Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Is America Losing Its Competitive Edge?

A new survey released by my Business Roundtable committee, Project Springboard, reveals that the United States is at risk of losing its competitive edge and American workers’ economic potential by not addressing business’ growing demand for a better educated and better trained workforce. American workers’ unmet need for further education and training is exacerbating today’s unemployment problem and portending long-term trouble for workers and businesses – even after the economy recovers.

The survey shows a glaring and growing need for workers with higher levels of skills and credentials, sharply contrasted with employers’ modest efforts to provide training and workers’ reluctance to pursue education and training because of serious obstacles holding them back. Key findings include:

• Employers expect to see an increased need for a better skilled workforce, with 65 percent of employers surveyed saying they will require an associate’s degree or higher for most positions.
• Looking ahead four years, employers say their greatest need will be workers with more
  technical skills, higher degrees or certifications, and improved skills or better qualifications.
• Half of employers say they currently have such a serious gap between their needs and employees’ skills that it affects their productivity.
• Eight in ten workers – regardless of income or education level – show keen interest in pursuing further training and education.
• The majority of workers say they would be very likely to pursue training or education if the obstacles they face could be overcome by such initiatives as programs with flexible classroom hours or enrollment periods, tuition reimbursement, online learning or programs designed and managed by local business leaders.

Participating on this committee was a terrific experience and I look forward to sharing some of our deliverables to the Obama administration with you next year!

When a Goal Flops

Have you ever pursued a goal only to eventually realize that it’s just not working out?  This has happened to me, and I can tell you there’s nothing more frustrating.  After all, we usually don’t achieve goals because A) we purposely set them aside to focus on something more important or B) we get too busy (or lazy) and don’t give them the time and attention they deserve.   

But what about the times when we do everything we should do to make something happen, and we’re persistent about it, but despite herculean efforts we just don’t see results?   For example, from the time my friend was a child, she wanted to be an actress.  After she graduated from college, she attended workshops, spent money on headshots, went on hundreds of auditions, and networked like mad.   But several years later, my friend still had no results to speak of save one walk-on part on a network sitcom. 

My friend realized that the cosmos was trying to tell her that she was meant to do something else, but she had been tuning it out.  She started listening, and recalled how she’d helped a friend in marketing come up with one of the most successful brand names in that company’s history.  Now she’s an extremely successful independent naming consultant, pulling down a six figure salary and loving every minute of it.   

Sometimes, we may think we’re destined for something, only to find out that there’s an entirely different plan in place for us.  When you keep hitting a brick wall despite trying your damndest to achieve a certain outcome, perhaps that means you should look at other possibilities.  As a unique human being, you have your own brand of genius to offer the world – even if it’s not exactly what you thought at first.

Your Career is a Corporation

I recently had the chance to talk with Martin Yate, one of my most-admired authors in the career advice space.  Martin and I chatted about how most of us will work for nearly half a century, changing jobs roughly every 3-4 years.  We agreed that now is the time for all professionals to take charge of their own careers.  Here was Martin’s advice:

“Certain transferable skills like communication, time management and organization, teamwork, creativity and leadership are transferable and sought by all employers in all professions and ease the transition from one job to another.  Now while these skills are critical to success, there is another skill, perhaps the most important of all that enables you to better navigate the rocky road between jobs and as you climb the promotional ladder. Smart professionals think of themselves as Me Inc., a financial entity much like a corporation, which must maintain a steady cash flow over half a century.

With Me Inc. awareness, you immediately have a serious commitment to profitability and are constantly developing Me Inc.’s products and services against the needs of your customer base, the employers who hire people like you. Me Inc’.s success demands ongoing initiatives for research and product development (skill building based on market trends), Marketing and PR (establishing personal credibility, positioning, visibility and branding), Strategic Planning (development of defensive and offensive career management strategies), and a state-of-the-art sales program (resume, job search and interviewing tactics).

Tomorrow’s successful professionals will be those who develop the critical job search and career management skills that allow them to navigate the twists and turns of a long and rarely secure work life.”

Martin always challenges me to think about career development issues in new and innovative ways.  Hope he did the same for you.

