In general, we think that getting old has many more downsides than upsides. What with declining health, reduced relevance, and being closer to death perhaps among the most egregious. And as has been noted many times in the past few years, the rapid and widespread ejection of many older workers from the workforce has left many feeling depressed and inconsequential at what they feel is a premature conclusion to their careers. 

Aging and career do not have to be oil and water. Rather, let us view the career of the mature worker as needing serious reform as they look toward a future in which work can still be engaging, satisfying, and lucrative. Fortunately, one of the great advantages of aging is a growing realization to make one’s remaining years count more than ever before. This can be a powerful motivator to approach life and career with renewed vigor. 

A process to reestablish a derailed career later in life begins by accepting that the old rules for finding work do not apply much anymore. Being overly reliant on searching for job postings that may be a fit can waste too much time. Instead, direct yourself toward conducting a thorough self-assessment. Identify all those traits, skills, qualifications, and most importantly experiences, which when combined define you as an asset. Leave nothing out of this list. If needed, query those who know you well to see how they perceive you. 

At this point reflect on this rich attribute inventory with the goal of selecting what Dick Bolles, the author of the perennial What Color Is Your Parachute, elegantly calls your favorite skills and your favorite experiences. This is when a cognitive exercise becomes emotional in nature. By recognizing the most energizing of what you have done and can still do, you appreciate what is possible in your future work. 

Making the most of your remaining work years is made possible by acting on your strengths. We do not have to accept a bitter end to our working years. Alternatively, we can construct a career made meaningful by capitalizing on the best of what we have to offer. But a significant part of doing so involves remembering those changed rules I mentioned earlier. There is a good chance the best of you may not fit neatly into a single job for which an employer will compensate you. 

Multiple income streams result from orchestrating a variety of work lines that together make up your favorite performance characteristics. Investigating and implementing various means of monetizing your sweet spots can lead to a satisfying hybrid career. 

There are some things to keep in mind about patching together multiple income streams. For example, you need to remain quite flexible in dovetailing your diversified ventures. Determining what can be scaled up and down due to parameters of time, money, and energy will place you in the role of being your own career choreographer.  

Achieving a degree of sustainability with each stream may take time but think how rewarding it will be when you get there. Having this new career be enjoyable is what it is all about. This life puts a new twist into the notion of being your own boss. 

I started this reframing of career for the mature worker by suggesting a self-assessment. There is no better time to reflect on where you have been and how far you have come, than near the end of your “productive” years. Now is the time to give yourself permission to approach life with a different flavor and approach than has been done before. Allow yourself to feel free, mix it up, and experiment. Benefit from all you have accomplished. Exhilarate at being at the top of your game. 

As an aging male with 60 years of perspective, I cannot help but note the huge change American women are undergoing in terms of their career options. As women have demanded and experienced a shift in social, political, and economic power sharing there is a wide and growing range of work choices available to them. 

I still remember how odd I thought it looked to see my first uniformed female police officer and big rig female truck driver and woman on a construction crew. It is not that I thought it wrong, but it did seem out of place. Growing up in the 50s and 60s I basically thought as a young person that work for women outside of the home was limited to being a secretary or an elementary school teacher or a nurse. 

Now women seem to be in nearly every profession, including the running of companies. In retrospect, I suppose observing the integration of women into traditional male jobs was my first eye opener to cultural change. It has since only increased in pace. 

For those of us who think increased equality among citizens is a good thing, then the news is great. The power structure long dominated by male viewpoints is yielding to a more balanced approach enriched by ideas contributed by women. Conventional wisdom suggests this is leading to a society that is fairer and representative of every person’s interests. 

