today’s dynamic workplace: are your students prepared?

Today’s Dynamic Workplace:

Are your students prepared?

Rita Jones

Orange Coast College

Creating Effective Programs

1. Provide an overview of workplace trends and necessary career development skills for the 21st century

2. Share resources that have been developed to implement effective career development strategies

3. Demonstrate effective career development activities

The Critical Importance of Career Development

• Most career decision-making is unintentional and uninformed.

• Research conducted shows that:

– 65% of working adults do not believe they are in the right job. (NCDA/Gallup 1999)

At Post-Secondary Level:

• 60% of high school graduates go to post-secondary by the age of 24 but what happens to them???

• 40% change programs or quit in the first year

• 50% NOT in jobs related to their major two years after graduation

There is a Need for aNew Kind of Career Development

Changing Work Dynamic A Few Wake-Up Statistics

• The average twenty-something entering the job market for the first time this year can expect, on average, 9 to 13 job changes in a working lifetime.

• The average job in America now lasts only 3.6 years.

• An average of 3 to 5 radical career shifts within a working lifetime.

Changes Since 1977

• Competition is now global.• Customers are exponentially more fickle.• Job security is dead.• Life balance is harder to find.• A new two-tiered society:

– “Haves” are the information workers.– “Have nots” are the routine

production & service workers.• Effective work has to be both high-tech &

high-touch.

Six Survival QualitiesIn a world like that, how do you survive & thrive?

Six key qualities that will take on an increasingly make-or-break quality in the next 25 years:

– Portability– Diversification– Entrepreneurship– Buoyancy– Balance– Connectivity

Portability

• Portability means “have skills, will travel.”

• Have a set of marketable problem-solving skills that you keep sharp and polished, so you’ll always be in demand.

A Few Words About Skills• Know Your Strength

– Peter Drucker: “It’s much easier to move from competence to excellence than it is to move from mediocrity to competence.”

– Build on your strengths, rather than wasting energy trying to shore up your weaknesses.

• Portability “knowing what’s in your backpack”• Your storehouse of abilities, knowledge, skills

and marketable traits that you carry with you from job to job. Think of this as your “transition survival kit.”

How do we help students develop “portable skills”?

Career Development Tools for FREE!!• Coast Careers

– www.coastcareers.com

• Work-Based Learning – http://wblconnections.com

• QT: Quik Tips, Tools & Timesavers – http://wblconnections.com

Experiencing a QT

• Complete the “At My Best” worksheet

• Turn paper over and draw three columns,

• Fill them in withThings I do splendidlyThings I do adequatelyThings I should not do without supervision

How could this information be helpful to you?

Diversification

• Diversification means that you simultaneously develop from 3 to 5 generalizable, transferable skill sets.

• Keys to effective diversification:– Pick skill sets that are different, yet rationally

related.– Pick skill sets that represent natural gifts.

• Your best transferable skills probably started emerging by the time you were 5 or 6 years old.

• If you’re stuck, ask yourself, “What were you good at in grade school?”

How do we help students develop more “diversified” skill sets?

Think Entrepreneurship

Remind students:• a paycheck is not an entitlement, but

the natural outgrowth of someone (a customer) being satisfied enough with something (a desired product or service) that s/he will part with cold, hard cash in return for it

• their benefit to the employer must be greater than their cost.

How do we help students understand what it takes to be an

entrepreneur?

Buoyancy

• Buoyancy, or resilience, means the “ability to bounce back from hard times, to see the possibility rather than the threat side of change, to keep growing and learning, to see meaning rather than meaninglessness in the patterns of your life.”  It is as much of an attitude as a skill, as much art as science.

• It is the best statistical predictor of such desirable traits as longevity, mental health, and even career success.

Balance

Work in our culture is about three things:

• Make a living.– Paying the bills, saving for retirement.

• Making a life.– A lifestyle, a way of spending or structuring time.

Think hard about this one, because money is gained by making lifestyle sacrifices.

• Making a difference.– Your mission, your purpose, your psychological

legacy.

What does it take to develop buoyancy

and balance?

Connectivity• “No man is an island,” wrote John

Donne in one of his most famous lines.

• Connectivity matters because you can't do everything, and you need to work with others who are weak where you're strong (and vice versa). 

• It matters because people hire people whom they know and trust or are known to someone they know and trust.

Helping studentslearn to connect…

Try this…..

“The most dependable and up-to-date information on jobs and careers is not found in books or on the Internet. It’s found by going out and talking to people.”

-Richard Bolles: What Color Is Your Parachute

• In the Career Journey Road Map booklet turn to:

p.16 “Informational Interview”

Capture coastcareers.homepage

Students Need Lifelong Skills

• Self-reliance• Resiliency• Ability to find work we love in

times of constant workforce change

• Ability to maintain balance between work and other life roles

Career Development Tools for FREE!!• Coast Careers

– www.coastcareers.com

• Work-Based Learning – http://wblconnections.com

• QT: Quik Tips, Tools & Timesavers – http://wblconnections.com

Capture Discover

Capture Identify your skills

Capture Job Outlook 2004

QT• Target Audience

– Anyone who interacts with students • Faculty • Counselors • Career Center Staff

• Format – Did You Know? – Try This: – Want More?

QT• Check out our On The QT newsletters for great

activities for your classroom!  Here are the topics:

• Concentration• Time Management• Communication• Find out what they know• Networking• Active Listening• Informational Interview• Internships• How to be an "A" Student• Critical Thinking

•Ethics•Manners•Problem Solving•Diversity•Transferable Skills•Writing Emails•Collaborative Learning•Leadership•Career Journey 1

Capture as many student lessons as possible on one screen

Capture Classroom Activities Page

Capture Faculty Connections

ROI…. for students with Career Development skills

• More successful in the workplace• Make more money• Fewer health problems• Produce more goods and

services• Experience shorter

unemployment periods

ROI for us….

Students do better in classes, have higher retention and

graduation rates

and keep coming back!

Contact Information

• Rita Jones – RitaJones@cccd.edu