Thread: The Changing Workforce and the Micro-Job

A few members have kids in Uni at the moment and it's interesting to see what path(s) they take in the future, but I've also always been interested in job markets and how they change. As we know, they are in a constant state of flux.


To prepare for the future, we need to shift from thinking about jobs and careers to thinking about challenges and problems, reports Alina Dizik.

24 April 2017

When Jean-Philippe Michel, a Toronto-based career coach, works with secondary school students, he doesn’t use the word profession. Neither does he focus on helping his young clients figure out what they want to be when they grow up—at least not directly.

For him, there's really no such thing as deciding on a profession to grow up into.
Rather than encouraging each person to choose a profession, say, architect or engineer, he works backwards from the skills that each student wants to acquire. So instead of saying, “I want to be a doctor”, he’ll aim to get students to talk about a goal, in this case “using empathy in a medical setting”.

It might seem a bit esoteric, but the twist in language helps boil down real objectives. And sometimes those don’t jibe with a single profession or even the career choice you might have imagined wanting at the start. Instead, Michel says deciding the skills you want to use leads to a career that’s more targeted—and thus more likely to bring you satisfaction. It also might be less a job and more a set of projects and work situations that lead you from one thing to the next.
They need to shift from thinking about jobs and careers to think about challenges and problems

“They need to shift from thinking about jobs and careers to think about challenges and problems,” Michel says. Easier said than done for, say, Gen X or even older millennials, but it’s not so out of the realm of thinking for younger people, who are already narrowing down their university studies.

The purpose, above all, is to prepare the next generation for a career in the future, which for many will be made up of numerous micro-jobs aimed at well-paid skilled workers, and not a single boss and company, he says.

Ultimately, developing precise goals helps teenagers plan for what many call a ‘portfolio career’. This type of career is made up of somewhat disparate projects or roles and will be more prevalent in the next decade, says Michel, who is based in Ottawa, Canada.

“They are going to have to carve out a niche that’s more specific than it once was,” he believes.

The ‘portfolio career’ isn’t a new idea – but improving technology is helping it enter the mainstream The demise of traditional

Futurists and human resource executives say that our work lives will consist of doing several long-term projects or tasks at once.

Instead of identifying your job role or description, you will be constantly adding skills based on what is going to make you more employable

“Instead of identifying your job role or description, you [will be] constantly adding skills based on what is going to make you more employable,” says Jeanne Meister, New York-based co-author of The Future Workplace Experience.



If you’re younger, this will likely mean the ability to pursue flexibility and passions rather enter into a more traditional role, say in accounting or marketing or finance.
The precursor for this shift is already here; it’s becoming more common to take on various roles even within one company, says Esther Rogers, who publishes a quarterly journal about insight and foresight in the workplace, in addition to client work as part of her role at Idea Couture, a Toronto-based innovation and design firm. Out of office hours, she also takes on local voice acting roles. There’s “a real mishmash of tasks within a role. It's already becoming difficult to come up with [job] titles,” says Rogers.


A mash-up of micro-jobs can make you feel more entrepreneurial – even if you work for a large company, says Jacob Morgan

Internal freelancer?

The idea of building a portfolio career has been around since the late 1980s, tapping into the dreamy interest many of us have in forging a one-of-a-kind career path. But, until recently, the idea has been more theory than practice since a lack of technology made it time-consuming to find out about new opportunities, says Meister. Now that the technology has created more opportunities in the gig economy—think Uber, Instacart or Taskrabbit—the micro-job concept is making its way up the professional ranks.



More traditional companies are catching on and offering freelance-like project opportunities to their own employees, says Meister. For example, both IT giant Cisco and financial services firm MasterCard are testing so-called “internal mobility platforms” that allow employees to cherry-pick projects to fill specific gaps for the company rather than staying in a more structured role, says Meister. Instead of continuing in one department under a single supervisor, workers are encouraged to choose their next projects based on their skills, or skills they want to develop, which can mean working in a different part of the company. She says it’s working, although they’ve yet to study return on investment of the effort.

