What is a Career in The Future of Work?
How "Career" is Evolving, and How Companies Can Respond to Attract Top Talent
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This Week’s Newsletter:
This week, I’m doing a longer bit on A Career in The Future of Work. There are three main parts
The Brief History of a Career
6 Shifts in Careers in The Future of Wrok
How Employers Can Respond to Attract Top Talent
1.The Brief History of a Career
In 1908 Frank Parsons created the Vocational Bureau, a new division inside the Civic Service House in Boston, Massachusetts. Parsons was the first to establish a vocational guidance approach and is credited with coming up with the basic framework for vocational guidance upon which the profession (career counseling) was built.
Parsons himself went through many career changes. He studied at Cornell University to be a civil engineer, and worked in the railroad industry, but due to the economic depression of the 1870s, he became a manual laborer, teacher of art and literature, and “read” for the law and became a member of the Massachusetts Bar.
Over time, vocational guidance was built into a methodology and approach, but initially, Parsons did three things:
Took a bunch of people (mostly men) sat them down and asked them questions
Found a list of jobs that were looking to hire
Played matchmaker between the two
Within a few years, this process was refined, and then career counseling became a profession, and vocational guidance was used within schools to help students find careers.
At the core of this, is something Parsons called trait and factor theory, which became the foundation for vocational guidance. Today, trait and factor theory has come under criticism because of its inability to account for someone’s change in their vocational development and orientation. At the time, choosing a career was seen as a static exercise - you choose it and then you’re done. Additionally, at the time, Parsons only focused on doing this for men. So not very reflective of today’s world of work.
Today is a much different time, but in many ways, the fundamentals for how we view careers in the context of how individuals choose them, how employees hire, and how colleges approach students have remained the same, even if we are a few evolutions ahead.
If we are talking about iPhones, the way that we construct decisions and approach the idea of a career is an iPhone 4 when the reality is more like an iPhone 12. Since then, the modern inventions that have evolved our thinking on a career include:
The resume (technically started in 1482 with Leonardo DaVinci) evolved significantly but started to pick up steam in the 1940s and 1950s
The rise of the internet and e-mail, and the beginning of job boards and career sites like Monster.com (1994)
Linkedin decides to enter the job board market (2005)
The proliferation and ubiquity of mobile devices (iPhone 2008)
The rise of Web 2.0 and employer branding (the 90s and early 2000s)
Employee Experience, Company Perks, and Tech Companies (2010-2020)
The Rise and Fall of Rise and Grind and hustle culture (2014-Present)
Great Resignation + other “Great” trends (2020-Present)
TLDR: The World of Work Has Changed
Before we talk about how careers are shifting and evolving, I want to offer and suggest the why behind all of this, which comes back to three main elements.
1. Complexity
We live in a world that is now starting to be more complex, and complex challenges require us to think in terms of complex solutions. That might sound like some platitude, but let me explain. To better understand this, it's important to understand the difference between a problem that is complicated and a problem that is complex.
Furthermore, the systems (ex: the companies we work for or organizations we work in) are becoming more complex than complicated. So instead of one right choice or a set playbook, there are multiple potential options. And instead of trying to get something right, the goal is to explore the range of possibilities.
2. Change
The Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed that the natural world was in a constant state of movement. People age, develop habits, and move environments. What was true centuries ago is still true today. We live in a world of constant change. Change can also often mean uncertainty - what comes next, what should I choose, how should I proceed?
A few years ago, it was a global pandemic, learning how to work from home, and curbside delivery. Today, it’s generative AI and Chat GPT-4, and AR/VR, and who knows what it might be in the future. What this means for employees is what my friend Jenny Blake says: “If change is the only constant, we should get good at it.” Second, to get ahead and thrive in a world of constant change, the antidote is being able to learn and explore faster than the rate of change.
3. Choice
In a world of complexity and change, there is also a lot of choice about how we can choose, evolve, and grow a career. And when there is a mobile phone that fits in our pocket, searching for information about a career, learning about a skill or profession, or searching for a job on LinkedIn can happen in a few clicks.
