I have been interviewing people who were dissatisfied with their jobs and have re-focused their careers about:
- How they made the decision to leave their job
- Their process of exploring new skills
- How they made the transition to a new career path
I’ve found that many people leave because they find their job creatively or emotionally unfulfilling, go through a period of dabbling with new skills, followed by a ‘coming to terms’ with their new interests and eventually school or a career change. My results are colored by the fact that I have only been talking to people who eventually made a change, I am talking to people with a similar educational background, and people from a similar socio-economic background. I would like to talk to a more diverse group, but it is taking a little time to contact and interview folks. (If you have any leads on people who are dissatisfied with their jobs, but have not left them please let me know. I want to talk to them!)
I interviewed people with an eye to developing an answer to the ‘How can we help learners assess their own skills when they are looking to enter a new industry?’ question I came up with last week. Now that I have conducted several interviews I am considering some kind of automated coach-bot that will help people define their interests, find related topics they might be interested in, find classes or degree programs they might like, and stay on track.
People I’ve talked to have suggested I checkout the Karen app and 30 Days of Genius series, so I’ll give those a whirl.
Next steps are, hopefully, a couple more interviews to fill out the pool and prototyping!
Reference/inspiration/things I’ve read that have informed this project so far:
http://www.citylab.com/work/2016/10/how-the-recession-upskilled-your-job/505262/0
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
https://www.aier.org/sites/default/files/Files/Documents/Research/3780/BCC20130401.pdf
Great to hear how you have started to schedule your plan towards prototype. I wonder if you have considered the recent data concerning the productivity of the American worker. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/us-workers-productivity/495722/
Can you imagine a world where Efficiency and for maximum gross is not the center of an economy? Is there a limit to efficiency?
I would also consider how difficult it may be to learn when you have less free time to do so. Would love to know your thoughts on how the system would be different in the future to manage that lack of free time http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/