-Introductions-
Jeff, great to see you!
Please have a seat.
Bob, how are you?
Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor.
Employers.
Academics.
Government Policy Makers.
This is their unbiased discussion on America's employment crisis.
Welcome to our discussion about the future of the American workforce. Communities
across the United States are facing some monumental challenges relating to the
growing Skills Gap. Our aim is to identify possible solutions. We begin with these two stories.
"Half a million open jobs with no one qualified to fill them..."
"It's called the Skills Gap. How could that be we wonder at a time like this
with so many people out of work?"
"More than half of US employers are having trouble finding people to fill open positions."
"Is our education system teaching students the right skills to max the needs of employers?"
"I think you are on to something because there is a giant Skills Gap."
"The American system of secondary education and adult training is clearly inadequate
in the new global environment."
I was in banking, Senior Vice President, making six figures. I was very comfortable. Then the last
bank I was at was acquired so I went off on my own. Started to organize banks kind of
at the perfect wrong time in a perfect storm and kind of everything fell apart from that.
I started off as an associate consultant at Manhattan Associates, um, before I was
actually laid off from there, I was there for almost a year.
I walked out of the unemployment office in tears and I was just like I can't afford
anything. I feel like a joke. I feel like an absolute liar and absolute failure,
and I felt like that I had gotten it wrong.
I wonder if there's some field or something that like has the intersection of technology and
sociology and business all at the exact same time. Is that a thing that I can actually do?
I was like, "you know what I think I'm gonna go back to school. I'm gonna study this
human computer interaction design thing. I think its going to be really
important in five years." I wanted to be recession proof. I wanted to be future-proof.
I wanted to get out ahead of my current skill set and prepare myself for a future
that was ten years or five years down the line, so that I wouldn't have what happened during
the recession happen again. I got linked up with a startup out here in Santa Monica called
Tradesy. I'm the lead experience designer. I work with a small team of people. Um, I drive a lot
of strategy, design direction and also figure out how it connects to operations as well.
So I'm using all my skill sets. All at once.
I had always in the back of my mind thought about teaching. My mom was a teacher.
My grandmother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, so I kinda thought well
maybe this is my signal to make that transition.
Pretty much I've been on my own for two years trying to make by on substitute
teaching income. Trying to make by any tutoring income I can get on the side.
In substitute teaching you're looking at 85 to 100 dollars a day depending
if you get called into work that day, and usually its last minute. You know you may get a phone
call at 5:30 in the morning. You know for me, best case if I'm working almost every day I can
make twelve thousand dollars.
"Is our education teaching system students the right skills to match the needs of employers?"
"State education leaders are looking for different ways to tackle a growing problem."
I'm insulted if somebody says, "ah, you know John you're just lazy, you're just not trying, you
just don't care." You know, I'm like I care. I care more than anybody.
You just don't want to admit that you're that defeated. You've been brought up
never to be a charity case. Never to have to ask for help. And all of a sudden you're
in that position where you got no where else to go.
Some tough stuff with John. Success story with Michael. What do you make
of their predicaments and what about somebody like John who worked at a
bank, made six figures and now he goes and gets a degree in education and he's
stuck, if he's lucky making $12,000 a year.
John made an error that you see not only with mid-career change like his but also with
people entering the workforce for the first time. That they pursued an interest. I've
always been interested in education, he didn't understand the economic
consequences of that choice.
It's a fine balance between the two - being progressive and seeing what's
lying ahead but also finding your passion within some of those.
Yeah because I wouldn't want anybody to think that you can't have a job that's
interesting and not get paid.
There's two things that I've seen - one, people think that the ultimate
shelter is get a college degree in something else - thats the ultimate shelter.
And the ultimate shelter is go to some place they think is stable and not changing.
That's the problem. So what's in the new world of work? Its flatter hierarchies, right, flatter
more open and flexible structures. You have to be deep in something but you've also gotta be
broad and its that skill set which is transforming the...
That's not intimidating at all!
You have to be better than everyone in the world and be a nice person!
I mean if you've got that flat hierarchy you gotta be competent to self-direct,
to problem solve on your own, to diagnose a problem on your own.
To interact well with your colleagues.
To interact well...
See I think thats the key. We may not know what the jobs are in ten years
but you know what that set of skills is.
But you know how the world of work is changing.
I think Michael was like the poster child for what everybody needs to get a job now
and in the future. Problem solving, critical thinking all integrated, comes together
doesn't matter what I'm gonna do, those things make a difference.
I wanna have the skills for five years out, I wanna be sort of recession proof in the
future and sort of thinking about what is that industry I can go into.
But the other thing he did which I thought was really interesting was he talked about
trying to find something that also connected like sociology and working with people and this
whole sort of human-centered work. No matter what job he goes in to somebody's
gonna want somebody who knows how to work from the person perspective.
