#249 From High School Forward: Are You Building What Employers Will Actually Want? Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  00:00

At the intersection of these buckets, they are not three distinct buckets that we build. They’re an ecosystem, a professional identity that the young person is building towards as early as high school, that they will then communicate as they apply to jobs and as they interview for jobs. Welcome back to College and Career Clarity. I have like a bit of a petri dish going that I want to share about with you guys on this episode, and my dish really comes from the fact that I’m working with young people, students, even teens, as young as 15, and those up through their 20s. And what’s interesting is my petri dish is now including some in their early 30s as well, and it’s giving me this strange little laboratory, if you would, to grow a petri dish about career development and the things that we assume might work and aren’t working, and in this really uncertain world when we all long for future certainty, what I see going right and what I see going wrong. So regardless of how old the young person is that you have in your house, or maybe more of them, or those that you’re working with, I want you to stick with me because I’m going to bring in insights from families with high school students who are very early in what I would say their career discovery phase, where they don’t have an identity probably established at all yet, and the parents from that age group. Here’s what I hear them asking me: What should they pursue? What should they do with their extracurriculars? What classes should they take? What should they be thinking about after graduation? But it’s really more focused on what comes after high school graduation, right? But is still building towards this idea of what’s going to benefit them when they’re in their 20s, and I just everybody needs to hear this, right? Okay, the next group really is those with college age kids, or maybe they’re post high school, not going to college. We work with those students too. We support all educational pathways. Not all of my kids went to college, and the questions that I’m hearing from those families is, what else should I add? I need to add more to make me more marketable so I can land the job. It might be if they’re in college, do I double major, minor, earn a certificate? If they are already out into the world of work. Would a certification help me get hired? It’s all about building the skills, and then as that petri dish continues to grow, and I see recent graduates, those into their 20s now, they are feeling the real marketplace tension. I guess they’re seeing who gets interviews and who doesn’t, and it doesn’t always make sense to them why a peer or why my friend’s child got the opportunity, but we’re not gaining traction. They have degrees, maybe accomplishments, certifications, real work experience, but it’s landing flat. So as my little laboratory over here is growing things in the petri dish, I want to tell you the things today that has me paying attention and will help you figure out what you need to be doing, and by the way, it’s interesting when I hear from people those first two groups that I said you have a high schooler or you have a a recent high school graduate who maybe is in college, maybe is taking a different pathway. The questions almost always come from their parents when they’re in their 20s. The questions might start with parents, but sometimes I’m hearing for the 20-somethings themselves, right? And then as they near 30, I hear only from the young adult. So, okay, this is college and career clarity, where we support career discovery and development for 15 to, I’m just going to start saying up to 30 year olds, maybe even some early 30s, to help them build their professional identity so they can go out in the world and launch and thrive. So in this conversation today, I want you to hear me say we’re very good at helping young people accumulate things that look impressive, and I get it because that’s often the low-hanging fruit that’s easy to grab: classes, degrees, you know, minor certificates, credentials, activities. But what I’m seeing because I’ve got in. Petri dish in my laboratory. The kids that are actually successfully now getting jobs.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  05:05

I’ve identified what are we actually building for? What of those things that we’re grabbing for? What if those actually matter when it comes to building the individual profile that an employer will actually pay attention to, want to interview, and then get you hired. If you’re watching the news, you know that the unemployment rate for those in their 20s is higher than the general population. So I hate to like quote exact data because I’m recording this in a day, but the data will shift by the time you guys listen to it. A couple, two, three weeks from now, right? But unemployment for the general population is running down around 4% and for these 20-somethings, it’s over 5% So we need to pay attention to this. So whether you’re a young person’s 15 and college, starting a job. What I want you to not lose sight of is the actions they’re taking today is building towards something that