tree, you’re likely to see that you’re descended from self-employed people who earned their living as contractors, tradespeople, craftspeople, and small-business owners.
When the concept of full-time employment working for someone else became widespread with industrialization, many of our forefathers thought it was a crazy idea. It was seen as unpleasant, unnatural, and an inhuman way to work. It’s the ultimate irony. The job, that thing that our ancestors saw as abhorrent, is the thing to which we’ve become addicted.
The workplace is currently going through one of the most significant changes to occur in the past hundred years. But it’s a mixed bag. While many workers are facing real hardships in trying to cope with these changes, others are sailing along virtually untouched by them.
There is work available, but a lot of it is not packaged in the form of a job, as we traditionally understand that term. The onus is on those looking for work to find the employment opportunities that are out there, or in some cases, to create their own. This is a new role for most people, and our education, training, and in some cases our upbringing does not prepare us for it.
Those who are unable or unwilling to adapt to this reality will find themselves competing for a dwindling number of conventional, full-time jobs. Those who aren’t afraid of a freelance career, who can adapt their job-search strategies and market themselves effectively, will have more options, offer more value to employers, and best position themselves for twenty-first century success.
Here is a fundamental fact that our society, politicians, senior bureaucrats and senior college/university administrators need to accept: For an increasing number of workers, the era of the traditional job that has served us well for over 100 years is over — and it’s not coming back.
Acceptance of this fact will be a positive first step in recognizing that we are in a new era and that we have to stop trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions.
In This Edition
Throughout this edition you will find updated commentary and insights on key happenings in today’s workplace and where informed professionals are suggesting it is headed. A new chapter, The Role of the Internet and Social Media Tools, has been added. College/university students, graduates, and experienced people who have lost their jobs don’t have the luxury of waiting for governments or the education systems to catch up with the needs of employment seekers in the twenty-first century. They need to take ownership of this issue themselves, as do people who are underemployed or who want to prepare themselves for the possibility of losing their jobs.
Thousands of graduates and experienced people in the