The Future of Work - Session by Dan Finnigan

The job market has changed in the last couple of generations.  Think of the TV Show Mad Men.  In those days, when you were employed, it was much more like a marriage between you and your employer.  In times of recession, cost cutting was done through non-labor budget cuts (i.e., rationing staples or paper clips).  Now, the worker is disposable.

We've seen the rise of the "disposable worker".    The contract between employees and employers has changed.  Now companies faced with a budget crisis almost always responds with cutting jobs rather than by cutting budgets.  Employees have responded in kind.  Right now, roughly 61% of your employees are shopping for a new job.

Education is pivotal to our collective success in recruiting talent.  Growth in jobs requiring a master's degree is up 22% and jobs requiring a doctorate are up 20%.   Very soon, there will be a shortage of prospective employees to fill jobs requiring a Master's degree because the U.S. no longer leads the world in education.   If we increased the HS GRAD rate by 23%, would add 10 trillion to our economy.  U.S. education institutions are falling behind foreign institutions of higher learning.

China is out-producing the U.S. in science & engineering... AND not because they're cheaper ... It's because of the scale of the employee market.  

When I graduated college, they told me to expect to have 7 different jobs.  Today, the average worker can expect to have 10 jobs in his lifetime (14 if you're in a high tech industry).  

How people work and what is considered working has changed. 50% of work is done by contingent workers.  82% of independent contractors prefer it to a permanent job

The nature of work has also changed as evidenced by:

• Gigwalk: use your iPhone to take pics of things. 
• Mechanical Turk

Recruiters are pulling from YouTube, Facebook, Google Searches, Linked-In and building little black books of potential candidates.   However, employees of your company may be your best recruiters as 25% of all new hires come from employee referrals.

New data suggests that the Super Socials (those that use social sites regularly/obsessively) are more likely to get job referrals and will make more money.  Companies should be better partners with their existing employees (should stop being abusive to their employees) if they want to be able to recruit in the future.

A great example of how to accomplish this is Zappos who want employees to work for them for reasons other than money.   In fact, Zappos offers new hires a cash bonus if they decide in the first couple of months of employment that they don't want to work for Zappos.