Coming Full Circle: Jobs, Skills, Professional Experience and Young Adults

1. Coming Full Circle:Jobs, Skills, Professional Experience and Young Adults Dr. Phil Gardner Collegiate employment Research Institute Michigan state University For Students in Transition National resource Center Houston November 13, 2010 For slides contact me at gardnerp@msu.edu

2. The Test: Do You Know Someone Who …..? • Lacks motivation • Holds lofty and unrealistic expectations (impatient) • Is ignorant of the world of work (ill prepared) • Has no respect for business culture • Displays a poor work ethic • Excels in social skills for team oriented environment • Possesses no internal guidance system (external voices telling them what to do) • “What’s in it for me?”

4. BOOMERS: INVESTMENT BANKERS • Monetary success • Professional prestige • Elevated goals (for all behind them) • Don’t share well (it’s mine) • Control • Principals • Legacy • Make sure it stays as we built it

5. Networked Intelligence Economy It’s all about Managing Knowledge and Developing Skills

6. Economic Shifts and the Skills Gap • Knowledge/Networked Economy • Requires transdisciplinary individuals • Sourcing • High quality labor at lowest price • Technology substitution • Workforce Succession • When will they ever leave? • Lost Knowledge • Leave your brains behind Grandpa!

7. The Shifts

8. What Jobs Will Leave?

10. Skill Usage: The Funnel Communicate Orally Think Analytically Acquire Learning Evaluate Alternatives Creative Solutions Teamwork Leadership Utilize technology Grasp Realities Demonstrating Initiative Apply Learning Writing Effectively Teamwork Grasp Realities Workplace Acquire Learning Demonstrating Initiative

11. The First Turn Based on skills reformation 1.0 See www.careernetwork.msu.edu Click on Guides to find 12 Essentials

12. Benchmark: 12 Essentials Developing professional competencies Communicating effectively Solving Problems Balancing Work and life Embracing Change Working Effectively in a Team Working in a Diverse Environment Managing time and priorities Navigating across boundaries Acquiring knowledge Thinking Critically Performing with integrity

13. Advanced Skills for Professionals: Star Performers

14. Organizational savvy Self-management Teamwork effectiveness Networking Perspective Leadership Followership Show&Tell A Model for Professional Expertise Taking Initiative Technical Competence Cognitive Abilities Kelley, R. & Caplan.J. (1993). How Bell Labs Creates Star Performers. Harvard Business Review: July 1993

15. The Full Circle

16. The New Standards Build and sustain professional relationships Analyze, evaluate and interpret data Engage in continuous learning Communicate through persuasion and justification Plan and manage a project Create new knowledge Seek global understanding Mentor and develop others Build a team Initiative: The Holy Grail Paper is available at www.ceri.msu.edu

17. TODAY College graduates must come to the organizations as a STAR PERFORMER!

18. The New Look for Young Professionals The T Professional IDEO’s terminology Applicable to all education levels

19. The I Professional: Going Deep Deep in at least one discipline (analytic thinking & problem solving)

20. Tinkers • Claude Levi Strauss • Tinker vs. Engineer • Tinker redefines the means to do something • “Tinker Toys” • Judy Estrin CEO JLABS • Today’s best talent • Deep understanding (respect) • Breadth (communicate/boundaries) • Infectious excitement (passion) • Compulsive tinker (drive)

21. Boundary Crossing Competencies communication, teamwork, perspective, networks, critical thinking, organizational culture, global understanding, project management, etc Many disciplines (understanding & communications) Many systems (understanding & communications) Deep in at least one discipline (analytic thinking & problem solving) Deep in at least one system (analytic thinking & problem solving) T-Shaped Professionals(Both Deep and Broad) ME See www.ceri.edu Jim Spohrer, IBM Labs

22. The “New Starting Job” • Internships • Co-ops • Career-related employment • Other engagement: no longer equal • Preparatory experiences

23. The Evidence

24. Employer Expectations: “Not What They Used To Be!” Yesterday’s Outcomes areToday’s Intern Expectations

25. Internship: A High Stakes Event • Definition of a HSE • Characteristics • Knowing what your interests are • Frequency • How do you gain practice? • Feedback • Reflection on practice • Reflection in practice • Timing: on going continual • Difficulty

26. Difficult “If I am learning, for instance, russian, I am confronted by an authoritative structure which commands my respect. The task is difficult and the goal is distant and perhaps never entirely attainable. My work is a progressive revelation of something which exists independently of me. Attention is rewarded by a knowledge of reality. Love of Russian leads me away from myself towards something alien to me, something which my consciousness cannot take over, swallow up, deny or make unreal. Iris Murdoch Sovereignty of Good

27. Professional Experience Year • Sandwiched between junior and senior year • 12 to 16 month assignment in workplace • Full-time • Paid • Boundary spanning takes 8 to 16 months in workplace to accomplish; traditional internship only learn to transition • Outcome • More mature • 20% starting salary premium • Job offer in-hand

28. Think Anew “Structural Problems need structural solutions.” Mohamed el-erian, CEO Pimco

29. Joseph Schumpeter • On the expansion of higher education beyond labor market demand creates: • “employment in substandard work or at wages below those of the better-paid manual workers.” • “it may create unemployability of a particularly disconcerting type. The man who has gone through college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work.” • “…the ideal of making educational facilities of any type available to all who can be induced to use them. This ideal is so strongly held that any doubts about it are almost considered to nothing short of indecent….” • Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy 1942

30. Education Wars Production Education Knowledge Education Passing exams Meeting course deadlines Disciplined study for sake of mastery of knowledge Willingness to confirm to an organizational discipline Develop the disposition needed to develop competence in a bureaucracy Flexibility Looking over rim at other disciplines Cultivation of a different sort of self Psychological and social aptitudes Liberal arts have to be relevant

31. Training versus Doing • Two paths: liberal and servile • Move from production of goods to production of brands • Escalating demand for educational credentials • Degradation of work is ultimately a cognitive matter; rooted in separation of thinking and doing • Lawrence Katz • The Wheelwright • Creativity comes from disjunctive thinking and is a product of mastery that is cultivated through practice

32. The discussion we are not having together

34. One Paradox a surplus of resources &a shortage of critical skills

35. Two Questions • Do successful organizations recruit more proactively?OR • Are some organizations successful because they recruit more?

36. Three Required Elements Economic Development Short-Term & Longer Range Needs Employment Education Focus on Critical Skills

37. Action Item #1 Together, business, government and education must: Make greater investments in science, technology, business, and design/creative education Must insure that regardless of educational interest all young people possess the skills to contribute in the 21st century

38. Action Item #2 Together, business and education must: Enable and evolve to a culture that embracesand enables life-long learning

39. Action Item #3 Together, everyone must address: • The significant shortage of skills required to create competitive advantage for many organizations; • Unique needs of the new/developing workforce; • Impact of the retirement of the “Baby Boom”;and • Need for greater diversity and inclusion in our education programs and workforce • Educational segregation

40. Action Item #4 Together, we must: align our investment in education, with;We have failed to do this – watch the community colleges We do not mean vocational education (everyone cannot be a business major) current and emergent employment needs, in order to many companies still can not articulate their needs support economic development objectives, and there are none return our economy to an environment of sustainable growth less focus on immediate greed more focus on long term prosperity, integration and sustainability

41. Revisiting the Gap What employers say about college students? Why are “we” so negative? The science class: smart without a map Gap widens faster than education want to adjust Must set higher aspirations and provide a education framework to get there.