And the hardest part we're finding is that students are majoring in two and
three majors and have two and three minors and they're creating these programs
that seem to make them think that that's gonna ensure their opportunity to
get a job when in fact what they need is experience to be able to demonstrate
what they can do. They need a set of skills to negotiate with other people and they
need a network, and colleges aren't doing that, let alone high schools. When are we
finally gonna say that learning actually happens when you do something.
And given that the education system is not providing perhaps the necessary skills right
now, how much is the Chamber, for example, talking about the responsibility the
businesses have to try and fix this?
Instead of trying to fix the education system or fix the training systems, fix
the supply side, how do we think about helping employers be more sophisticated
in those partnerships to really say like these are the competencies, these are
the credentials, these are the requirements that we're looking for so really trying to encourage
and sort of arm and equip employers to play a much more active and important,
sophisticated role in this.
I think those standards can also be set not just by government entities but by the
employers themselves along with the education organizations.
I think they have to be set by the employers and the employers have to invest time and
effort in getting a more coherent and common set of standards.
Just building off these themes thats employers taking a leadership role and
defining and building their own talent pipelines with providers who are very
responsive to those employers and then giving the signals to the students
how to purse those pathways so that people can actually know whats going on
right now in terms of the workplace.
The other part of that is this stigma out there that hey in order for me to be
successful I need a four year degree. What we've been doing is we've been
sponsoring bus tours of high school students to our campuses, bring them in to introduce
them to STEM education.
Science, technology, engineering and math.
Exactly. We talk to these individuals everyday throughout a school year and
we ask them why do you go to college? Well to get a job. Are there jobs out there?
No. They feel like there's no jobs out there. And then we help them understand yes
there are jobs out there, there's lots of opportunities you need to just think
outside the box, so we'd say like "who in here likes to play video games?"
And everybody raises their hand, "I like playing video games." Okay well what
are you doing while you're playing video games? "Well I'm uh problem
solving, I'm working with computers. I'm having fun."
And probably working with somebody else who's on the other end of the
computer playing the game with me.
Exactly! Exactly! And I say well automotive, diesel, motorcycle, marine technicians,
they use the scientific method every single day. Kids are coming out after
just under a year and can start out in a job paying $40,000 a year at 19, 20
years old. We have to overcome this stigma that there is dignity to work.
If I can pick up on that and just on the deep expertise area is that we're in a
race in a sense, so if you're doing routine anything - routine accounting, routine
automotive, anything - they gotta have the alarm bell go off and say "danger,
danger, danger"
Isn't there a danger tho to following your passions because student loans that
kids will rack up or in the case of John, he was following his passion by going
into education and getting a graduate degree?
I think it's the passion...sorry I just totally interrupted you!
I think thats part of the rules here!
Passion coupled with information, like I mean we just don't.
It's not either/or it's a both/and.
You know one of the things that happened to my husband who a year ago
was laid off. Everybody wanted him to be a coder, um and get a PhD in computer
science and he actually went to the unemployment office. The people at that
office actually sat him down and did a network map and they went back through his
career, and they started to do these rings of like who do you know and who do you
talk to and how do you actually create a plan. Somebody needs to sit down with Jon and say
ok lets revisit and restructure.
I don't care what field you're in, specialized high-end, deep expertise in a certain area will win.
Another way to describe what you're saying Bob is demonstrated expertise that allows a
capacity to continue to learn and grow as the job changes.
What actually matters for that next level of job is the computational thinking, the
algorithmic thinking that goes...it's not the coding. A computer can take your blood
frankly, but the nurse has to be able to say "hey wait a second, what did you eat last" and
what they you know have to actually understand and talk to you.
Yeah there's an underlying theme to all of this, there is opportunities out there and
its about networking and understanding what those opportunities are. I think there
is a bright future to this economy. Go find out what you want to do, where you want
to work. Ask them. Where are they hiring from? What school are they hiring from? Then go to that school.
Its like even though the playbook in the 1970s no longer works anymore there is a new playbook,
and people who take advantage of that new playbook will be able to adjust fine.
Well then that's what, I mean I have to say I'm sitting here, I have a 15-year-old son
who is starting to talk about college and I feel like I want to take this entire conversation
back and say "okay, here's what we are going to do - rethink your strategy!"
You have three new uncles and a new aunt and they're coming for dinner.
That's right haha! Thats right. And all of them are coming to set you up for your future. Thats what I learned.
Well I have to say one of the things that I've learned is in doing this is that there is awareness
in the business community, at educational systems, among manufacturers and academia
that there is a problem thats coming and its coming very quickly. And it almost underscores
that there is no sort of central solution to the idea of the federal government being able to sweep in
and solve it, is you know, forget about that. It's local communities, regional economies
working together and collaborating, and there are a lot of people out there that are trying.
Trying very hard, yep.
And it ain't that the message is don't wait for somebody else to do it, do it yourselves.
You have all the resources, you have in your region to make it happen but you gotta take
the effort yourself to get it done.
Jeff and Bob and Cheryl and Joe and Lisa. Terrific, thank you!
Thank you David!