you want for them tomorrow, even if you’re not thinking about it yet. And what I’m seeing at the far end is becoming very clear into my focus. Right, we’ve got 20 somethings. I just had a call this morning. A young man named Ryan graduated, spent about four months into his job search, which is completely normal, and he’s submitted. He said 60 applications, and he hasn’t landed an interview. And I said, hey, don’t feel bad. I talked to somebody last month that had 100 applications. Was offered two interviews, but for churn and burn companies, they just get you in the door. They’ll take a warm body. They’re going to wear you out. You’re going to move on. They’re okay with that. Hey, we’re launchers here. We’re thrivers here. We’re not okay with that. So these kiddos, they’re not failing. I looked at Ryan’s resume. I’m like, man, you’ve got the skills and the evidence, but you’re still not getting the attention. And so, what are we going to do to get the attention? Many times, it’s what certification can I go get? Right, so I’m working with a 32 year old who’s been in a job for a long time, college graduate, and they’re not satisfied. And so as we dig in and do the work quickly, it was like, well, what certification should I go get? And when we looked at the certifications with our methodology about what really adds value, we found that that probably wasn’t going to get her what she needed. There are other things that we can do. So those things that you think are going to feel like progress, oftentimes they’re filling the wrong gap. Okay, these things aren’t necessarily bad choices. They’re not going to do harm, but what we really want is traction. So, what would be the better investment of time to build towards the identity that’s going to get hired? So, here’s what here’s what I’m seeing. I have created what’s called a career ready profile, and if if you subscribe to my newsletter, my hand drawn, literally, you guys, on my iPad. I’m picking it up now. It’s on my iPad. I just was thinking one day, and I grabbed my pen and I started drawing this diagram. And at the intersection of my Venn diagram with three different things, so I’m going to explain the three to you right now. But at the intersection of that was the career ready profile, meaning who gets hired. Okay, it’s what is coming out on the other side of my petri dish after we give it time to grow. So, number one in this AI world, everybody’s worried about like, is AI going to eliminate the jobs? It has eliminated some jobs, that’s real, and the hire the people getting hired have to have some kind of AI know-how. Not every kid needs a an AI certificate per se, but they need some understanding of how AI can aid the work. They can intelligently work with it and adapt with it as it changes. So AI is part of this, but not the part that you’ve been paying attention to, which is it’s eliminating all the jobs. Right? I’m not going to be able to get a job, which often feels like permission. I talked about this last spring. Often feels like permission to well, I don’t know, so I’ll just wait until it shows up for me.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  09:46

So AI know how that’s one part of our Venn diagram of who’s career ready to get hired. So we’ve got we can begin building this early as the teen years and begin to build on that. Foundation and grow with it. Okay, the next circle is your individual skills as it relates to the work that you think you might want to do at this early stage career step, and then proof of it. So not merely I learned it, not I got the degree, I got the certificate, I learned it. I can do it, and here’s proof of those skills. Okay, it could come from an internship. It could come from your own research project. And when you do this, I want you to to concentrate on cross functional skills. You know, one of my clients, Elena, one of the 20-somethings, she’s pivoting, and I’ve talked about her in an earlier an episode, and she’s now gotten hired as we’re wrapping up our 90-day elite engagement. But you know what stood out? Once she highlighted the cross-functional skills that she had that could benefit her in a wider variety of careers, and she translated that into her personal career professional identity. She started landing interviews, and she got hired. Okay, so AI know how skills with proof of skills that yes, we’ve got to put out there publicly resumes, LinkedIn profiles. Know how to speak about it intelligently. If you have a teenager, don’t turn me out here and say, “Well, they’re not ready to be hired. Or if you have a college student, graduation, you know, three years off, we shouldn’t be thinking about this yet. Oh yes, you should, because every decision you make, the classes you’re going to take next semester, the internships, the extracurriculars, how you use your free time, how you’re going to use that to build a professional identity deserves attention now. Because you’re building towards something. If you’re in my listening community and you think of yourself as a launcher who wants to thrive, we think ahead. We reverse engineer, and that’s why I think it’s just so important. And I wanted to record this episode to come in here and say, like, hey, here’s who’s getting hired in