Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Hiring Managers: Are You Supporting Vets?

In a recent Prudential Financial and IAVA survey published on Military.com¹, two-thirds of veterans said they faced a difficult transition to civilian life, partly because they speak a different language than the business leaders hiring them.

Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said that we aren’t doing a good enough job of training people leaving the military to look for work. “It’s less a matter of veterans overestimating their skills than it is miscalculating how their experience translates to nonmilitary jobs and how well business leaders comprehend what veterans can offer,” he commented.

Because of these disconnects, a veteran who managed a few dozen people in the military might only be considered for an entry-level, individual contributor role in a private-sector organization, and significant achievements might be overlooked because they occurred in a military rather than a business setting.

Preparing New Vets for Transition

A few years ago, as a workplace and career author and consultant, I worked with the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Defense to overhaul the military’s Transition Assistance Program (TAP)². This mandatory five- to seven-day program educates departing troops on job skills, vet benefits, and personal finances. The course explains the expectations, behavioral styles, cultural norms, and “lingo” associated with civilian employment and helps veterans adjust to a less rigid routine with increased individual competition.

Perhaps most importantly, it guides veterans in effectively translating skills acquired in the military – which often include strategic thinking, scenario planning, critical thinking, problem-solving, coaching, self-discipline, time management, attention to detail, teamwork, interpersonal communication, and adaptability – to civilian jobs in which these exact attributes are needed.

For the rest of this post, please visit the DeVryWORKS website.

Why Corporate Training Must Be Part of Your Mix

As a workforce author, researcher, and consultant, I observed many organizations that were concerned about a labor shortage brought about by baby boomer retirement. This shortage, and the skills gaps that went along with it, was partially delayed in part by the financial crisis and subsequent recession, because many baby boomers lost savings and were working past traditional retirement age¹.

Many baby boomers, born 1946-64, are now in their 70s, and the time has come for them to exit the workforce. According to a recent report by the Federal Reserve², industrialized nations like the U.S. are facing a shortage of working-aged professionals, and employers need enough qualified employees to survive.

In my experience working with dozens of companies over the last decade, I’ve seen that corporate training and development can be an effective solution to this problem. As more senior roles are vacated, corporate training, particularly for succession planning, may be a good vehicle for mid-level professionals to master skills like team leadership, business acumen, strategic planning, conflict resolution, and decision-making.

All Employees, All Levels

One of the topics I write about most is increasing automation and machine participation³, and given this trend, I believe that even employees who will not become senior leaders must continuously upskill or reskill to maintain their value within the organization. The days of having one degree and one corresponding skillset may be numbered, because if that skillset is automated, what then? Corporate training provides one way to diversify what each individual employee can contribute and the variety of roles he or she can hold.

There are other benefits besides skill acquisition. I’ve written that despite technological advances, productivity in most organizations is lagging⁴. Corporate training is one method for adjusting your processes, targeting efficiency so employees can better perform tasks and focus their energies more specifically on company goals.  I have personally seen that many organizations with solid corporate training initiatives keep their people longer because the employees appreciate the investment in their development. And, I’ve observed that organizations that do right by their people are perceived as having strong brands that customers want to support.

For the rest of this piece, please visit the DeVryWORKS website.

My Takeaways from the ATD Tech Skills Gap Panel

The technology skills gap is a well-known issue in American employment circles. Yet, research tends to focus on only one aspect of the problem – the shortage of hard tech skills like programming and information security management. But there is another, perhaps even more critical dimension to the technology skills gap¹: the lack of applied tech skills in the workplace.

As we’ve talked about previously, when an individual has applied tech skills,² they can integrate people, processes, data, and devices to effectively inform business strategy and plan for and react to unanticipated shifts in direction.

At the annual Association for Training and Development (ATD) conference³ in San Diego, I moderated an applied technology skills gap panel with John Aquilino, Manager, Skills Gap Training and Services, DeVryWORKS; Jessica DiCicco, VP, Learning & Development, Randstad; Jackie Linton, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, City of Philadelphia; Kristen Switzer, Sr. People Development Manager, Taylor Morrison; and Andre Walker, VP of Training & Development, Securitas Security Services.