And with the advent of technologies, and social media platforms, never has it been easier to explore a curiosity that could lead to a job, such as a side hustle, hobby business, or personal brand on a social media account. There are more options than ever before. In a world of change and uncertainty, there are choices and possibilities. Since there is ambiguity and no one right path, we do have the option for choices.
2. Six Shifts in How We Think About Careers in The Future of Work
Now that we’ve set the context, let’s take a look at how things are shifting about the very nature of what a career is in today’s world of work. View these shifts as a continuum.
#1) Choosing a Career: From Static to Dynamic
For many Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Millennials, the playbook for choosing a career was to go to college, get a degree, and choose a job that you could get, and then over time, it could turn into a career until you retire. While there are variations of this, this was a generally accepted norm. Basically, in college, you decide what you are going to be, and then you grow and build a career in that for the rest of your life. That is a very static way of thinking about choosing a career and developing within it.
Today, careers are much more dynamic. You may start in one career, but then eventually move to another. You may do this because you want to, or because in some cases you have to as a result of changes to your company or industry. Furthermore, new industries or roles may pop up, which may incentivize you to proactively make a transition or reinvention so you can position yourself for a new career. The way that we set and decide on careers has moved from being something that we choose once and forget, to one that we dynamically revisit throughout our career.
#2): The Employer’s Role in a Career: From Employer-Led to Employee Driven
Once upon a time, There was a somewhat paternalistic relationship between employers and employees when it came to career advancement and movement. This was when companies such as GE, Kodak, Xerox, etc invested in leadership development programs, corporate universities, rotational programs, and internal mobility. When IBM could make a 5-10-15 year strategic plan with predictability and reliability it could also provide their employees with roadmaps to move through different roles in the business. In many cases, your employer, in exchange for lifetime employment, allowed you to move, but on their terms.
Eventually, many companies stepped away from this, and employees were left to fend for themselves. Partially due to the rising complexity of business, and partially due to deciding to make cuts either due to economic conditions (double-digit inflation in the 1970s, flattening and delayering management in the 80s and 90s, recession in the early 2000s and Great Financial Crisis in 2008)
For many of us, we still feel that this is true - we feel alone in our choices for managing our career growth. That said, today there are more tools, resources, opportunities, and means to construct your career in an employee-driven and self-sustaining way.
Furthermore, the nature of how we want to work is more accessible and diverse than ever before. Between choosing side hustles, gig platforms, fractional and part-time work, employees have more choices and definitions for how they want to make “work” work for them.
#3)The Direction of a Career: From Linear to Non-Linear
For a long time, most career advancement and development was seen as moving in a linear fashion. Each move is prescribed in advance, and then a step-by-step process to achieving the end outcome, and usually, that meant increasing in size, scope, and compensation, until you reached the end goal. This is how we come to know terms like the career ladder, or “climbing the ladder,” or this idea of a career path.
In today’s world, the ladder still exists, but so do many other models, and part of this is because while we still have linear paths, we are becoming increasingly aware that we live in a non-linear world. As a result, there is a desire for more expansive models and ideas for how to evolve and grow in a career. Now, we see other examples of ways to grow a career including the ladder, such as a Portfolio, Lattice, and Pathless Path.
#4)Career Development: From Episodic to Continuous
Traditionally, we thought of career development as something episodic. This meant the yearly career conversation, or once a year filling out an individual development plan, when the time came for a promotion, or in unfortunate cases, like a lay-off, or RIF, you went into career development mode, and you dug in and got to work. Career development was an “episode” and you turned it on when those big moments came.
We are moving to a model where managing your career is going from a “once a year” and episodic nature to something continuous and always on. Instead of waiting reactively for a big moment, it’s more about intentionally putting in habits and practice to fuel everyday career development. No longer do we have to just wait around for a big milestone or event, we can practice it every day.
#5)Learning in your Career: From Learning as an Event to Lifelong Learning
For many Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Millennials, our model of education and learning was through “traditional methods.” Go to school, go to high school, go to college, and enter the workforce. For those of us who grew up in that and now work in knowledge work, college was our final “learning event.”
Now, for those that can and do choose to go to college, college is just one step in a future of lifelong learning. To keep up with the advances in industries as a result of technology, competition, and innovation, simply going to college for four years and stopping learning is not going to be enough.
