Prove Yourself

 

For a while now, I've been following closely the plight of today's young people entering the workforce and encountering uncertainty in landing that first entry-level job. Through my previous job I tried to understand this from an employer's and university's perspective, and as a dad I'm processing the same topic through our oldest two who are on the precipice of the start of their careers.

Being a child of well-educated immigrants, I feel deeply that school is an important foundation upon which you built your employability. But I also know it is a tumultuous time for workers, employers, and universities alike, given the growing uncertainty in our global economy, the advent of AI, and the proliferation of non-university paths to credentials and careers.

As a cold-blooded capitalist, all of this chaos doesn't surprise or bother me; indeed, it's how things work out, is through free market exchanges and innovations and failures and successes. If anything, I want there to be more direct and proportionate feedback to the system. If a student flakes in college, they shouldn't expect a good job offer. And if a university doesn't provide a quality education, it won't properly prepare its students, and students and employers alike will choose away from those schools. 

Innovation doesn't take us on a straight path but it does lead us to progress. Students who try crazy things like travel and entrepreneurship and volunteerism may find they unlock skills and confidence that help them stand apart from others even if they lack the grades or pedigree their peers have. And universities that experiment with alternative forms of education delivery (e.g. streamlined 3-year degrees as opposed to 4-year degrees, internship experiences baked into the degree requirement) may similarly unlock a path to career prep that students and employers take to and want more of.

But let's step back for a second. I suppose that life is just one big game, one of signaling and networks and cause-and-effect. But, fundamentally, jobs go to those who can contribute to their employers, and they do so because they have a set of hard and soft skills that an employer can work with to get value out of. In olden days, that skill set was more defined, which lent itself to an apprentice model in which you prepared for a career by learning the craft of that career, and as you learned it you became more ready to take on that career.

Nowadays, the white collar workforce's skill set seems far more nebulous. Sure, there are hard skills that can be defined, and we should (employers and universities) be more rigorous about expressing what those skills are and measuring who has and doesn't have those skills. Indeed, we are woefully weak about this, relegating much of what passes for a credential to the branding of a school rather than an actual and unassailable analysis of whether a graduate from that school actually knows how to do X and Y.

But what today's employers really want, since a lot of what entry level white collar workers used to do can now be done far more quickly and cheaply by AI, is a much squishier set of traits, which are hard to gain and similarly hard to measure. The accumulation of "reps" that make up someone being described as "experienced" can be hard to access if you're only 22. But, you still need to get those "reps" in. Does it matter how many years of college you got through or where you went? Absolutely. But, those are merely proxies for, do you possess a set of foundational skills that I as an employer can work with, such that I am willing to trade you their money for your time. I think that's on today's youth to prove, and universities to provide.