Michael Stull, a senior vice president at Manpower Group, a global human resource consulting firm in the US state of Wisconsin, says more firms are demanding similar setups.

Forging a career path

Choosing where and how you work seems fun, right? But when it comes to forging a long-term career, there are drawbacks to creating a portfolio of work, say experts.

The biggest barrier to adapting to a micro-job is mindset

If you constantly hop from one project to the next, the change can be jarring and leave you without a clear path to benchmark success. With fewer promotions and changes to job titles, it can be more difficult to feel like you’re succeeding even if you’re regularly completing projects, says career coach Michel. What’s more, our identity is often wrapped up in the type of work we do, which doesn’t really fit the micro-job collecting life.

And, of course, even though some companies are experimenting, steering past a traditional mentality on what constitutes professional growth can take years to change.

“The biggest barrier to adapting,” says Meister, “is mindset.”

BBC - Capital - The next generation of jobs won?t be made up of professions

And more young folks are looking overseas in our globalized world and declining opportunities in the US (for some).

Go East, Young American
By SUKETU MEHTAAPRIL 21, 2017

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — One of the fiercest debates in the nation these days centers on immigration to America, and whether it takes jobs away from people already here. But maybe the solution is emigration from America. Today, there are nine million American civilians living abroad — up from four million in 1999. In the 21st century, America’s greatest export could just be … Americans.

Just as India’s greatest export has long been Indians. In 1936, when my grandfather was 16, he had to help support his five younger siblings in a village in Gujarat. His father sent him to Nairobi, Kenya, where he began his career sweeping floors in his uncle’s accounting office. In turn, his children moved, to America, to England, to Australia. In the 1970s my father stood for nine hours a day at the Diamond Dealers Club on West 47th Street in Manhattan because he couldn’t afford an office. My grandfather’s descendants are doctors, lawyers, public servants, corporate executives all over the world. Mobility is survival.

Many Americans recoil at the idea that they should have to go abroad for anything more taxing than sightseeing. The number of Americans working abroad is very low compared with other developed countries. Only a third of Americans have a working passport; three-quarters of Britons do, and 60 percent of Canadians.

If you were to believe President Trump, and even some supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, you would think that this is because every American has a divine right to a well-paid job in his own country.

Are you an American who lives abroad? Tell us why, and what you’d share with other Americans wondering about doing the same thing on Instagram using the hashtag #AmericanExpatLife.

The 20th century was the American century; the 21st, not so much. A young person in Denmark or New Zealand has a better quality of life than a young person in the United States. There you can go to college free, not have to worry about money when you’re sick, and enjoy two months’ vacation even if you’re only an intern. Partly this is due to the significant underinvestment by the government in education, health care and the arts, which has left sections of the United States looking like postwar Europe.

Americans who work abroad do quite well; American pilots for Chinese airlines, for example, make $300,000 a year. All around the world, there are legions of Americans making a good living as engineers, corporate executives, English teachers.

Critics say this kind of globalization is only for the elite, those lucky and wealthy enough to have been educated at the best schools. But it’s not just jobs requiring a college degree that Americans should consider doing overseas. A 150-peso-an-hour job in an automobile plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, isn’t the same as a $40-an-hour union job in Detroit; but you will live much better than if you made $8 an hour slinging burgers in Scranton, Pa. Maybe, instead of building a wall, President Trump should be demanding that Mexico open up its labor market to Americans.

I certainly understand why Americans might be attached to their house, their friends and family, their home country. I’ve made New York my home, the last home for those who have no other. The United States is a beautiful country, a safe country and, for most people, a comfortable country. It’s true that we should fight for better-paying jobs at home; companies move jobs abroad so they can pay workers less, in countries with looser environmental and labor laws.

But American jobs are disappearing not because they’re moving to Mexico or China; it’s because they are increasingly being done by robots. What we need is not tariffs, but training. We also need to gently teach our children: You might prefer to stay in the house you were born in all your life, but it’s not a constitutional right.

