The Years of Experience Problem.
Why reskilled adult learners aren't getting jobs
*Apologies for the delay since my last post, I started a new day job
Currently, we are seeing unprecedented amounts of unfilled jobs in America and there are no signs it’s slowing down. There are 500,000 open Cyber Security jobs in the US. The restaurant industry added 186,000 jobs in May alone, which is one out of every three jobs the economy added for the month. Applebee's is so in need of frontline managers that they are paying $3k in referral fees. Companies need to hire so many more people.
BUT, even though there are so many job opportunities out there, we still have 7.6 million fewer people working than before the pandemic.
If there are so many people in need of a job and so many companies in need of people, why are we having such a hard time getting butts in seats? Or restaurants? Or call centers?
That’s because there is more than just a disconnect between people having the skills they need for the job they want (you know I love to talk about this) - there is also a huge issue in newly trained individuals being able to secure jobs in the industry that they reskilled for. This is specifically a big issue in digital economy careers.
Why?
It’s what I'm calling The Years of Experience Problem.
When two candidates apply for a job with the same training and get selected for an interview, my own research has shown that 8 out of 10 times the newly trained candidate is beaten out for the job by someone with more years of relevant work experience than them. There was no bias in the type of training the candidate had when applying for the job - they secured the interview - but, when a hiring manager has a fixed set of open roles and has to pick one candidate over another, they default to picking the candidate that has some real on-the-job experience of what they are being hired for.
So if you are a newly reskilled job candidate, with zero years of related work experience, how do you get a new job? It’s a major issue that needs to be solved, just as important as solving the skills crisis.
Also known as the last-mile problem, it turns out adult learners need more than just tangible skills courses to prepare them for the workforce. They also need resume and interview training, soft silks, the ability to work in cross-functional teams, and the list goes on and on. Most of the boot camp offerings in the market today offer career services, but training for an interview and teaching people what it will be like in the workplace isn’t the same as them having experience real work.
The solution?
It’s most likely apprenticeships.
Better than an internship, because they actually pay people, apprenticeships are a hybrid model of doing work and learning on the job. Apprenticeships aren’t new, every trades industry has an apprenticeship model, but the application of apprenticeships to the digital economy is new.
Superior to an internship, apprenticeships allow adult learners, turned new job candidates, to earn a living wage while getting on-the-job experience. That’s critical for the majority of adult learners who paid for their skills training on an ISA they need to be earning ASAP after graduation.
Here are some apprenticeship models in the digital economy:
Multiverse positioned as a replacement to college, students learn on the job in roughly 18-month programs. Started in the UK and now expanding to the US.
IBM’s New Collar Apprenticeship program also takes adults without a college degree through a skills education while doing real-work projects.
Springboard based in the UK offers virtual work experience so you can at least show employers examples of work projects.
DistricTC a nonprofit that gives high school students the opportunity to do real-world work projects, with employer feedback, in diverse student teams.
I’m also excited for new apprenticeship models that are bubbling up in the trades industries. There is just as much of a market opportunity there with the hiring needs in HVAC, Telecom, and solar alone.
As you may have been reading in the news, the Biden administration plans to invest more in job counseling by nonprofits, community colleges, and local governments. I think that gets us 2/3rd of the way there. The equation is:
Skills training + career coaching + on-the-job work experience = hireable reskilled individual
My prediction is that the companies that can seamlessly execute on the skills learning combined with careers coaching -> on-the-job training experience -> hiring -> first job secured will win the overall skills education game. And the economy needs them to.