The Next Gen of Job Boards

UnitedWeWork.org, a new job site, says that it’s seeking to connect job seekers with employers in a more personalized and humane way that’s free for everyone.  The model has been compared to that of the popular dating site eHarmony; instead of listing available jobs and applying to each one, job seekers create one profile which includes their skills, experience, education and desires and the job-matching network connects them with recruiters who are filling appropriate positions.   

Similar to the idea of eHarmony’s matching technology, United We Work utilizes QuietAgent's smart matching technology, which isn’t just based on job titles or keywords.  Intuitive yet complex, the site is perfect for anyone open to a career transition and/or relocation because the job seekers are matched with positions based on compatibility of skills and strengths – not just on past experience in that exact position.

UnitedWeWork sends members real-time status updates for each job seeker; allowing them to feel empowered by understanding what the process is; if the job has been filled, or if the employer needs more time to decide. 

 While anonymity is still a critical concern for some job seekers, every user is entirely anonymous until they choose to reveal their identity.  Additionally, each user’s profile can be set up to exclude any employers by domain names.

If you’re job hunting, it’s definitely worth checking out!

Be Who You Want to Be

This week on METRO:

In high school, you probably had a friend whom all the parents loved. You remember the type: good student, athletic team star, community volunteer, kind to children and animals, etc, etc. This kid never got in trouble and always did everything that was expected of her. And every time your mom or dad praised her, you would feel a little twinge of envy. A part of you wished you were that kid.

The part of us that wants to be loved — by other people’s parents and our own — doesn’t go away just because we get older. Countless adults stay in jobs and relationships they dislike because they believe it’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s more important to them to be perceived positively in the minds of others than to go after what will truly make them happy. 

I see these people every day. There’s the New York lawyer who works 100 hours a week at a big-shot firm because his wife wants a big house in Westchester — but who would really rather rent an apartment in Brooklyn so he can be a state prosecutor. Then there’s the woman who opened a boutique with her best friend and has since realized that she’s not cut out to be an entrepreneur, but now feels obligated to make the store her permanent career.

Are you living the life that your friends, family members or colleagues think you should have?  If you’re still trying to be the kid whom all the parents loved, stop for a minute and think about how you’d feel if you died tomorrow and were asked if you did everything you wanted to do with your life during the short time you were on Earth. Life is tough enough when it hits us with negative events and circumstances that we can’t anticipate. Your career, and the skills and talents you contribute to society, are aspects of your life that you can control, and you have a responsibility to yourself to use them to be the person you really want to be.

Social Security for Gen X and Gen Y

My friends and I have been lamenting the demise of Social Security for years. "It's not fair that we have to pay so much when the baby boomers are going to drain it dry," we say.  "There won't be a penny left for us."

According to CNN Money, this isn't exactly true.  Apparently, we CAN count on Social Security to be around in some capacity.  Says CNN:

"Despite what you may hear about the system going broke, the funds from workers' payroll taxes will cover all retirees' payments until 2016 even if no changes are made to the current program. After that the Social Security Administration can cover full benefits until 2037 by cashing in its Treasury bonds from the Social Security trust fund. And when the bonds run out, income from payroll taxes would be enough to cover about 75% of payments for decades.

That said, the government is looking at ways to shore up the system. President Obama has talked about imposing Social Security payroll taxes on income over $200,000 (currently, earnings over $106,800 are exempt). Other possible fixes: upping payroll taxes, raising the retirement age, and scaling back payments in some way.

The good news for anyone in or near retirement: "People 55 and over are likely to see no change or just a marginal change in benefits," says actuary Bruce Schobel, who worked on the commission headed by Alan Greenspan nearly 30 years ago that fixed the system (at least until now). But younger workers can rest assured that drastic cuts are unlikely."

Good news!

30/20 Vision Returns!

After a two month hiatus, my friends and co-hosts Lindsey Pollak and Christine Hassler and I are thrilled to bring you a new episode of 30/20 Vision, airing on Blog Talk Radio on Monday, October 12th at 5PM ET.  We'll be talking about how to test the entrepreneurial waters.  Hope to see you there, and if you can't make it, be sure to check out the archive!