While I applaud this historic development and in no way wish for a regression, I also notice an angst and relative lack of direction on the part of men. In general, while the career prospects for women are expanding men appear to be more adrift with their changing role. Here are some of the signs I see: 

• Men took a greater unemployment hit during the recession than woman. Jobs requiring brawn like construction and traditional manufacturing were being shed faster than jobs requiring nurturing and education like healthcare and business services. 
• Women now outpace men in receiving college degrees. In a world that is going to rely only more on an educated workforce, this bodes well for those individuals embracing higher learning. 
• The trend in leadership roles is to become more gender neutral. As women move more into management and executive positions it displaces the men who formally held those spots. 
• The competition field for securing jobs is getting deeper. Not long ago, men had to form job search strategies that pitted them against other men only. Not anymore. Now men must compete against women. This is not a comfortable place for many men to be. 
• The nature of work is changing in that physical strength, the greatest value point men have traditionally had, is increasingly less in demand. Technology, mechanical engineering, and robotics are already handling much of the digging, lifting, and carrying once done by strong men. And as time goes on, there will be even less need for physical strength on the job. 
• Increasing numbers of men are wanting to spend more time with their kids. Men putting their careers on hold or at least slowing the pace of development in favor of parenting seems to be becoming quite acceptable among the children of Baby Boomers. How this choice is seen by hiring managers once the man wants to re-engage with the workforce is still unclear, but potentially damaging to his career. 

How this all turns out is hard to say. Perhaps work is becoming completely gender neutral, and we will no longer think in terms of male and female jobs. But for men who like things traditional, facing these employment adjustments may be rocky for the foreseeable future. 

One of the most difficult practices for people to pull off when advancing their careers is verbal self-promotion. Known commonly as the elevator pitch or the power statement, this self-promotional introduction can have the strength to leave a lasting impression about you with an influencer, or by contrast leave you forgettable. 

Being able to professionally introduce yourself to decision makers or those connected to them, when your objective is to seek employment or career advancement opportunities, is an important practice to master. Typically, there is often not much time to make a strong impression when opportunities to do so come about. People are busy. Time is short. If you cannot communicate relevance and practicality to the listener pointedly and in the moment, then you run the risk of being boring, extraneous, or even a nuisance. 

As if this is not pressure enough, think how awkward and stressful it can be to make a sales pitch about yourself if you are introverted, shy, or lacking in confidence. Well, that describes a whole lot of us! No wonder so many of us take feeble solace in saying, “I don’t like to toot my own horn.” 

We have convinced ourselves that to not display traits about ourselves is a virtue. We may even blame this weakness on our parents. “I wasn’t brought up to make a spectacle of myself.” True, to not draw attention to yourself is preferred in some social situations, but it does not help us to make a mark in our career development. 

Your professional introduction summarizes your expertise and value to the workplace. Making one need not be a major hurdle or social faux pas. There is a way to compose, practice, and eventually master the introduction. To make the spiel impactful, it should be short, perhaps 30 to 90 seconds, and rich in content. To begin follow a simple formula. For example: 

My name is

I am [use job title or subject matter expert descriptor]. 

I have

Add Power Statement 1. 

Add Power Statement 2. 

By Power Statements I mean a line that includes a competency and an accomplishment. 

Let’s look at an example: 

My name is Jane Smith.  

I am an expert in dental office management. 

I have thirteen years of experience as a dental office manager, including eight with a $2M practice. 

I am highly organized. For example, I was fully responsible for all ordering of supplies, negotiating with dental supply vendors, and conducting inventory control. 

I am also great at personnel development, having hired, trained, and evaluated all seven of our non-medical staff. 

These pitches can contain your soft “human connection” skills, or they can highlight your innovative solutions to significant problems, or they can describe how you added value.  

So, now that we have a professional introduction framed out, we must make sure it does not sound too clinical. If you come across resonating as too rehearsed and scripted it will sound so — and not be impressive. Practice making these points as a real person would sound. Recite your pitch to others without worrying about word memorization and get feedback. Is it sounding natural? Is it coming across smoothly and genuinely? 

Another interesting approach is to begin your intro with a question. Questions have a way of focusing our attention at the outset. For example, “You know that stress you feel every spring as April 15 approaches? My name is Jim Smith and I’m a Tax Preparer…” 

For those of us who are not naturally smooth-talking salesmen, who can have just the right persuasive words roll off your tongue at just the right moment, you will need to prepare and practice. Developing a strong professional introduction can help accelerate your career. So go ahead, toot your own horn and make music while doing so. 