a really tough market, so that you can begin look at what you’re doing now as building towards something. Now we started with AI know-how, the machine, right? But the third part of who’s getting hired is humanness. Those with human skills. And what do I mean by that? It doesn’t mean just. I I think we often just take it to like, oh, I can collaborate, right? I can work with other humans. I think a big part of this, and I recently did an episode on it, is agency-a belief as a human that I, young person, teenager, young adult, parent, even-I have the ability to influence what happens to me, what happens at work, agency, the soft skills of communication, spoken and written, hello email skills, one that we fail at a lot, and one that still matters in the workplace. So problem solving, eventually leadership. I recently saw a 20-something who just graduated from college and had on their resume for their general skills. They literally called them general skills. They said leadership, and I’m like, really? Have you really had that much of an opportunity to lead yet, because I think we could replace that with something else. Okay, so AI doesn’t make the humanness less important, and it doesn’t mean that we can opt out of networking appropriately, right? Communicating, collaboration, solving problems with and through people. So that’s our Venn diagram. This is the at the intersection, and I’m gonna I’m gonna drop this. If you’re a newsletter subscriber, you’ve seen it. If you want to be a newsletter subscriber, go to flourishcoachingco.com forward slash newsletter. I know brilliant of me, right? And put in your email, and we’re gonna send you our newsletter every Tuesday when the episode comes out. I drop helpful pieces like this in there, and a conversation queue so that you can be talking about this as a family. So, at the intersection of these buckets, they’re not three distinct buckets that we build. They’re an ecosystem, a professional identity that the young person is building towards as early as high school, that they will then communicate the.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  14:59

As they apply to jobs and as they interview for jobs, the people that are landing with me at 2425, 26 that are coming up short, the first thing I look at is are they clearly communicating a professional identity, and I literally have not found. I I have found I’ve literally not found one where I’m like, oh, they’re doing a really good job of communicating this. They’re just not applying correctly, right? So it’s about bringing that all together into this hiring profile, so that they can begin showing it to the world. So you’re in high school. Don’t panic and don’t start resume stuffing. Use the experience to begin building the skills, the humanness, and the evidence. They have plenty of runway, but that doesn’t mean we kick it down the curb and take the time to do it later. If they’re in college, it’s time to put your foot on the gas. Right? Don’t assume the degree, which is an experience, will complete the profile. They’ve got to be. You’ve got to look at and identify. I would sit down if I had a college student. I’d sit down. I would take this career ready profile and say, where are we showing up strong? What’s absent, or where are gaps, and how do we fill them through AI know-how skills with proof of skills or humanness, not adding another low-hanging fruit, minor or certificate or double major, and if you’re sitting there with a graduate and you’re already feeling the tension and they are too, and you’re feeling like you are the emotional and financial backstop for them. Don’t immediately assume that more applications, graduate school is the answer. You really need to diagnose before adding. And if you’re like the 20-somethings I’m seeing, the ones not getting the jobs, is that even if they have the skills and the proof of skills, it’s not being communicated appropriately to grab the attention. So we all have a runway. Think about where you are. I always say let’s reverse engineer from that launch date. You know, in my mind, as I was raising my now adult kids, I always thought we feel good if, like after college, if they needed a little extra support to come back home, but they would be out on their own maybe by 24, right? And I reverse engineered from that through our conversations, through our expectations, through their own financial management and what they were building towards, so you don’t have to build the house today. You’ve got time, but if you are as young as high school, you’re laying the foundation for what will serve you later, and that is having a good career ready profile. So let’s sit down. Look at where they’re strong. Look at where they’re thin. Next week we’re going to come back as we right before we tee up. I don’t know if you guys know this. You probably don’t, but November is National Career Development Month, and we’re going to use our last October episode to talk about the different stages and how we wrap our mindset around these different stages, so that it feels doable for our young person instead of overwhelming. This will be useful for you whether they’re 15, 16, or 24. So remember, we’re building together, and I can’t wait to see you guys next week.