Our dream of fix jobs
Do remember when we’re kid, parents, aunty, grandma and grandpa always asked, what do you want to be when you grew up? Some of us will say I want to be a pilot, a doctor and other “fix” profession. But some others will say they don’t know.
The saga continues when we have to choose higher education. What college, what university, what major we need to take. Some continue their dream as a kid, some will change direction and some will still confuse, they still don’t know.
Fast forward a couple of years. We finished college, we got a job, stay there for 10–15 years or so. Some will live their dream, become a pilot or a doctor. Some will go with the flow, take any job they can get, although sometimes they regret it. Some others still confuse, just can’t find their direction, just keep changing unrelated jobs over the years.
Ok, let's stop for a minute. Let’s see the landscape of jobs today, the trend of “young workforce” and the exponentially faster technology shifting we face today.
For a starter, I live in Indonesia and I’m not a professional HR person or something, I just see what’s happening around me and trying to figure out the pattern. This might not represent your situation in other countries.
Is about the trend of “young workforce”. How often you go out, around the business district, at the shopping mall, or in the small coffee shops. Then what do see? Do you see the people? For me, what I see is young people everywhere.
I think I read about this somewhere, but the evidence is quite clear (except for government official of course), companies today have preferred to hire young people over slightly older but experienced one. That means, if you above 40, in some (or many) cases, you out of luck.
What drives this trend is another article to write. For now, let's just keep it.
Then, there is the faster and faster technology shifting. We heard word disruption everywhere. Old expertise becomes obsolete, automation, new business model, new kind of company, new software skills, etc. This also spells trouble for some of the older workforces.
By now, if you’re 40’s or above, you might become worried. How can I stay relevant, what value can I bring to the job market?
Some of us might get our dream job as a kid but suddenly lost it. The follow with the flow guy and the confuse one might seem to feel that life is going nowhere. But, if we look closer, some people do survive, they continue to thrive, and able to make themselves stay relevant. But how?
I think about this for a while. And, it looks like the answer is “branching”
So, what is branching?
For me, branching is a person capability to figure out other possible routes from where they stand now to prepare what change in the future to stay relevant.
Some example
Meet Joko. Little Joko really likes to draw, and he is really good at it. Young Joko then takes the product design course in some local university. Soon after graduate, he lands a job as a product designer for a small family owned but a quite famous furniture company.
Alternate reality one
Joko stays on the company for 15 years. He just works there, no other business outside 9 to 5 jobs, with a limited network. He just wants to be a designer, nothing else, is my dream, and I’m living my dream, he thought.
Suddenly, the company he works for collapsed, leaving Joko without jobs, limited network and outdated furniture design taste and skills.
Alternate reality two
Joko stays on the company for 15 years. Along these years, he is active in the designer community. He likes to submit his works to some design competition and wins. Inside the company, Joko also actively meet many people from suppliers and customers. He creates a network of people. From it, he acquired fresh insight and perspective from it, and this is important.
Suddenly, the company he works for collapsed, leaving Joko without jobs, but his vast network, insight, skill, and perspective gave him a leg.
He quickly recognizes the opportunity related to his 15 years career, not exactly the same, but related. He understands that modern furniture industries need a recyclable sustainable wood like material, he learns about this since 5 years ago when visiting a design conference and meets the key supply chain back then. Now, he becomes the major supplier for recyclable sustainable wood like material in Indonesia.
Joko now is not a product designer anymore, he is a material supplier. But he knows this product design world inside and out, and able to find the opportunity related to it.
The keywords
Since this is only a short article, I’ll just make the summary here.
In our time, most likely some big change will happen in our world. This change might possess a thread to our career.
To prepared ourself, and our kids, we need to learn to stay relevant by keeping a list of other things we can do and learn deeper some of them, best within our basic skills, so you don’t have jump into a completely different industry, it is possible of course, but is much harder, except your a kind of people who have multiple skills.
One other thing that important is to keep widening our network. Always search for the opportunity to meet new people. Best is some of these new people are related to the list we make above.
And the end … after you try don’t forget to pray to God.
We’re nothing and what we get is only to God behalf.
:)