Applied Technology Skills: Why Now?

I began by asking the panel why applied technology skills have become so critical in business. “Everyone in our company, whether they are in construction, purchasing, accounting, or customer service, touches a technology system. They need to understand these systems to do their jobs well,” said Switzer. “We are also offering training on a variety of technology platforms that require employees to come up to speed.”

Next, I asked John to comment on how his cross-industry employer partners are equipping their workforces with applied technology skills. “Access to training and development is not the issue,” he responded. “It’s much more about how those skills are curated and aligned to arrive at actionable outcomes.”

Panelists shared that their organizations are searching for and using solutions that help their employees develop “soft skills” related to technology adoption such as critical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving. “Applying knowledge of Big Data, digital infrastructure, and integrated processes is essential to effective decision-making,” said Aquilino. “Companies are infusing learning experiences with technology, so employees can leverage the familiarity of working with machines in their daily roles.”

For more panel insights, head over to the full piece at the DeVryWORKS website.

Tapping Into Global Business Innovation

Before the internet, most innovation took place in small communities, with isolated breakthroughs eventually spreading throughout the world. Today, however, global business innovation is the norm.

Business owners pursuing growth may want to make a habit of looking around them—and not just at local competitors. How other companies around the world do business can affect your organization.

I spoke to two business owners to understand how they tap into global business innovation to power their companies.

Stepping Out of Your Communal Bubble

Fabrizio Moreira is the owner of The Moreira Organization, a nonprofit that develops world leaders. He has learned that everything a business owner touches involves a global team of talent—from manufacturing to storing data in the cloud.

“This global talent pool means you're competing with a lot of innovators who you ignore at your peril," Moreira says. “Many emerging markets are leapfrogging established markets because of need-based innovation and fewer existing infrastructure constraints," Bullen says. “Paying attention to what these markets are doing can help you identify opportunities in your own market as well as threats that may be down the line."

He seeks out intelligence on global business innovation by observing similar organizations operating in other countries, and finding ways to plug in and work with them.

Erik Bullen is CEO of MageMail and is actively involved in the start-up and innovation community, mentoring and advising for programs such as Techstars, MassChallenge and LaunchX. His ideation is regularly informed by other cultures, markets and industries.

“Many emerging markets are leapfrogging established markets because of need-based innovation and fewer existing infrastructure constraints," Bullen says. “Paying attention to what these markets are doing can help you identify opportunities in your own market as well as threats that may be down the line."

For more where this came from, check out the AMEX OPENForum.

You Are More Than Your Credentials

Credentials ruled in the traditional job market. Candidates were coached to dial up the prestige on their resumes, on social media, and on job interviews. Saying you went to Harvard was better than saying you went to the University of Illinois. Describing a stint at Deloitte at age 22 was better than talking up the rare and desirable skills you picked up in a second-act career.

That’s finally staring to change, but not every job seeker has quite gotten the memo. Many still tout their credentials as stand-ins for the job skills recruiters and hiring managers are really looking for. Here’s how (and why) to switch up your approach.

THE TROUBLE WITH PEDIGREES

Employers in all industries are finally wising up to the limits  of fancy credentials as predictors of on-the-job success. Too often, high test scores and degrees from elite universities signal wealthy parents and other forms of privilege at least as much as they signal competence and expertise. Relying on signs of prestige doesn’t provide either the diverse perspectives or the grit that employers need their workforces to possess in order to thrive in the modern business world.

