Read the text and do the exercises.The 21st-century career
Offering
employees a rewarding career used to be easy: You’d hire a bright young person
out of college, plug him into an entry-level role, and then watch him climb the
corporate ladder over the years as he progressed toward retirement.
The company
could plan for this continuous process - hire people based on their degrees,
help them develop slowly and steadily, and expect some to become leaders, some
to become specialists, and some to plateau.
Today this
model is being shattered. The days of a steady, stable career are over.
Organizations have become flatter and less ladder-like, making upward
progression less common. Young, newly hired employees often have skills not
found in experienced hires, leaving many older people to work for young
leaders. And the rapid pace of technology makes many jobs, crafts, and skills
go out of date in only a few years.
But hold
on. The world of careers doesn’t have to be so difficult and unforgiving.
Organizations can adapt their career strategies and help people learn faster
and continue to stay engaged.
Let’s examine
what a “career” really is. The traditional idea of a career has three
components:
A career
represents our expertise, our profession, and ultimately our identity. It
defines who we are and what we do. This form of self-identity makes changing
careers dauntingly difficult: What if we switch careers and fail? Then
who are we?
A career is
something that builds over time and endures. It gives us the opportunity to
progress, advance, and continuously feel proud.
When we are asked to change our career or path, what happens to all we have
learned? Do we throw it all away? Or can we carry it forward?
A career
gives us financial and psychological rewards. It makes life meaningful, gives
us purpose, and pays us enough to live well. What happens if our career
suddenly becomes less valuable, even if we still enjoy it? Should we continue to
make less money or jump to a new path?
The
changing world of work has disrupted all three elements: expertise, duration,
and rewards. And as scary as this may be for employees trying to stay ahead,
it’s equally disruptive
for employers who must try to hire and develop the workforce of today,
tomorrow, and five years from now.
It used to
be that only certain types of jobs - think of computer programmers and
IT troubleshooters - needed constant training and
upskilling. Now, all of us are expected to continuously learn new skills, new
tools, and new systems.
Today,
anyone who wants a shot at a well-compensated position should consider
developing skills in math, statistics, and logical thinking; comfort with data
is increasingly essential. It’s safe to say that anyone who lacks a basic
understanding of science, technology, engineering, and math - the STEM fields - will likely find limited career options.
That said,
STEM no longer tells the whole story of skills in the 21st century. Tasks based
on math, science, and engineering are vulnerable to automation, so they should
be complemented with soft skills and other strengths as well.
While the
core need for technical skills remains strong, another theme has entered the
job market: the need for people with skills in communication, interpretation,
design, and synthetic thinking. In a way, we can think of these as the arts,
hence the evolution of education from STEM to STEAM.
What does
it mean to add arts to STEM? The jobs of the future require social skills complementing
more technical abilities.
In short,
we have to blow up the traditional career model and work to make it easier for
people to take the skills they have and use them in new roles within the
organization.
No one
would suggest that dealing with the career dynamics of the future will be easy,
for either employees or employers. It’s important to actively redesign our
learning organizations, rethink our job models, create more hybrid roles, and
throw away our traditional ideas of the up-or-out approach to success.