We were once told: “Go to university” and “Get a degree!” -this was all in a bid to set us apart from the competitor and upon graduation, to shimmy us up the corporate ladder with ease and excellence in the form of professionalism, with the help of our degree certificate we had stuffed in the back pocket. Snap back to the real world and 2018 and I meet more and more struggling London uni-leavers who’ve for want of an apter description: graduated into unemployment. The experience for the youth seems more snakes and ladders than it does ‘up the career ladder’. What then is going on? Is London not one of the financial centers of the world? So why are the next generation of professionals floundering?
Ric Edelman, founder and executive chairman of Edelman Financial Services, leading financial advising firms reveals: “The notion of going to college and emerging at age 22 with a degree in a field and an expertise that you’re going to engage in for the rest of your working career is gone,” Edelman told Business Insider in a Facebook Live : “Instead, it’s no longer about a college degree, it’s now about lifelong learning.”
With Edelman’s predictions for longer lives thanks to the rise of tech and delayed, if not deceased retirement norms, he says we’ll be living longer, taking sabbaticals and continuing our life/work balance in a secular motion for the rest of our days, we see the very core belief system we’ve long adopted at The Job Auction. This theory totally irradicates the current set up and refreshingly so I think. The thought of cutting your hair and getting a job, working your entire life until retirement age, in a race to save as much cash as possible and then at ‘the end’ experiencing a few years as a pensioner before death never did fill me with elation. Having always been a fan of the sabbatical, seeing the world and keeping it fresh by moving from sector to sector, learning as many skills along the way as I could and chartering what were once unknown waters when others thought I was professionally suicidal, I can honestly say: thank god it’s becoming recognised as the sensible way for humankind to move forward. I’m with Edelman on this one: “engage in learning, employment, and leisure, on a repeating cycle” (for our entire lives).
As far as the finances go, Edelman’s take is that “You’ll be able to supplement your income, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year working on a part-time basis doing whatever you feel like doing, it’s going to be easy to make money,” Edelman said. He believes that we’ll circle back into line with the formula of: learn, work, sabbatical, repeat, each time emerging from another educational chrysalis ready for the next life and where desired, working as freely (be it freelance or part-time) as required.
How then do you market these skills and where do you find your latest role? Panic not, The Job Auction is the future. Advertise your skills for free on a profile with us, create one in minutes here or search through jobs, Instajobs, Job Auctions or even list your own skill as a Skill Auction and have hiring managers bid on You. If you don’t know where or how to begin, The Job Auction can offer you a friendly helping hand. Keep your eyes peeled for our newest addition: CV Clinic. We offer packages to assist you with navigating your next professional challenge. Corporate go-getter, freelance jet-setter or sole trader seeking to do better, you’ve got Skills To Pay The Bills.
The long and the short of it being; if you feel you’ve graduated into unemployment, have been overtaken by younger generations in the fast lane catching up to you, then take an evening class, reinvent yourself, market yourself, whatever it may be…go get it…fortune, as they say, favors the brave.
[…] talked about students leaving university and graduating into unemployment, do you think that the revival of apprenticeships could be the […]