For the 2018 Job Preparedness Indicator, my nonprofit organization, the Career Advisory Board, asked 500 U.S.-based hiring managers to share their thoughts on nontraditional job candidates. We defined nontraditional college students and graduates as meeting any of the following criteria:

• Started attending college more than one year after graduating high school
• Attended/attending college as a part-time student
• Had/have children and/or other dependents other than their spouse while attending college
• Worked/work at a full-time job while attending college
• Did not receive a standard high school diploma and instead earned a GED or high school certificate of completion

Since the Career Advisory Board is supported by DeVry University, a for-profit institution that attracts many students from nontraditional backgrounds, DeVry certainly has a stake in the trends my team set out to analyze. Still, half of our respondents said their organizations are hiring more nontraditional students and graduates than they used to: 50% said they “recognize valid, alternative education paths besides the typical college journey”; 34% “desire more diversity in our workforce”; and 32% feel “nontraditional students and graduates have a stronger work ethic.”

And refreshingly, fully 70% of hiring professionals agreed with the following statement: “If a candidate has the right skills for an open position, it doesn’t matter what type or format of education was used to get them.”

These attitudes are reverberating throughout the talent space. A recent LinkedIn survey of some 9,000 recruiters and hiring managers likewise picked up on intensifying efforts to shake up the traditional recruitment process to find more diverse, qualified candidates without elite credentials. And artificial intelligence is playing an ever-wider role in efforts like those. At the same time, tech leaders like Airbnb and Pinterest are expanding apprenticeship programs to hire smart, non-traditional engineers first, then train them on the job. One tech company Fast Company spoke to last year has even started intentionally hiring people with no relevant experience, as long as they possess the right skills and qualities instead.

GETTING BACK TO THE ACTION, NOT THE SETTING

But these evolving attitudes won’t matter if you don’t change your approach as a job seeker in order to capitalize on them. Desperately talking up every impressive-sounding credential on your resume is going to pay diminishing returns in the years ahead. So whether or not you’re a nontraditional student or grad, it’s time to start pushing your skills to the forefront. These are a few ways to do that:

Focus on on-the-job wins. Let’s say you’re applying to a job as a marketing data analyst. In the past, perhaps you led with the fact that you earned high honors studying computer science at a top university. Today you may have better luck mentioning how you mastered analytics skills by selecting and implementing new software at a previous employer, then used the mined data to tell a story about the best path forward.

Speak directly to the job description. You have to know the target position inside and out in order to show how experience directly relates to the job in question. Be prepared to tell your interviewers exactly how you have solved similar challenges–with excellent results. Then, instead of trying to prove why you’re like every “prestigious” cookie-cutter graduate who walks through the door, explain how the organization will benefit by having an employee with your special combination of determination, resilience, and resourcefulness.

Get specific. Rather than trusting that a kid who got a few lucky breaks can hack it in an often chaotic business climate, employers told our researchers that they’re after candidates who “have developed niche skill sets or unique experiences that differentiate them from the market,” “have internal drive and good time management,” “have demonstrated a track record of stable work history, including promotions and cross-functional experiences,” and who are “willing to learn the business and work in whatever capacity the company needs them.”

Arguably, these are all things that hiring managers have sought out since time immemorial–they just used fancy pedigrees as a shorthand for these attributes. As that begins to change, more opportunity is opening up to more job seekers, no matter where they went to school or last worked. All that’s left to do is seize it.

This post was originally published in Fast Company.

Introducing Tours of Duty for the Business World

According to Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and author of the book The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age, a tour of duty is an employee situation that involves working full-time in consecutive roles within an organization, working full-time in consecutive organizations for the purpose of upskilling, or taking breaks or dialing down from a full-time role in an organization.

Within a single organization, a tour of duty typically lasts for a finite period of two to five years. Both manager and employee openly acknowledge that at the end of the tour, the employee may well leave the organization. “The new compact acknowledges the probable impermanence of the relationship yet seeks to build trust and investment anyway. Instead of entering into strict bonds of loyalty, both sides seek the mutual benefits of alliance,” commented Hoffman in Harvard Business Review. “As allies, employer and employee try to add value to each other. The employer says, ‘If you make us more valuable, we’ll make you more valuable.’ The employee says, ‘If you help me grow and flourish, I’ll help the company grow and flourish.’”

The best tours of duty involve the mastery of new skills, or entrepreneurial opportunities like building and launching a new product, reengineering an existing business process, or introducing an organizational innovation. Regardless, the notion of a compact is critical. The tour of duty agreement must be made between individual manager and employee and therefore cannot be legislated by HR.