A very interesting and potentially watershed story has emerged in recent days in business news. It concerns the top-down working conditions decision made by the recently selected CEO of Yahoo! Marissa Mayer. Ms. Mayer has announced that telecommuting among the company’s employees is to be eliminated. Although this decision was intended for internal dissemination only, it quickly leaked to the rest of us and has sparked a rapid and vociferous debate about productivity and innovation in cutting edge companies — and by extension to the rest of us. 

To be clear, I have been and continue to be an enthusiastic proponent of any workplace practices that promote creativity, collaboration, autonomy, productivity, and civility. Among the exciting changes emerging within the post-industrial workplace has been employer recognition to adopt flexible working conditions, many of which achieve these very goals. 

Common examples include open concept “office-less” workplaces that promote interaction and sharing, remote working via technology whether from home or other places conducive to production, and work settings that include benefits like childcare, gyms, and ping-pong tables. 

The underlying management belief in these types of arrangements is that workplaces should be results-only-work-environments, encouraging employees to produce individual and even idiosyncratic styles, if measurable deliverables are realized. 

A management approach embracing an attitude that trusts its employees to be value-producing when they are given freedom to choose schedules, environments, colleagues, and problem-solving approaches is the trend in working conditions. So why has Ms. Mayer, a product of Google, Silicon Valley, and data-driven decision making, made the move to eliminate one of the fastest growing flexible workplace practices, telecommuting? The apparent answer is to re-establish a lost culture of innovation. 

Innovation has become the holy grail of business, particularly in the fast-paced Internet-based industry of services and content. Yahoo! was once a big player in the early days of the web. It was one of the first to establish one-place shopping for search, email, news, shopping and much more.

Since its mid-1990s launch, however, it has been losing market share to much bigger innovators such as Google, Apple, and Amazon, who currently dominate the web. Yahoo! is in trouble. Survivability is in doubt. 

So, is corralling all employees back to the ranch going to reinvigorate an innovative edge and competitive advantage or is this a desperate move based in fear that if old fashioned business standards are not reapplied the company is going to sink? Time will tell, but this story does raise the question of what it takes to create work conditions that inspire workers to innovate and produce at optimal levels. 

Encouraging high levels of creative performance in any workforce will result from valuing original problem solving and adaptability. When management applauds new ideas, the exercise of imagination, and learning from rather than avoiding mistakes, then innovation flourishes. 

For most of us, unlearning the way we were educated can lead to more creativity. Our schools were designed to produce workers for the industrial age, not the much more sophisticated information age we have only just entered. Sameness, rigidity, and compliance characterize the way most of us were educated. Assessment methods have been little more than a means of measuring accountability or adherence to these standards. 

This outdated education model is often replicated in too many businesses that value hanging on to tradition more than innovation. As a result, innovation is often stifled at a time when it is needed most to stay competitive and relevant. My concern with Yahoo!’s latest move is that it appears to be a reach for an old-styled accountability practice during a time of anguish. It is as if the thinking is non-traditional workforce practices are not giving us a competitive advantage, so let us go back to what worked in the old days. 

I have no doubt Marissa Mayer will use data over time in determining what works and what does not work for fostering innovation at Yahoo!. For the rest of us we will have an interesting experiment to observe with lessons to be derived for the future of business and the facilitation of innovative workforces. 

Social media appears to be growing in functionality beyond being just a way for friends to share interests. Marketing professionals, for example, generally accept that getting their product or service shared and discussed among connected individuals is now a solid and preferred part of any business’ promotional plan. Facebook and Twitter have become an essential part of many marketing campaigns. 

The power of social media is also playing a factor in career development. Sharing career related tips, job openings, employer reviews, and more is occurring among trusted peers. But perhaps the most powerful advantage of social media is the way it exposes individuals to those sourcing and background checking talent. Each of us has the option of crafting our information and building dynamic profiles that reinforce the professional brand we wish to project. 

