When I headed to lunch yesterday I took along last week’s Time Magazine cover story on the future of work http://tinyurl.com/r7pu6h. It was a great accompaniment to my yankee bean soup and tuna sandwich. The article is actually a series of 10 essays from a group of Time reporters who specialize in finance, business, employment and culture. The connecting theme was what our jobs will look like ten years from now. What struck me was the overall optimistic projections in nearly all the articles. The authors we’re unanimous in predicting that the unprecedented levels of unemployment we’re currently experiencing will abate – many feel, sooner rather than later. But, and this is the “but” I’m always mentioning, (if not screaming about), at GetHired – it’s not the same old employment market we’ve grown so familiar and comfortable with. The jobs will be different, and the techniques and strategies you’ll use to land them will have to change as well.
The other thing that struck me was the interconnectedness of many of the trends that each of these experts were predicting. Things that one author was talking about were clearly influenced by developments in a completely different area that one of the other authors was discussing. This clear relationship between the articles could be the product of good editing – or in my opinion, the nature of the subject matter. The take-away for me was that if you want to succeed in the new employment market, you’ll need to maintain a global perspective. And I don’t mean global in just the geographic sense, but in understanding the task of finding a job from all its different facets. With that in mind, here are some of the insights that I found most interesting and potentially helpful to my audience of out-of-work professionals.
In his article, “Yes, We’ll Still Make Stuff”, David Von Drehle makes a distinction between exportable jobs and ones that will stay here at home in the U.S. Let’s take health care for example, while it’s totally acceptable to have a worker half a world away processing an insurance payment for your recent surgery, when you’re in the hospital recovering, only a nurse that’s physically there will be able to change your I.V. And though many items we American’s consume are made overseas, as the economy recovers so will energy prices. Suddenly, it might end up being cheaper to make something here, rather than overseas only to have to ship it back home here to its customers. This bodes well for American workers, as long as they don’t choose a career that Von Drehle characterizes as “exportable”.
That being said, marketing expert and trend forecaster Seth Godin, http://tinyurl.com/8nd64, argues that the biggest job growth in the U.S. won’t be among workers who make things but the people who manage that process – wherever it takes place. While there are great designers, engineers, accountants, writers, editors, researchers, etc., etc., etc. located all over the global map, accessible via the web, and available on a contract basis, the jobs salaried workers in the U.S. will still do is managing that talent for the companies they’re employed by. And that might be done in person or from their portable, virtual offices. In other words, it may not be the best time to invest in companies that manufacture office cubicles.
So who are these virtual workers ten years hence? According to Anne Fisher (http://askannie.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/) they’ll be Gen X’ers who have come of age. Anne also argues that companies want more short-term independent contractors and consultants. And more and more companies will reward competence rather than seniority. Both these qualities define the younger workers of Generation X, workers born between 1965 and 1978. She also argues that companies will eschew traditional hierarchical management style in exchange for collaborative decision-making. That fits right in with the views of Claire Shipman and Katty Kay. These two highly successful journalists maintain that in ten years, women will rule business. They cite the female tendency to be less competitive (in a good way) consensus builders as the hallmark of the new management style. This is good news for all the women who have asked me for strategies to deal with sexism and gender bias in their efforts to get hired.
The really great news Clair and Katty offer is in a study by the Employment Policy Foundation that estimates that in the next decade there will be a 6 million-person gap between the number of college grads and college educated workers needed in the U.S. Since the majority of college grads these days are female, it’s yet another positive sign for women workers. Take heart gals, your day is coming.
So, while female Gen-X’ers might have the best employment prospects they’ll still have to compete to get the jobs. As Stephen Gandel, senior reporter for MONEY writes, with all the wealth lost by baby boomers in the collapse of the housing and stock markets, they’re having to work approximately nine years past their planned retirement date. On the one hand, that just increases competition for all job seekers. But on the other, when more people work, more people spend money. And money spent means jobs created. Albeit not all of them in the U.S. but going back to David Von Drehle’s essay, many of those jobs may start coming back to the U.S.
But with all this increased competition, along with the stalled economy, some workers are happy to help their employer save a few bucks by agreeing to fewer hours. According to Laura Fitzpatrick, http://laurajfitzpatrick.blogspot.com/, more and more workers are willing to sacrifice some hours and salary in exchange for a lifestyle with more personal time for themselves and family. Some major companies, such as Deloitte Consulting, are embracing the desire for better work-life balance with programs like their Mass Career Customization. It allows workers to customize their schedule and workload to fit the specifics of their lives. The net to companies employing more flexible work plans is a 20% decrease in real estate costs and 10% drop in payroll. For a big company, those percentages translate into big savings.
After reading these collected (and interrelated stories) I was reassured that the picture looks a little brighter than the current unemployment figures would have us believe. But where are all the jobs these reporters are talking about? According to Alex Altman, the bulk of the new jobs will involve complex knowledge work – fields like mathematics, the sciences, network systems and data communications. According to Altman, in the next seven years, the number of jobs in information-technology will increase 24%, twice the projected overall job-growth rate. Because of their technical nature (and the need for security to protect these highly vulnerable intellectual properties), they fall into Von Drehle’s non-exportable jobs category. Some other categories that will experience high rates of growth will be healthcare, education, and construction – fields that will benefit from the government’s massive stimulus package. But just make sure that as you plan for a career in one of these professions, you choose the work that must be done here at home, rather than in a lab in Mumbai.
So, bottom line – it’s not as bad as it looks. BUT, in order to be successful job seekers will have to be smarter, better informed, extra focused, more targeted, innovative, and highly flexible. Please forgive the plug, but that’s where companies like GetHired come in. There are a number of us out there who are constantly exploring new approaches and techniques to get the attention of hiring managers. Yes, you can do it without our expertise and guidance, but it will probably take you a lot longer. And wouldn’t it better if you were doing something right now that was putting money in your pocket, instead of just reading this post?