The Unblazed Trail
There are roughly 150 million working adults in the U.S. today. People who work full-time spend more time on their jobs than any other activity in their lives (sleeping is a not-so-close second place). Given its relative importance, it is amazing that so little research or understanding has been devoted to the study of careers.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has never attempted to estimate the number of times people change careers in the course of their working lives. In their words, “The reason we have not produced such estimates is that no consensus has emerged on what constitutes a career change.” Conventional wisdom would suggest that a person’s career is a compendium of the jobs held over the course of his/her adult life.
At CareerMap, we believe a career is more than a series of jobs; in fact it is a series of decisions that a person makes that incorporates professional interest, personal goals, life events, and (perhaps most importantly) their actual experience of being in a job that contributes to “success” and “advancement” (subjectively defined, to be sure). Since there are so many personal factors that impact career decisions, careers are truly like snowflakes: no two are identical.
Career-seekers tell us that they are often frustrated by their inability to convey the full arc of their experience and skills to a hiring company. Meaning not simply the titles, responsibilities and accomplishment, but the manner in which their goals were achieved. The soft skills around leadership, perserverance, collaboration, collegiality that never come through a resume or cover letter…but would likely change a hiring company’s view of a candidate if it could be included in the overall assessment process. This is a focal point of how CareerMap is seeking to use Big Data analytics to revolutionize job search and career management.
Big Data is also an ally for support organizations that are striving to help career-seekers. There are hundreds of industry and trade associations that provide executive development, skills training, and networking opportunities to its members. While these organizations possess a limited amount of member data , they do not have the most important dataset that could use to truly support their members’ career goals: a full history of work and educational accomplishments, and an understanding of the motivational factors drive career decisions. When support organizations are able to capture and utilize this data their value proposition for its members will be greatly fortified.
Higher Ed institutions have their own unblazed trail: to provide their students (and parents) with a compelling case of the value of an undergraduate degree with a $250k dollar price tag (and rising), and the value of a graduate degree for over $100k. The Big Data solution for a college or university would be to canvass all alumni who hold either an undergraduate or graduate degree in a particular major from their school, and to capture their professional work accomplishment throughout their careers. An analysis of say 10,000 or 20,000 careers would yield a new set of outcome data, such as “% graduates who achieved a senior leadership position at their company”, and “average number of years taken for a graduate to reach a director level responsibility”. You can imagine that these new metrics of graduate success would quickly become a more meaningful set of proof points for use in admissions, advancement, and other marketing communications.
It will take some time to completely clear these unblazed trails. By partnering with major industry associations and Higher Ed institutions, it will be akin to using a team of bulldozers instead of a shovel.