Instead, learning becomes something that needs to be there throughout the entirety of someone’s work life and career.
And while college and traditional higher education institutions still play a role, there are far more opportunities for “career accelerators,” or short bursts of learning that fuel opportunities for employees to develop new skills and further their opportunities for advancement.
#6)Choosing a Career: Selecting a Career to Define What Career Means To You
We used to select a career and pursue it. Now, because of the choice and expansiveness of what a career could be, it is something that we all collectively can define for ourselves. For some, that can be something more traditional, and for others, this can be much more creative, expansive, and new. If you want your career to be your life, you have that option. If you want to fit a career within the context of everything else in your life, that is an option too.
And if you want to change and evolve what “career” means to you throughout your life, there is an opportunity to do that as well. Once upon a time, once you “stopped” a career, it was hard to get back on. Now, we can consistently iterate how to turn on a career, depending on our life and current state conditions and circumstances. To be sure, this is much easier for some than it is for others, but fundamentally, a career then moves from something you “define” and stay on, to something you consistently reflect and “iterate” on as you evolve.
3.What This Means For Employers
While some could argue the future of work is already here, many of these shifts are already in process. Here is what that means for employers who want to attract and retain talent.
#1)You Need a Relevant and Consistent Employer Value Proposition
Being very clear and consistent on your employer value proposition and what you’re offering in your employer-employee contract is going to be critical to being able to attract and retain talent. This is especially true if you work in professions or industries where you are competing for a small amount of highly skilled talent.
In your EVP, there needs to be an element around what you’re offering as you try to support and grow your employees and their careers. Amy Edmondson and Mark Mortenson offer a nice framework as a starting point, but yours will probably need to be more robust and specific to how you are going to support and empower a prospective employee and their desires for their career
#2)You may need to rethink where and how you bring in talent
For years, companies like professional service firms have created contract-for-hire marketplaces where they will either allow talent flowing out the door to work in a part-time contract capacity or as a means to identify new talent who wants to work part-time or pick up additional work. Freelance marketplaces have been around for decades, but new ways of procuring talent including Rolesharing are also viable ways to obtain access to top talent who want to think differently about how they structure a career.
#3)Technology is important but not enough
Right now, internal mobility platforms, skills architecture, and talent marketplaces are hot commodities as companies look to find ways to retain and grow employees. I think these are all well and good, but we’ve never solved a big problem with technology alone. True as form, the norms, ways of working and people play a critical role in enabling whatever you plan to do with your career strategy. I am always a big fan of thinking about this in a systematic way, where technology is an enabler of the strategy, but different strokes for different folks.
Even though Bank of America relies on technology for many of its internal mobility strategies, it also has a team of folks who act as advisors to help facilitate the process. Many other companies have other internal mobility and career specialists who do this kind of work.
#4)You may need to think differently about who you are as a company
A few years ago, Chick Fil A had a photo of a teacher on their employer branding page who was a Chick-Fil-A alum encouraging prospective employees to come to work there to “achieve their dreams.” The point of it was that the alum’s dream was not necessarily to work at Chick-Fil-A, it was to be a teacher, but Chik-Fil-A was an enabler and vessel for achieving that dream. Chick Fil A knows not everyone goes there to work there forever, but going to work there can enable that employee to build the career they wish to build. Chick Fil A isn’t trying to be the employer of choice, it's trying to attract talent that has aspirations and wants to use their time at Chick-Fil as a step on that journey.
Another example of this came from Wal-Mart. A few years ago they opened neighborhood education centers, where they trained their associates. But they also realized since Wal-Mart was such a bedrock of many communities that they could use some of the same training they were giving to associates and opened it up to the general public.
Wal-Mart is an employer but it also acknowledges that it plays a greater role. In turn, they also can attract other talent.
Other examples of this include companies that have alumni programs, as well as consulting firms that offer support to their employees who end up leaving.
In this new world of work, people will have a career long after they leave your company, and your ability to understand where you fit in their life and offer them something of value is going to help you attract the best talent.
These are my thoughts - I would love to hear yours!