Category Archives: Motivation

Bifurcation

by Motivation, Politics, Success, Uncategorized, unemployment •

Bifurcation is one of those excellent words reserved for crosswords and serious conferences. It was being used yesterday to describe a rather depressing phenomenon that will affect millions of people. I was at the Employment Related Services Association annual conference and labour market trends were being discussed. Bifurcation was being used to describe the way the employment market is splitting into well paid and highly skilled jobs and low paid unskilled ones, with the middle being squeezed. Technology and globalisation mean that many of these ‘middle’ roles are disappearing and those that cannot obtain the highly skilled jobs face unemployment or jobs they do not want.

This is a concern for the affected individuals as well as a problem for our country and unfortunately there are no easy answers. Going from unskilled to skilled is not a swift and simple journey and meanwhile our knowledge employers are struggling to find the people they need. The wider the gap between the haves and have nots the more unpleasant society becomes. There are thousands of families for whom the choice is unemployment or low paid work and the forthcoming changes to the benefits system will increasingly make life without work more challenging. I firmly believe that it is better to have a job with the structure and self-respect that this brings however for many the types of job available to them will not make for fulfilling employment.

I don’t believe there are solutions to the bifurcation. The Luddites demonstrated the futility of taking on technology and markets. However go to any UK town and there will be a college offering free training. Meanwhile the quantity and range of online training is vast.

It is easy to stigmatise the unemployed and there are certainly many who abuse the system or make no effort to help themselves. However I believe the majority simply meandered through education and early adult decisions and then found themselves in a position where options were few and employment choices bleak. I don’t want to trivialise the challenges of up-skilling or being different in a community where unemployment is the norm, however the more I think about it the more the solution is with the individual and not society. Government can enable however each person has to make his or her own choice as to what discomfort will be endured in order to bring about personal change or change for one’s children.

You can lead a horse to water but can you make it drink?

2
by career management, Motivation, Outplacement, Technology •

Mixing metaphors, the elephant in the corner of outplacement is the extent to which job seekers accept and act on the guidance they are offered.  A good many do.  They take advantage of the knowledge and experience offered them and benefit accordingly.  But a meaningful proportion does not.  For reasons such as cynicism, depression, pessimism, disillusionment and lack of confidence they simply don’t engage with the process.  A negative spiral kicks in and the consequences can be long-term unemployment.

This is very frustrating for all concerned.  The people who work at my company, MyWorkSearch, and our competitors get up in the morning with the intention of helping job seekers.  We passionately care about the results we achieve and are saddened by those who don’t take the useful guidance that is made available to them.

This is the leading the horse to water bit.  But what about the drinking?

Last year, in October, I wrote about how we had identified this as an area we wanted to research (http://blog.alberg.co.uk/2009/10/23/the-job-search-conundrum/) and stated that I would return to this as a topic.  Since then we have made considerable progress.  Our research has helped us discover the areas to focus on and our design and development teams have made great strides in implementing improvements.  For example:

Usability is an area we have to work really hard on as if it is difficult or not obvious what to do next a proportion of people will give up.  We have transformed MyWorkSearch with a comprehensive redesign. We have looked at ‘user journeys’ and tried to eliminate the areas where a person can get confused and cease activities.

Allowing flexibility whilst providing the option of a guided route.  Some people want the freedom to self-serve our advice, content and tools.  Others want to be guided through a stepped process.  One size does not fit all and providing this choice removes usage barriers.

Sometimes there is provision for a person to assist individuals as they progress on their path to re-employment.  Knowing who is succeeding and who needs help is key to providing targeted assistance that makes the most of this expensive resource.  We therefore developed a reporting engine that allows a person to see who amongst a group is effectively using MyWorkSearch and the job seekers that would benefit from personal assistance.

The above are all hygiene areas.  They are the basics of a sensibly designed system.  Although they may not be easy to get right we know that they are essential for an effective online re-employment solution.  The area that has most long-term potential and goes above these quality foundations is our Nudge Engine.

Our Nudge Engine is designed to understand each job seeker as an individual and provide personalised guidance and prompts that nudge the person towards the best outcome possible.  Through understanding human psychology and statistics we can populate our Nudge Engine with rules that help each person get the most from MyWorkSearch.

We started work on the Nudge Engine a few months ago and it is about to go live.  We see these personalised small steps as the key to helping individuals succeed.  I will let you know how we progress.

The job search conundrum

3
by career management, Motivation, Outplacement • Tags: , ,

Looking at how people use MyWorkSearch and MyNewjob.me has thrown up an interesting challenge. Since our process is managed by sophisticated software we know what our users are doing and equally what they are not. What has become clear is that a noticeable proportion of new users are not particularly active. There is a disconnect between stated job search activity and actual job search activity. Unfortunately by the time they find out just how difficult it can be to get a job in this market many of them are thoroughly demoralised and their job-search effectiveness reduces.

Our ability to track what people are really doing as opposed to what they state they are doing is opening up tremendous possibilities for the career transition profession.  We can research ways of encouraging job-seekers and see what processes really do result in higher activity levels and which ones do not. I know that the answers will be fascinating and this is a subject I will return to in future posts.

On a personal level I find this interesting and frustrating. Unlike losing weight, getting fit, or giving up smoking, a successful job-search process is not a lifelong change. It is something that for many may not be a lot of fun, however do it assiduously for several months and a new job should be secured. The pressure is then off and normal life can resume. However logical this may be the realities of human behaviour are different. This is a very important challenge for our team and one we are committed to.