In fact, we are at the point where not having a robust presence on social media places us at a distinct disadvantage in advancing our careers. Remaining in the digital shadows could very well mean we do not get found by the very stakeholders we need to have find us to move forward. This phenomenon is particularly a problem for the older end of the workforce, who still do not accept or who harbor a mistrust of social media and its implications. 

Despite the growing advantages of leveraging social media for talent searchability it does raise a significant social issue that is increasingly becoming relevant, the value of individual privacy in the digital age. A disconcerting correlation is now evident — the more we increase our Internet presence the more we diminish our privacy. 

The web is becoming ever more invasive. Cookies that track our Internet use, location tracking apps, and other user-identification functions means others can and do store and re-purpose data about us. Simply using the Internet engages us in personal data sharing of some sort even though we rarely or ever give anyone permission to collect and use our personal information or Internet-use behavior. 

Maintaining some semblance of personal privacy in the Information Age may soon become the next big civil rights issue. What we now know is that keeping a relatively unregulated Internet yields individual privacy rights in favor of those with some degree of economic power and capital, i.e., big business. So, what is new? Power always seems to concentrate on the haves vs. the have-nots in an unregulated environment. In time we will see how it all turns out. 

There is a legitimate concern when we use websites for information gathering and research purposes that our personal data or web use is collected and tracked behind the scenes. The use of social media specifically is intentional sharing of information about us. When we essentially advertise ourselves online via social media, we have a harder time crying foul when we are found out. 

Each of us needs to weigh the potentiality of an Internet display with the concurrent erosion of anonymity. Although this is a very personal decision, the reality is that being searchable is a best practice in job searching and recruiting. 

Controlling what is known about you online with a professional-looking profile and website is the recommended way to go. Applying a 20th century concept of privacy to these times is not practical for career movers. At least to some extent we need to get over the privacy angst. However, each of us does need to advocate for stronger opt-in controls of what is displayed about us online. There should be options beyond no web involvement at all and full unregulated exposure. The Internet should serve us, not the other way around. 

Job boards, such as Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, and SimplyHired are getting a bad rap these days. The word is out that job boards are no longer effective or relevant for job searchers. Their image problem can be summed up in the words of a client who recently said to me, “C’mon, have you really heard of anyone getting a job from Monster?” 

It was not that many years ago job boards were seen as the next great thing. Instead of going to newspaper classifieds, job seekers could now go online to these supercharged job listings that held many more postings of descriptions from all over the country. Not only that, but they were being constantly reviewed by recruiters searching for talent. I remember speaking to a recruiter in 2008 who told me most of his day was spent trolling Monster and CareerBuider. They certainly were an improvement on the old and restricted methods available pre-Internet. 

In the meantime, however, the job searcher experience has deteriorated using these sites. Users now find themselves flooded with cheap emails from for-profit “career” schools asking them to spend money they do not have or from New York Life and Aflac and the like trying to convince them to become 100% commission salespersons. Oh and of course, starting your own franchise for whoever will really change your life for the better. Right! I have gotten to the point of recommending to clients who heavily use job boards to dedicate an email address to their job search, so that their regular email does not become inundated with this junk. 

Another concern for many regards posting their resumes to these sites. Yes, many more eyeballs will be on them, but maybe not all the eyeballs belong to people you want to see them. In particular, is the worry about contact information. Of course, you need to have a way for potential employers to reach you, but do you want your home address seen by a large anonymous audience? This is one of the reasons why more and more people, particularly women, are opting out of having their mailing addresses included on their resumes. 

Probably the biggest problem is that many jobseekers think sitting at the computer for a few hours each day submitting their resumes for positions that have great sounding job descriptions, but for which they have no networking connections at all, is job hunting. It may feel like you are doing something valuable, but the truth is very few jobs are acquired this way. Too much time can be wasted, and your frustration increased. 

So, are job boards passé? Not necessarily. They still have practical uses. I often recommend they be used for research. For example, individuals who are either trying to enter the job market or who are hoping to transition to some different type of employment can find the job descriptions included on job boards revealing. By finding appealing descriptions you can more easily determine how you are a fit for such jobs. Does your list of qualifications closely match the required skills for the job? If not, what can you do to reinvent or improve your professional status? 

