Career Discovery In The Future of Work
How did you find your career? How will you find your next one?
Welcome to this weekend’s newsletter. In this edition, we cover
Career Discovery in Today’s World of Work
Workplace and Career News
Learning and Development Podcast Resources
Let’s dig in:
1)How Do You Discover Careers?
Growing up, both my parents went to business school to get their MBAs, and worked in corporate jobs. Eventually, My dad left the corporate track to become an entrepreneur and build his own consulting firm. As a result, our dinner conversations, vacations, and everyday lives as children of 2 “business people” revolved somewhat around business.
When I was 12, My Father started hosting a technology and innovation conference for his industry that was held at Disney World, and we cut a deal. I would help him out at the conference and he would take me to Magic Kingdom and Epcot after the conference was over.
The deal worked out better than I could imagine. In addition to getting my wish to visit the theme parks, I got to learn how a business conference worked, got to meet executives and leaders from some of the top industries and companies, and at this point could tell you a majority of ins and outs of what it takes to host a conference. I also got the ability to meet some incredible leaders and keynote speakers, like Jim Collins, Jimmy Wales and more.
Fast forward to today, where, after a career in management consulting and working with some of the largest Fortune 500 companies in the world, I now am in the business of being a consultant, speaker, and adviser. While some of this surely comes from my own journey and effort, it’s hard not to see how the Apple doesn’t fall “far from the tree” as a result of the exploration, conversations, and experiences that my parents gave me early on as a teenager.
While it would be hard for me to say that I predicted this, those early experiences gave me experiences and expanded my mindset into what a career, based on interests and strengths could be. But after talking with thousands of professionals over the years about how to find careers, I can confidently say that not everyone has the same access to resources, opportunities and privileges like I did. Unfortunately, we do not uniformly provide consistent resources, opportunities and tools to children and teenagers to allow them to discover their careers.
This is most evident when students make it to college and often struggle to choose majors in college, or find jobs even after getting a degree. Finding or choosing a career is not a static activity, but rather, one that involves exploration, trying things out, being exposed to ideas and information, and monitoring your growth.
So how in the future of work, will we find ways to provide more students with opportunities, to not just find jobs, but also to fuel a mindset for managing and evolving your career over time? Here are a few ideas:
Pathmatch, a talent marketplace recently raised an early round to connect students with internships or jobs. It was founded by Nancy Soni, who after working a career as a high-tech recruiter and viewing millions of resumes saw the gap and mismatch between entry level workers and the most in-demand jobs and careers.
As a talent marketplace, Pathmatch has created an internal matching system that “matches” a student and their interests, strengths and values with potential careers and roles. From there, it also helps them not just know what they want, but shows them the skills and experience should be on their resume, so they can actually land in this field.
Based on the strength of a candidate's application, it also assigns them a “hireability” score to help them understand how they fare, and provides them with best practices to improve their chances.
Another challenge around providing early in career employees with good jobs and careers is getting them the training and skills they need to thrive in these in demand fields. College can be incredibly valuable for lots of reasons, but it doesn’t always mean that you’ll get be “career ready” to take on an in-demand job in an in-demand field on day one.
One way to do that, is to, well do just that - Helios Consulting, which is a Workday implementation consulting firm, launched Rise, an apprenticeship style program that hires early career talent (many without formal education) and provides them with training in hard skills (workday training) and soft skills (client management, communications) all while earning income with the benefit of after completing the training, having a good paying job as well as career pathway that promises upward mobility.
They recently received an investment from Achieve Partners, to scale their practice and program and to unlock more upward mobility for more people.
Selfishly, I wish more people could get access at an early age like I did in terms of experiences and opportunities to learn about careers. But as the world of work continues to evolve and change, develop more resources and tools using technology to help people find and explore work and careers. These are just a couple examples of how we can start.
2)📌 Workplace and Career News📌
Article: U.S. adds whopping 528,000 jobs in July (Axios) - The headline says it all. So are we in a recession, or no?
Article: Mentoring in Hybrid Workplaces (HR-Brew) - Mentoring has always been an important way for employees, especially younger ones, to learn and feel connected. It has become even more important in a hybrid workplace
Article: What a New Strategy at 2U Means For The Future of Online Higher Education (EdSurge) - Online education (degree based and non-degree based) continues to grow, but the market continues to evolve as many of the larger players in the space are facing challenges. One of the longest standing players in the OPM space, 2U announced a strategic change to their business which has implications for their company and potentially the industry
Article: Human Capital at Work: The Value of Experience (McKinsey) - While most people read this McKinsey article (or at least saw the infographic) this article is also interesting. The takeaway: getting employees access to “cohorts” or “academies” or earlier in your career where you get training, apprenticeship, mentoring, and a network can have huge dividends for your growth (professionally, and financially) Having started my career at one of these and doing a lot of work with companies who hire in cohorts and academies I see the value first-hand that these employees get from starting their career in this fashion.
Linkedin: The Muse Gets a Rebrand - Started in 2011, The Muse has been a longstanding name in the job and career space. They recently announced a rebrand and a promise of more details to come as to what that means. The Job, Hiring, and Employer Branding spaces are notoriously competitive but do present massive challenges (hence all of the companies in this space..) so it will be interesting to see their shift in strategy.
3)🎙Resources: Learning and Development Podcasts🎙
I use a myriad of different resources to try to get smart and stay informed about various topics, and this week I’m going to share some of the top podcasts I have listened to and followed around things that L&D practitioners might care about.
Leading Learning with Tagoras - A long running podcast that is great for staying up to date on trends and companies in the learning, continuing education and professional development space
The Learning and Development Podcast with David James - The name says it all. If you’re an L&D professional, this is a great podcast to learn about the L&D profession, and is hosted by David James, a Chief Learning Officer.
The Bloc Podcast with Heidi Kirby - BLOC (Building Learning and Organizational Culture) is a podcast where Heidi connects with learning and talent professionals about how they are bringing learning to the top of the priority list in their organization.
The Business Of Learning by Training Industry - Backed by one of the largest media publications on training and learning, The Business of Learning brings on leaders in the training and learning industry to talk about trends and best practices
The Overnight Trainer with Sarah Cannistra - If you’re trying to break into the L&D field and don’t know where to begin, Sarah’s podcast is for you. Make sure to follow her on LinkedIn as well
Offbeat - Not officially a podcast, but this is a great L&D newsletter that comes out each Sunday which has great links and insights related to talent, learning, culture and leadership.
That’s all for now. Have a great week!
Al