Those that plan and manage their careers, will increasingly be able to define their jobs around their own interests and passions and build careers that enable, rather than limit their lifestyles.
The Great Recession marked the end of an era. A college degree, long viewed as the passport to a good career and comfortable lifestyle, will no longer guarantee a job. It certainly won’t ensure a job in the field for which you have prepared, much less a predictable and secure career that allows you to pursue your passions and live a lifestyle of your own choosing.
The Grim Reality
After more than four years of decline and slow growth, unemployment among recent college grads is still almost 15 percent. Another 40%, according to Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies, are underemployed or are unable to find full-time jobs or those that make use of their skills. These patterns are echoed in a 2011 study by Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. It found that 44% of 2010 college graduates had not held a single job over the 12 months since graduation (compared with 10% from the classes of 2006 and 2007). Among those 2010 grads lucky enough to find jobs, only half landed jobs that required four-year degrees, 30% claimed that their jobs were below their skill levels and only 22% saw their positions as steps along a long-term career path.
Worse still, a study of previous recessions by Yale School of Management economist Lisa Kahn, found that those graduates unlucky enough to enter the job market during a recession not only begin at lower wages, they also find it difficult to compete with younger, more recent graduates when normal hiring patterns resume and are likely to continue to earn lower wages though much of their careers.
All this bad news is taking a terrible toll on morale. According to the previously mentioned Center for Workforce Development survey, 56% of recent college graduates now believe they will to do less well than their parents—only 17% think they will do better!
A Brighter Future?
Although it may be comforting to think that this situation will return to normal once we pull out of the slump and the recovery begins generating jobs at a more traditional pace, this is worse than wishful thinking—it is self-delusion.
The recession, as severe as it has been, has merely unmasked a number of fundamental job market-altering trends that have been in place for more than a last decade, but were disguised by the financial and homebuilding bubbles. These trends fall into four primary categories:
- Automation, in which not only factory and administrative workers, but also knowledge workers (as in routine accounting, programming, legal and even some medical jobs) are being automated;
- Globalization, where increasingly educated engineers, financial analysts and lawyers and other professionals, from a growing number of developing countries, perform jobs for as little as one-tenth the cost of a comparably educated domestic white-collar worker;
- Flexible hiring, with companies looking to reduce fixed costs by increasingly looking to part-time or contract workers as alternatives to full-time employees; and
- Unpredictable volatility, where political, economic, social, technology and market forces change so suddenly and profoundly as to make it all but impossible to anticipate, much less prepare for major dislocations or their often unanticipated consequences.
The bad news is that those who are not prepared for these trends face a lifetime of uncertainly, disrupted career plans and low earnings. Their careers, their financial security and, to an extent, their lifestyles, will be subject to the whims of the market place and the good graces of others.
The good news is that those who understand and are prepared for the job market of the future—and who plan and manage their careers effectively—have the opportunity to not only minimize these risks, but to turn them into opportunities. They will increasingly be able to define their jobs around their own interests and passions and build careers that enable, rather than limit their lifestyles.
Although most college graduates have the potential of taking charge of their own careers, those who are still in high school or those who are about to enter or are still in college, have, by far, the greatest potential. It will, however, take planning, work and commitment.
The sooner you accept these responsibilities, the greater your chance of ensuring that you will be the master, rather than the victim of your own career.
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And how, exactly, are people supposed to be prepared for these trends? And how, exactly, is one supposed to be prepared for the job market of the future? Be flexible, be willing to commute wherever the job takes one? What about family and friends and stability? So you make a living, but have no life to spend it on. Please try and provide less theory and more practical ideas.
Jaine,
Thank you. I am just now writing a book that is intended to do just that. At a high-level, some of the most important steps–at least as I see the–include:
Develop the base set of skills (research, critical thinking, communications, teamwork, IT skills, etc.) that will be required across all types of careers.
Develop deep skills in one particular area in which you have deep interests and particular skills, around which you hope to build a career
Create a network of people in the field that can help guide you in assessing and preparing for career paths, and ideally, introduce you to people who may know of opportunities for internships and jobs;
If your chosen field happens to be in an area of high-growth for which there is a shortage of qualified people (software engineering, quantitative research, virtualy any aspect of healthcare and so forth), you will have greater luck and more flexibility in finding a job in an area in which you would like to live. Jobs in which you can work virtually provide particular flexibility, at least after your first few years of experieince.
Career stability is a tough demand in a market where jobs are being conntinually automated and offshored. Your best hopes for stability is by making yourself an invauable employee who, as Tom Friedman has written, have the
• The imagination to identify new opportunities;
• The initiative and the skills to build compelling business cases around them; and
• The interpersonal and communication skills required to sell these ideas.
But even with this, job discriptions and job opportunities will continially change. The best hope for “stability” is to continually stay ahead of your field–anticipate where the new opportunities will be and develop the skills and the networks that will allow you to move into them before others are prepared.
From my experieince, one of the best long-term solutions to creatinga career in which you can define what you do, where you can do it from and how much time you want to devote to it is to be able to go out on your own, such as by starting your own company or by working as a freelancer, consultant or contract employee. This, however, requires additional skills, such as managing time and money, proactively selling yourself, accounting and so forth.)
While I know this is pretty brief and high-level, I hope it is of some help.
Practice out-of-the-box, cross-disciplinary thinking that can help you identify solutions that others do not see and the ability to effectively sell yourself and your ideas (in speaking, writing and via social media)