Another great use of job descriptions on these boards is to use them for harvesting relevant keywords. When tailoring your resume, it is important that it contains keywords like those contained in the job description you are targeting. Alignment of what you have to offer with what a potential employer needs is key to securing an interview. 

And yes, sometimes people do find jobs on Monster. I place it far below good networking and even outreach to recruiters in effectiveness, but it can happen. In general, I recommend spending about 10% of your job search time looking at job boards, 20% getting the attention of recruiters, and 70% on effective networking. 

The challenge for job boards is to stay relevant in the ever-changing world of job searching and career development. Time will tell if they can do it. 

A couple of years ago I penned a piece called The 10 Best Career Development Practices. It remains one of my most read blogs. But in the time since it was written I have come to feel that this list needs some slight adjusting. A combination of more time delivering career development services on my part along with a growing recognition of the realignment occurring with effective career practices leads me to revise this list. What follows is my 2013 take on the ten most advantageous steps a professional person can do to enhance their career. 

1. Know Your Professional Value — Conduct a self-assessment resulting in you feeling comfortable, confident, and focused about your value proposition. Think of yourself as a subject matter expert with reliable and consistent qualities that set you apart from the competition.
2. Develop the Three Capitals — Consistently be involved in building and growing your intellectual, social, and emotional capital. This leaves you well informed, well connected, and energized about your profession. Career growth is a 3-legged stool. For balance, work on all three simultaneously.
3. Write a Strong Resume — The document that most anchors and communicates your value proposition is the resume. Although its primary purpose is to secure an interview do not forget that its overall marketing potential can be crucial.
4. Prepare Intriguing Cover Letters — Making that first impression is of course key. Promoting your own skills while aligning them with the potential employer’s needs and following up with a great resume may open the all-important door to an interview.
5. Engage in Networking — Yes, who you know and who knows you does matter. Most of the high-quality employment arises from referrals among trusted contacts. The best way to get to a hiring decision maker is to know them in the first place or know someone else who knows them.
6. Manage an Online Profile — Recruiters and hiring managers tend to fish where the fish are. If you are not in the pond, then you will not get caught. The Internet is the pool where talent is found and investigated. Additionally, being online helps you to share your brand, build your network, and cultivate your professional relationships.
7. Engineer Your Job Search Process — Knowing what comprises a truly comprehensive job search involves implementing a complex set of procedures. Understanding what techniques can motivate you and using an organization tool like a career management CRM can make the process much more manageable and successful.
8. Use Power Statements and a 30-Second Pitch — When introducing yourself to high potential professionals realize their time is tight and attention spans probably short. Making impactful statements that leave you remembered and hopefully valued requires an economic delivery.
9. Conduct Informational Interviews — A research technique that assists you in building intellectual and social capital is the informational interview. Seeking out and conversing with professionals who can provide useful information you can use in determining the direction of your career is a powerful tactic.
10. Perform Well in Your Job Interview — This age-old conundrum is as elusive as ever for many, but it does not have to be that way. Preparing without cramming by rehearsing your upcoming performance such that you dovetail your background knowledge with the potential employer’s needs is well worth the effort.

You may have noticed that developing a career is an ongoing pursuit not limited to the times when you receive a pink slip. It helps to get over the natural but inhibiting desire to be complacent with a single job or relatively unchanging career.  

For those not held back by inertia, but rather eager to enter the career fray this list of practices should help the career-oriented individual form a continual improvement strategy. 

Among the workforce phenomena already underway prior to the recession, but which has picked up pace since, is the increasing role of independent workers. These soloists are typically defined as part- or full-time workers who do not violate the employee-defining guidelines set by various state labor, revenue, and employment security departments. 

They are called by a variety of names, such as independent contractors, consultants, freelancers, self-employed, temporary, on-call workers, and even solopreneurs. Whatever you call them, their ranks are growing. 