For more on tours of duty, check out the full post at the SilkRoad blog.

Investigating the Tech Skills Gap at SXSWedu

Greetings from SXSWedu! This evening, I will have the privilege of moderating a panel titled Tech Skills Gap: What Can Employers and Educators Do? I'm representing DeVry University's Career Advisory Board and will be joined by Robert Paul, president of DeVry University, Randi Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, and Sara Ley, digital learning and technology leader at GE.

Without giving too much away, we'll be discussing the Career Advisory Board's recent research, for which we asked 500 hiring managers, human resource professionals, and c-suite executives to reflect on the importance of both applied tech skills and hard tech skills, the challenges they face in recruiting and retaining tech-savvy talent, and the degree to which educational institutions have been successful in preparing students with the right level of technical competency.

Our employer respondents indicated significant pressure to keep up with the pace of technology and its ability to inform and impact business strategy. Technology is increasingly important to companies in all areas of business, with four in five respondents (79 percent) agreeing that for technology to be effective, it must integrate people, processes, data and devices. Interestingly, 87 percent of baby boomer respondents supported this overarching view of technology, more than their younger counterparts in Gen X (76 percent) and the millennial generation (76 percent).

Seventy-seven percent of all respondents said a company’s competitive advantage lies in using technology to solve problems, and they desire a workforce that is well-schooled in how to do this. Seventy-five percent agreed that employees should understand how to use technology to inform and drive business decisions, while 84 percent claimed that employees who know how to use the right tech tools in their fields are more effective.

Furthermore, over 80 percent reported that companies that integrate data and processes are more successful, and 74 percent said that employees need to master the skill of integrating data and information from various sources in the service of better business decisions. According to the survey, the ability and willingness of employees to fully leverage data varies by age. While 72 percent of respondents agreed that millennials are keeping pace with technology, only half said that baby boomers are.

For more about our Tech Skills gap research, visit CareerAdvisoryBoard.org. If you are attending SXSWedu, we'd love to see you at the JW Marriott (Salon A) at 5PM this evening. If not, stay tuned for updates via @alevit!

New Career Advisory Board Research Reveals Employers Are Lukewarm About Talent Development

This week, my organization the Career Advisory Board announced the results of our sixth annual Job Preparedness Indicatory survey, which identified gaps between the skills and traits candidates have and the skills and traits employers seek to fill open positions.

Gaps were measured by assessing skills that are most important but least common among entry-level, mid-level, and senior-level job candidates. This year’s research of nearly 500 US-based, senior-level hiring managers also explored how organizations are developing the necessary skills and competencies in their workforces, as well as their level of commitment to strategic talent development and management.

Senior hiring managers are lukewarm in terms of how effective their organizations are at talent management and competency development. In this survey, few were willing to boast that they were employing sophisticated recruitment, development, and retention practices. Only 13 percent of respondents, for example, said that their companies’ talent development initiatives are very well-aligned with overall business strategy, and only 11 percent said their initiatives help “a great deal” in providing employees with the skills they need to be successful.

In order to ensure that employees are adequately trained to do their jobs, 80 percent of respondents rely on on-the-job training, 34 percent on formal mentorship, 31 percent on one-off online learning programs, and 30 percent on one-off in person learning programs.

Furthermore, only 12 percent of respondents indicated that their organizations align talent development initiatives to retention strategies “a great deal,” and only 11 percent said their companies very effectively align employee competency development to advancement at all levels. Seventeen percent of respondents said their organizations place a great deal of value on leadership development training, and only 13 percent place a great deal of value on succession planning.

Perhaps most significant, however, our respondents shared that the feel that their organizations are weak when it comes to tracking the return on investment (ROI) of talent development initiatives. Only eight percent said they do this “a great deal,” while 21 percent said they do it “a fair amount,” 31 percent said they do it “somewhat,” and 40 percent said they don’t believe that they do it at all!

