You’ll look up and down streets. Look ’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.
Oh the Places You’ll Go, Dr Seuss
Talking to Alec Baldwin on Here’s the Thing, comedian Steve Young describes working on The Harvard Lampoon as a pivotal moment. It was here he realised “there have been people who have gone before… and for the first time, maybe in your life, you think ‘oh’ this is something people do for a living”.
Experiences like this matter. They are the forks in the road that divert people into jobs that lead to careers.
But how does this work when the road isn’t well travelled? When the jobs don’t exist yet or are unrecognisable as work? When the bitumen hasn’t been poured.
We need more modern day equivalents of Steve Young’s Lampoon experience.
For Zoe Baird, CEO of the Markle Foundation, it’s about finding ways to literally show people the new jobs.
…advanced manufacturing jobs, people don’t see themselves in those because their uncle or their brother isn’t working in advanced manufacturing, but if their Facebook friends show them what advanced manufacturing jobs looked like and that people like them were doing those jobs then they can see themselves.
Zoe Baird on McKinsey & Company podcast The New World of Work.
She goes on to say Google is putting significant effort into figuring out “how to use its assets to help people see better what (new) jobs look like”.
“It’s not what you know, it’s what you see”?
Try this at home kids
Practice what Zoe Baird suggests and take advantage of technology to see the jobs of the future – TED talks, profiles, social networks.
Research shows that when it comes to finding a job, it’s the ‘weak ties’ between people – the more tenuous links, the friends-of-friends – that matter the most. Perhaps in the future the research will substitute ‘friends-of-friends’ with ‘social network platforms’ showing people what the jobs of the future look like, helping people see themselves in those roles.
… And here’s an analogue tip, from Tyler Cowen, economics professor, author, and creator of the blog, Marginal Revolution in discussion with Shane Parrish of the Knowledge Project: introduce your kids to your friends with different and interesting careers.
* ‘End of the bitumen‘ by Slim Dusty
try this at home kids 