I would speak about Global village;
we are living in new reality for the last 10-15 years.
As soon as I have deal with recruitment market for this long period,
I know the evolution of how people search for job,
companies search for employees
and how it deals with all these virtual things we are speaking about today.
Lately Gallup Company had taken a global research.
They wanted to find out what was the main value of people around the world.
But unexpectedly it found out that for the majority of people from Patagonia to Norway
the most important thing is “job”.
This fact must be taken for granted by the leaders at all levels.
I have seen many people: employed, unemployed,
losers and men of fortune, happy with their work and doing nothing at work
and I am absolutely sure that “a well-paid” job and “a good job” are not synonymous.
Good work must have meaning.
One famous physicist Richard Feynman wrote in memoirs called “Manhattan Project”
about the first atomic bomb making.
And there were a lot of calculations to be done within the work.
There were no computers, just a lot of girls in a big room
with arithmometers — mechanical calculators.
This is arithmometer.
And a very big task was broken into smaller pieces and all the pieces were put on cards
and the girls made calculations, put the results and passed a card to a neighbor,
and it was a big circle of operations.
And if one girl made a mistake the circle started again.
And the project was kept in secret
and common employees didn’t know what they were working on.
And Feynman convinced army authorities to inform the girls about the purpose of the job.
And when they knew that they had been creating a war stopping weapon,
they started to work much faster and much less mistakes were made since then.
So, in the condition of their work only one thing changed –
the meaning appeared.
And we can apply this example to any position.
For the last 10 years recruitment market changed a lot.
In non-digital epoch the companies searched for people
publishing advertisements in newspapers.
It was good if one newspaper ad took 10-15 responds.
In 90-s Internet appeared and it almost killed thick newspapers with vacancies.
At job web they could get more than 30 responds
and employers found it good to have more options.
In 2010 one vacancy ad published either in Russia or America
gets in average 200 responds.
But there is a problem of so called “circulars people”
overbalancing and troublemaking the market.
They don’t know what they need.
You can feel yourself employer when you clean your mailbox every morning removing circulars.
I can define three major groups of employees whatever the occupation:
The first category I call “smart and digital”,
they get maximum profit from digital revolution
and can create, control and manage informational streams —
they are the main resource of our post-industrial epoch.
The second group is the largest. I call it ”analog and unplugged”.
The main informational channel for them is TV, they can use only cell from all digital stuff, but:
In 95% people who deal with human recourses management are concentrated on this group:
they work on how to attract, to keep, to motivate, to teach them,
because there is huge lack of different specialists
(nurses in America, workers of different types in Russia)
and companies rack their brains to find them.
They have to hire immigrants and this is not always good.
And there is a third group to my opinion:
in Russia we call them “office plankton” (pin-striped masses).
I don’t like this term, because all bread is not taken in one oven.
They are more likely “digital followers”,
they can use internet, but don’t have courage to build their lives themselves.
They make this big problem of circulars and spam.
Lately we took a research about occupations of your dream and here are the results:
Interesting (psychotherapist, writer) jobs — the first group.
The second group — dealing with currency, they indicate the wish of getting more money.
When people want to be public sector workers (third group)
it means they wish stability.
Of course this work is far from stability… but there is such a myth.
If you look at this diagram, the most desirable occupations are “interesting”.
It means that work they have is not interesting and they want something more creative.
What to do with all this?
The answer is very simple:
if you find your job meaningless you must change it immediately.
But you can reply: it brings me money to keep family living.
And I would tell you: the situation of Sonya Marmeladova —
the heroine of Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment”
who went to the streets to earn for starving family is NOT your situation.
And when you start thinking like this, ask yourself:
am I in the situation of Sonya to sacrifice myself for my family?
I am sure that you are not.
And if it is so — you have great sense in your life
and the only problem is to sell yourself more expensively.
But in 99% you have space to make maneuvers
and you have to try, try and try and find possibilities to sell you skills
and find people who need what you can do.
Generally all the problems of qualified specialists searching for a job have
are of communicational origin;
they cannot bring their competence to the potential employers.
When have you last time written in your blog about your job:
news, events happening, what do you feel about the future of your profession?
I give 99% that you don’t do it.
But for the employer this information is the most important, I know it,
it is more important than dead official data or letters of recommendation.
And it is good that people don’t do it now and you can easily stand out.
Good meaningful work mustn’t be something high and beautiful.
Even simple work may have sparkles.
Find the job that will make you happy, there is place for everyone in our global village.