Being Childlike May Save Your Life

I love this post from the brilliant Leo Babauta, who writes the Zen Habits blog.  Leo describes how to be happier and more creative by returning your mindset to a simpler time, when you weren't constrained by how things should be.  He says: "As children, we are naturally imaginative, curious, able to play without a worry in our minds. Some qualities of young children that happen naturally:

• they live in the present
• they have no concerns about money, productivity, or being cool
• there are no limits to their imagination, except what they’ve been exposed to
• they play and lose themselves in play
• they create with abandon
• they are endlessly curious, and ask questions … without end
• they love showing off to their parents

We lose this childlike nature, the nature we’re born with, because of society — it has certain institutions and systems in place that beat childishness out of us, so we can be more productive citizens and consumers. I think it’s unfortunate.  We shouldn’t abandon all responsibilities, but we can learn a lot from children and be more like them in some ways.Start by deciding to abandon caution and to give this a try. Start by identifying the qualities of children you’d like to emulate: curiosity, play, living in the moment, abandoning worries, imagination, creativity, pure joy.

Observe children: Watch how they play, how they live, how they create, how they ask questions. Sure, sometimes they do dumb things like throw tantrums, but even in that you can see their pure abandonment of everything but what is happening to them right now. Watch and learn.

Play with children: If you have some of your own, great. If not, play with children of friends and family. Lose yourself in the play. Be a dinosaur, or a gorilla, or a villain. Have a joyous time. Make them squeal in delight, and feel free to do the same yourself.

Create like a child: Don’t be constrained with what people expect, what you’re used to. Be wild and have fun. Imagine that things can be different, that there are no limitations, and see what happens. Most of your childlike drawings will be tossed in the trash, but some might be put up on the fridge. 

Be curious like a child: Look at things with a child’s eye, and ask questions you’ve never asked before, explore with a beginner’s mind. Don’t be afraid to ask why, and what if, and why not?

Live in the moment: Forget about all you have to do. Forget about what happened yesterday, or that conversation you had. Forget about that meeting that’s coming up, or those deadlines. Just do, and be."

ThinkTweet is the New Cliff’s Notes

When I was in junior high, my friends and I were always trying to get a hold of those precious little black and yellow volumes called Cliff’s Notes.  We weren’t trying to get out of reading the assigned books.  It was just that we often didn’t readily understand them, and so we were forced to read them over twenty times.

You, as a busy professional, face a similar problem.  Today’s business books are chock full of fabulous insights, but who has the time to read and digest 250 pages a week?  That’s why Mitchell Levy and Rajesh Setty came up with the concept for ThinkTweet, a series that offers bite-sized lessons on a variety of subjects.  The books are based on the Twitter model of 140 characters per complete thought, so all can be read within the space of a short morning commute.  

I’m thrilled to announce that one of the first books in the series is my very own MillennialTweet: 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Managing the Millennials.  If you’re in the position of needing to recruit, supervise, and retain young employees, this slim volume provides a career’s worth of insights in one hour and will also you  to be more productive and competitive instantly. 

MillennialTweet makes a conference giveaway or holiday gift, so let us know if you’re interested in getting a terrific deal on a bulk purchase.  We'd be happy to help!

Hot Industries for Job Seekers

A lot of people have been asking me about the best types of jobs to pursue these days. I've read some varying opinions on this, but here are a few of my favorites:

Healthcare: There is already a major labor shortage in fields such as nursing, and this is only bound to increase as the boomers continue to age and need more services, more often. Others will continue to get sick and be treated whether they can afford care or not.

Education: Children in the United States are still guaranteed schooling until the 12th grade, and many states are perennially experiencing teacher shortages. Plus, laid off or unsatisfied adults are returning to school in record numbers.

Accounting: Don't lump this one in with "finance." It has been hot since federal regulations forced companies to get serious about their books a few years ago, and now, more people than ever are looking for accountants' help to pinch every penny they can.

Agriculture and Utilities: The economy may be sickly, but the first things people pay for include food to eat and gas to heat their homes. These jobs are not affected by the loss of discretionary income and will remain intact.

Local Service Sector: Every town needs at least one plumber, electrician, and hairstylist. In a recession, though, just make sure you live somewhere where the demand outweighs the supply.