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SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY
My family had to move because there was no future in rural Gujarat; 200 years of British colonialism had left the Indian economy in ruins. When we moved, we missed our vegetarian food, our family, the trees, the rivers and our language. Some of it we could take with us; some of it we couldn’t. We returned to Gujarat when we could.

Americans are more fortunate; the whole world looks like America now. Americans who emigrate don’t have to go without cheeseburgers, “Seinfeld” or the English language.

So go forth into the world with confidence, young American! Don’t believe Mr. Trump’s defeatist talk of “American carnage.” Americans have a spirit of enterprise, efficiency and honesty that is unparalleled in the world. If you don’t believe me, try visiting a Chinese or Indian or Russian government office — and see how an American government office compares.

Some of my former New York University students were able to land lucrative jobs in the booming Indian news industry because they have writing and editing skills honed at a top American university. In India, their salaries can buy them an apartment, nice dinners, domestic help. Most of their peers in New York are still struggling in unpaid internships and have to be supported by loans or parents.

For my college-going sons, there is no guarantee that there will be a job waiting after graduation in America. But they have already worked, with confidence, in Brazil and Indonesia. Growing up in New York has made them comfortable with the idea of living anywhere in the world. The other day, my older son, who wants to be a journalist, told me he was thinking about looking for a job in … India.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/o...yt-region&_r=0

I thought you were against all this warm, fuzzy, liberal, PC BS, CP.

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

Rather than encouraging each person to choose a profession, say, architect or engineer, he works backwards from the skills that each student wants to acquire. So instead of saying, “I want to be a doctor”, he’ll aim to get students to talk about a goal, in this case “using empathy in a medical setting”.

How many employers advertise jobs such as: "Two persons required to use empathy in a medical setting"?

FFS, they need two doctors, two nurses, two psychotherapists or two receptionists for the medical centre.

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

A young person in Denmark or New Zealand has a better quality of life than a young person in the United States. There you can go to college free, not have to worry about money when you’re sick, and enjoy two months’ vacation even if you’re only an intern.

This isn't the NZ that I know. University isn't free anymore and I doubt that the typical working Kiwi gets two months vacation per year. I would agree that in most cases if you are sick you don't have to worry about money, although most people I know back in NZ now have private health insurance.

Poorly researched and written article.

Originally Posted by Barty

Poorly researched and written article.

Usual fake news from the libtard mainstream media, that love to paint globalization as all rosy.

Originally Posted by Neverna

I thought you were against all this warm, fuzzy, liberal, PC BS, CP.

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

Rather than encouraging each person to choose a profession, say, architect or engineer, he works backwards from the skills that each student wants to acquire. So instead of saying, “I want to be a doctor”, he’ll aim to get students to talk about a goal, in this case “using empathy in a medical setting”.

How many employers advertise jobs such as: "Two persons required to use empathy in a medical setting"?

FFS, they need two doctors, two nurses, two psychotherapists or two receptionists for the medical centre.

Not PC, IMO.

People switch jobs more often today and the focus is on skill sets.

Some (many?) consider working at the same company for 10 years means a worker is stagnant and not motivated.

I'm not saying this applies to everyone. Certainly not.

But the workforce demands often change.

Depends on the company but in general it's not about "being yourself" but deciding what to divulge and how to behave.


WHY YOU SHOULDN'T BE YOURSELF AT WORK

The most common career advice can be completely misleading. Lennox Morrison explains why.

'Be yourself' is the defining careers advice of the moment. It’s heard everywhere from business leaders in the boardroom to graduation day speeches. It's so common it's even a hiring tool for some companies.

One person striving to successfully heed this advice is Michael Friedrich, the Berlin-based vice-president of ScribbleLive, a Canadian software company. For Friedrich, being himself involves wearing shorts to work, and telling prospective clients he’s sleeping on a friend’s living-room floor while he finds a home of his own.
Playing by his own rules has worked well so far, Friedrich says. Thanks to the foreign languages, and well-honed intercultural skills picked up while travelling instead of going to university, he’s landed well-paying jobs. And, despite his unconventional behaviour at ScribbleLive, he’s won a major promotion.

