Practitioner’s Corner

An Interview with Barbara Moses

It seems the computers were really Y2K ready after all. Now how about the rest of us? How has the work world changed with the century and how can we prepare ourselves for the future? Contact Point asked Canadian career guru Barbara Moses for her comments. Here’s the interview:

CP: Can you identify 5 changes in the “career landscape” from when you started your work to now?

BM: One big thing I’m seeing now is niche employability. People are refusing to hang up their personality at the door, they are demanding work that allows them to express who they are, looking for environments that reflect their own personal needs. The new diversity in the work world will accommodate individual needs, whether one wants to work within a traditional corporate culture or for a non-profit or as an entrepreneur.

I’m also seeing a new sense of security. Security lies in 2 things: 1) the degree to which one has skills and abilities that can be sold in a number of different environments, and 2) the ability to articulate those skills and abilities. People often have difficulty articulating their skills — they tend to be overly identified with job titles, and don’t see themselves as owners of a portfolio that can be marketed.

There’s definitely more intermittent work, where people move in and out of life domains and get credit for all the activities they do, not only jobs, but sabbaticals, travel, and school. There is no longer a start and finish line for activities. People go to school, travel, work, go back to school, change careers, and everything flows together. Hand in hand with this is the concept of Temp World, where work is contractual, and there is little income continuity. There’s no such thing as time on and off, and there’s lots of competition for the work out there. To prosper in this temp world, we have to realize that the auditions are endless, we always have to be “on”. It used to be that people were hired for their potential, but now people are hired for their results. We’re only as good as our last hit.

CP: What are some current trends that aren’t so good?

BM: People are experiencing fractured and atomized workplaces now, there’s a feeling of loneliness out there, no sense of belonging, since teams come together quickly to do a job and dissemble. This is why mentors have become important — people need to find new sources of emotional, technical and social support in the form of mentors, professional associations and the like.

I’ve also noticed a phenomenon I call the “cult of busyness“, where people brag about the number of e-mails and phone calls they get — and don’t return them. In the limited time people do have, some parents are putting profits before their children, making personal sacrifices in favour of work so employers get their best while the kids are left with the dregs: parents are grumpy and tired when they get home.

Organizations sometimes display cruel and unimaginative hiring practices, crying talent-shortage blues but not hiring young university grads with degrees in arts and humanities, instead favouring those with hot skills in IT, computers and engineering. There’s a marginalization of people who don’t have the hot skills or training for today’s economy. Organizations are also firing older workers — there’s a youth mania in today’s culture, and a disregard for the wisdom and experience associated with older workers.

Finally, corporate greed continues, with managers looking after their own stock options while downsizing the workforce, instead of being responsive to shareholders, staff and the communities in which they operate.

CP: You talk about career activism in your books, and it certainly seems like everyone has to look after themselves these days, competing for work, self promoting. Aren’t these skills traditionally used by business people? What if you don’t consider yourself a “business type”?

BM: It is the reality today that we always have to be on, but there’s a major misconception here about changing careers. You have to think Lego. The key is to know your skills and abilities and to reconfigure them as you go through life. As an example, a career practitioner’s path may look like this: start out as a company recruiter, take some courses in adult education and become a career counsellor with an independent practice, do some more training, then take on career planning and job search workshops, which leads to a job writing policy for government regarding unemployment. The core skills of this person are understanding and appreciating interpersonal differences, differences in workplaces and the types of jobs out there, a capacity to establish relationships with people both one on one and in a group, and the ability to translate general concepts for an organization into concrete statements related to an individual.

Barbara Moses, PhD, is the author of Career Intelligence, The Good News About Careers, and the Career Planning Workbook, completed by over one million people. Her company, BBM Human Resources Inc., has conducted thousands of workshops at organizations in every sector of the economy. Barbara also writes a weekly column for the Globe and Mail.