In September, MBO Partners, a service provider for independent workers and companies that hire them, released their second annual “State of Independence in America” survey. What they found was that the trend toward project or portfolio work was increasing across all demographic cohorts of today’s workforce. Conditions appear to be coalescing that allow for growth in this non-traditional employment sector. 

My own speculation is that the combination of more workers accepting, perhaps begrudgingly, the new normal of an uncertain economic environment both domestically and globally, in combination with affordable technology improvements, is allowing for expansion of independent contracting. 

Time will tell if independent contracting is a sustainable, non-cyclical, and viable career option. However, this survey reveals some interesting points of transition within a population historically used to finding economic security by way of a single employer. Nearly 17 million workers operate as independents currently, up one million from last year. Projections are that 23 million will be their own boss in five years. 

The number of independents who claim satisfaction and reduced anxiety with this career choice is also growing. Many in fact intend to hire employees as resources allow, suggesting that independent contracting may be a gateway to larger entrepreneurial ventures. 

The GenXers, those aged 33 to 49, seem to embrace this concept the most out of the demographic groups measured. Given their relative vitality coupled with some years of actual work experience they are more open to taking control of their career and lifestyle destinies, certainly more so than their employer-loyal parents. 

Perhaps somewhat counter intuitively, the Gen Y (aged 21–32) workers appear to have a more mixed view of independent working, at least for now. The difficulty they have been facing in recent years entering the workforce and gaining valuable work experience may be skewing their attitude. After all, independence may not be a choice for them, but simply their school-of-hard-knocks reality. 

Many Boomers (aged 50–66) on the other hand have their own reasons for resisting migration to this level of work autonomy. In short, they were not brought up this way. Rather, dedication to an employer who in turn provided economic security has been their norm. But increasingly this generation too is seeing the benefits of more self-reliance and determination as evidenced in the survey. Increased flexibility, less workplace politics, more control over scheduling, and greater opportunities to practice their individual skillsets on their terms is being seen as attractive. 

I see significant advantages for our collective careers in encouraging individual economic independence. Although it may never, and perhaps should not ever, entirely replace the traditional employer-employee relationship there is nevertheless value in workers adopting a more flexible and adaptable economic position within the general workforce. 

Maybe we could start preparing our youth by insisting that our schools replace some of their course load, which is of marginal importance for the mainstream, like algebra and medieval history, with financial literacy and entrepreneurism.  

And Boomers, accept it. You are being ejected from the traditional workforce sooner than you expected. Your choice is becoming the pasture or carving a niche that matters to the marketplace. 

Change is only going to become more exponential, not less. Preparing yourself for independent contracting may be the best way to position your career for it. 

These are tough times for those of us who really dislike shopping. We are not only bombarded by holiday shopping advertising everywhere we turn but are told by economists and those who report what they say that shopping is practically a patriotic duty. Apparently, the economic health of the country is largely dependent on how robust consumer activity is. The more we buy the better it is for the economy. 

Now I understand retail makes up about a third of retailers’ annual revenues between Thanksgiving and Christmas and that $465B is expected to be spent on gifts, food, and decor this year alone. Clearly the 8% of the GDP driven by retail needs consumer spending. But I cannot help but to be bothered by some consequences of an economy so reliant on consumerism. For example: 

Material Overindulgence: Do we really need all the stuff we have? American households are bursting with things, many of them tangential to what is necessary for survival or even a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. We collect, clutter, and hoard more and more items to fill all the space made available by our ever-larger houses. 

Resource Depletion: To build, make, and produce all this stuff we are consuming vast amounts of the planet’s resources. From oil to water to minerals and beyond we voraciously harvest the earth for the by-products needed to leave ourselves saturated with products. 

Global Reputation: It does not take Henry Kissinger to see why the rest of the world resents us. We consume vastly more than most of the world’s other countries. We have an insatiable per capita appetite that leaves an impression we are selfish and bottomless. 

Does this holiday season again have to mean that we feel pressured to spend money that in many cases we do not have? Look how many of us cringe every January when we get that credit card statement. So much for the previous month’s Happy Holidays.  