Michael Friedrich bids farewell to his London colleagues before embarking on an 800-mile bicycle ride to Berlin, Germany

“I don’t worry about image in the traditional sense. I am the way I am,” says the 44-year-old. “I accept what I’m like and I celebrate it.”

But is ‘be yourself’ good advice for everyone? Just how much of yourself should you reveal to your colleagues? And, are some of us more suited to this ethos than others?


Blurred boundaries

‘Being yourself’ can backfire in certain circumstances, says Professor Herminia Ibarra, an expert in organisational behaviour and leadership at London Business School and Insead in France.

For instance, her research suggests that people who have been promoted are at risk of failing in their new role if they have a fixed idea of their own ‘authentic’ personality. Rather than adapting their behaviour to fit their changed status, they carry on exactly as before. For instance, someone who sees themselves as open and friendly may share too much of their thoughts and feelings, thus losing credibility and effectiveness, she explains.

Just been promoted to manager? Professor Herminia Ibarra says it’s not always wise to carry on behaving the same way

“A very simple definition [of authenticity] is being true to self,” says Ibarra. “But self could be who I am today, who I’ve always been or who I might be tomorrow.”

Self-monitoring
People can use authenticity as an excuse for staying in their comfort zone, says Ibarra. Faced with change, “oftentimes they say ‘that’s not me’ and they use the idea of authenticity to not stretch and grow”.

People can use authenticity as an excuse for staying in their comfort zone
The ease with which you adapt your behaviour to fit new situations depends to what degree you’re a ‘chameleon’ or a ‘true-to-selfer’, according to Mark Snyder, a social psychologist at the University of Minnesota. He created a personality test to measure this, called the Self-Monitoring Scale.



Chameleons treat their lives as an opportunity to play a series of roles, carefully choosing their words and deeds to convey just the right impression, says Snyder. In contrast, true-to-selfers use their social dealings with others to convey an unfiltered sense of their personalities, he says.

‘Chameleons’ may change their tune to suit whoever’s in the room – but they are more likely to get ahead, says Mark Snyder (Credit: Getty Images)
The problem with ‘be yourself’ as careers advice is that chameleons have a bit of an edge, says Snyder. That’s because a lot of jobs, particularly ones that are at higher levels in corporations, call for acting and self-presentational skills that favour people who change their deeds to fit the situation.
Earning your stripes

Other research suggests it's only as you progress up the career ladder that you have the licence, power and opportunity to be authentic. It takes time to earn what sociologists call “idiosyncrasy credits”.

“Senior people have tried, experimented, trial-and-errored different versions of self, found whatever works for them, and consolidated a style,” says Ibarra. “They advise students and junior staff to ‘be yourself’ with good intent, forgetting that it’s been a 30-year process.”

It’s not bad advice. It’s just not particularly useful advice
Part of the danger in simply telling people to ‘be yourself’ is that they might think that’s all they need to do, says Jeremiah Stone, a New York-based recruitment specialist at Hudson RPO.

‘Being yourself’ can only get you so far – you’ve got to be able to back it up (Credit:

“It doesn’t mean that you go into an interview or a workplace environment and you behave in the same way you would with your mates. It means that you are engaging authentically with other people, that they get a sense of who you are and what’s important to you and what your values are,” he says. “It’s not bad advice. It’s just not particularly useful advice”

Even Friedrich is unconvinced by ‘be yourself’ as words of wisdom – particularly for younger people. “The advice ‘be yourself’ – that’s starting in the middle. How can you be yourself if you don’t know yourself?” he says. “Get to know yourself and find out what makes you happy.”

BBC - Capital - Why you shouldn?t ?be yourself? at work

The OP is a drooling retard.

Originally Posted by Davis Knowlton

The OP is a drooling retard.