For more Job Preparedness Indicator results, check out the Career Advisory Board press release and executive summary.

Current Trends in Learning: Focusing on Performance

At last summer's SilkRoad Connections conference, David Wentworth, principal learning analyst at Brandon Hall, shared that most organizational learning is still done in the classroom (66 percent). But classroom learning has its limitations.

For one thing, 61 percent of companies believe that employees need to interact with learning on a daily or weekly basis in order to be effective at their jobs. Furthermore, according to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, people forget 90 percent of what they’ve learned after a mere month.

What High Performing Companies Do

Brandon Hall’s research illustrates that one of the most effective learning methods is coaching and mentoring, and on the job exercises are almost as effective. Over 90 percent of high performing organizations think tailoring learning experiences and offering experiential learning in multiple modalities are important or critical to the business. These companies report following about their learning and development offerings:

• Learners can participate in coaching/mentoring
• Learners have access to subject matter experts
• Learners can comment on and rate content
• Learners can share content with one another
• Learners can generate and contribute their own content
• Learners can discuss content and development paths in the learning environment
• Learners can meet virtually to discuss topics without the need for formal scheduling
• Learners can use simulations to learn a skill in a no-consequence environment
• Learners can take on stretch assignments and special projects

In high performing organizations, learning is embedded in the job and incorporates a blended approach. It is contextual (according to my role and development path), digestible, informal, social, and often mobile.

For the rest of David's insights, check out the SilkRoad blog.

Where Do You Learn Business Acumen?

You’ve probably heard that most businesses fail, but the reasons why are not always clear. Lack of managerial expertise may be one factor. After all, most inexperienced people who get jobs in large corporations aren’t put in charge right away. Rather, they may be given small responsibilities until they have sufficient business acumen to be trusted with larger ones. On the other hand, small-business owners are often overconfident that they’ll be great at everything at launch.

I recently asked three successful small-business owners how they acquired the right mix of entrepreneurial skills to guide their companies effectively: Michael Bremmer, CEO ofTelecomquotes.com in California; Clarence Bethea, CEO of Upsie.com in Minnesota; and Holly Epstein Ojalvo, founder of Kicker in New York.

What are the most essential skills a new business owner should have?

 

Clarence Bethea: [Small businesses] are always changing. Having the ability to listen to your users/customers and adapt to their needs is important from the start.

Michael Bremmer: The ability to listen to a customer and ask intelligent questions based on their concerns is a critical skill. And even more importantly, you need to have the willingness to walk away from opportunities that don't make sense morally or financially.

Holly Epstein Ojalvo: I’d say that you need a combination of flexibility and resilience. That's because you need to stay strong and focused, yet be responsive and adapt to changing circumstances and challenges. You also have to be resourceful. Few new business owners have ample resources, so you have to make a little go a long way. You definitely need to be a strategic thinker and mostly fearless, with a healthy appreciation of potential threats.

How did you acquire these skills?

Bremmer: I dedicate myself to improving my skills constantly, which means I've probably read a thousand books and studied 50 to 100 of them like college courses. 

Epstein Ojalvo: One key thing is to see yourself not just as an expert, but as a learner. I work really hard at learning things I don't know. I also stay focused on my mission and keep reminding myself of the sage advice to feel the fear and do it anyway. 

Bethea: I got thrown in the fire early and learned on the job. I also had great mentors around who I saw as great examples.

How can small-business owners supplement skills they don’t have?

Epstein Ojalvo: Two ways. First, surround yourself with colleagues and advisors who have complementary skill sets and knowledge bases. Second, make it a point to learn by reading articles and books, participating in webinars, taking courses and so on. We all have gaps. It's only a problem if you stay stuck in those gaps.

Bethea: Hire smarter! The faster you become self-aware, the faster you figure out that you don't know everything. Hire your weaknesses and get out of their way.

Bremmer: Today, we hold the world's knowledge in the palm of our hands. Go on YouTube, iTunes University, Skillshare or just Google to learn what you need. If you're watching something, learn something. 

For the rest of the article, check out the AMEX Open Forum.