The buying binge will help retailers, (many of whom are now becoming required to work on Thanksgiving) but it comes at a cost to a society that could be placing its monetary value on more substantive and meaningful purchases. 

Maybe we can temper our consumerism so that the dollars we spend reduce waste and hoarding while at the same time going into the pockets of as many of our fellow citizens as possible. Buying locally produced consumables whenever possible is one important way of strengthening our local economies. Consumables like show tickets, restaurant gift certificates, and locally grown produce put money into our communities while stemming the tide of junk purchased from national big box outlets. 

But more importantly let us give serious thought to mitigating the frenzy now occurring every holiday season. Black Friday near riots and Cyber Monday shopping while “at work”?! What are we doing to ourselves? 

We seem to accept that working ourselves into a holiday shopping mania is the new true meaning of Christmas. Can we just chill? Let’s bring holidays back to a simpler time of recognizing family and friends in a more calm and loving way. Can it be possible to have a season of spiritual warmth without dumping a truckload of detritus on our loved ones? 

Finding a way to spur economic growth that does not rely on binge buying will be significant challenge for a society hooked on ho ho ho=dough dough dough. If I had the answer, I would print it here. All I know is that there is a downside to the type of consumerism characterizing the current state of the holiday season.  

I wish my friends in retail, marketing, and manufacturing happy holidays, but I also hope that the way they approach the last two months of each year will eventually change to something less frenetic. 

Encouraging and supporting a high quality system of educating both youth and adults is fundamental to our being a thriving and competitive country in today’s global marketplace. A nation that would short-change its schools and training opportunities gets what it pays for — an unmotivated and unskilled workforce. 

But the role of educational institutions is under pressure to change not just some of its practices, but its core mission. Preparing citizens for the future is not what it used to be. Historically, it was accepted that a relatively limited set of skills were needed to fortify a person for the world that awaited. We had the canon of reading, writing, and arithmetic (still important, of course) and threw in some knowledge to encourage citizenship. However, beyond that, students were largely on their own to determine which of several career paths they would choose. 

Not so in the 21st century. Even a bachelor’s degree may not be enough to suffice for an entire career. The nature of work and professionalism is changing too rapidly. In fact, it is estimated that today what one learns in college will in many ways be outdated before the student loans are paid off. Even the so-called blue-collar jobs are becoming more technical and require skills and certifications that did not exist in the recent past. 

Also, blue collar no longer equates to low skill. To think that achieving a certain level of education will be adequate for almost any career today is shortsighted and rooted in old-fashioned ways of thinking. 

For those dedicated to teaching, training, and helping people learn, this news is good. It means your job never ends. Education is ongoing. Learning is lifelong.  

The ones who most need to reframe their thinking are all the rest of us who need to wrap our arms around the reality that obsolescence will always be nipping at our heels and that learning, relearning, and unlearning are now constants. Complacency is the greatest threat to our careers. Growing accustomed to changing skills and demands is the greatest benefit. 

Workforce growth is linked to sophisticated skill development. However, according to the U.S. Labor Department there is a lack of talent in the STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), healthcare, and business. One thing this recession has made clear is that economic recovery is not about recreating conditions whereby people can return to their old jobs. It is much more about realizing that successful long-term employment is in preparing a workforce capable of performing in relevant jobs of the future. And that future is now. 

Companies that do the hiring are increasingly concerned about the lack of necessary skills available. This problem is now as egregious as other competitive issues such as location, transportation of products, and procurement of materials. 

The problem grows larger when you look out over the legions of unemployed and see that three-fourths of them only have a high school education. If you want to be a player in the workforce of tomorrow, you must accept that a high school diploma is not enough. Be ready to get higher ed, vocational ed, or other skill training however you can do it and know that learning will be continuous. For many of us this will be the only path to living the lifestyle we want. 

Schools should start getting this message to students at a young age. Society needs to shake loose this notion that education is something you do before living. Rather, it is what we do as part of living. A thriving, dynamic, and competitive nation is one that is always learning and adapting.