Does worrying about your job security keep you up at night?
It should and here’s why.
In our rapidly changing global economy with constant advances and changes in technology, we cannot rest on past successes as a guarantee for job security. Also, our past education and degrees and good performance reviews at work, are all in the “past”. We need to constantly be educating ourselves in the present or risk becoming obsolete.
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A Memorable Lesson about Job Security from the Twilight Zone
In the classic Twilight Zone episode entitled “The Obsolete Man“, in a fictional future society, a librarian is no longer deemed worthy to keep living because his job no longer has value. See the court case unfold as the Librarian makes his case for justifying his own existence when the state only views a man in terms of what his job title is, not who he inherently is; that he has worth in just being a human. Like so many failed institutions of the past, both governments and corporations, when the value and dignity of a human being are lost, those institutions will soon follow into their own demise, when they are overthrown by human beings.
What institutions don’t realize is that any human being can learn and grow and acquire new skills. Old skills can be shed and the occupation of a person can be transformed with retraining. And, it is so much more cost effective to re-train an existing employee than to hire a new one. By some estimates, the retraining of a new employee for a replaced employee can cost anywhere from 6-9 months worth of that person’s annual salary. And, who’s to say that newly trained employees will stay with the company for longer than 2 years? The average length of employment for a new employee aged 25-34 is 3.2 years (source: LINK)
Let’s watch for 3 Minutes 38 seconds this clip from “The Obsolete Man”:
How to Ensure Your Job Security
So, what if your corporation says that you are “Obsolete”?
The first answer is: Recognize that from a purely financial perspective, they want to make you obsolete. They will remove you in a heartbeat if they can find a cheaper alternative. This was the promise of outsourcing. Ship the job from a higher priced labor market to a lower price labor market. That labor arbitrage is now gone. The new labor arbitrage is to replace humans with Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Its sole purpose is to do “cost takeout” on processes and procedures. How do they remove costs? By creating RPA programs that can duplicate human tasks. If a person’s job can be automated they are no longer needed and the “cost takeout” comes in the form of a layoff.
The second answer is: Don’t bury your head in the sand and think you will survive the next layoff. Keep your skills relevant and current. Learn at the corporation’s expense. At IBM, all employees are required to take a minimum of 40 hours of training per year. Take courses that lead to you earning badges, because those badges stay with your resume even if you leave the corporation. If the corporation does decide to lay you off, then you will at least have marketable skills for your next job.
What is the best way to keep your job skills up to date? Find out what skills the corporation and the marketplace wants. At IBM, they offer over 40 free courses to earn digital badges representing your mastery of these skills. IBM doesn’t just do this out of the goodness of their heart. They give this training away for FREE because they are desperate to discover new workers who have these skills. Once you take these courses, IBM looks at you as a potential job candidate for high demand technologies. Additionally, for its current workforce, they can show clients that they have knowledgeable employees who will be able to consult with the client and deliver solutions for the client.
Here is a Badge Mindmap showing these 40 badges representing high demand skills in areas like:
- Blockchain
- Data Science
- Big Data
- Cloud
Want more proof that these skills are in demand? Check out this recent survey of the Most Promising Jobs for 2019 by Linkedin. At the top of the list for most promising jobs is Data Scientist with over 8,000 job postings in 2019 with an average annual pay of $130,000!
You may say that being a Data Scientist is great, but even if you took the training we suggest, you don’t have experience. You can get a job as a Data Science Freelancer to start, and after you have some experience freelancing, corporations will hire you. Why? There are 2.5 Quintillion Bytes of Data generated EVERY DAY. Corporations want to make use of that data to generate new sources of revenue. A Data Scientist is a source of revenue just as a salesperson is. Companies are willing to pay $130,000 every year for a Data Scientist because they can make more money on that employee than what they pay out. Learn more about this HERE.
Grab a FREE copy of “50 Ways to Make Sure You Don’t Become Obsolete!”
In this mini eBook, I share a holistic approach of 50 practical ways to make sure you are living your best, most productive life so you can be in control of your future and embrace every opportunity that comes your way!
Don’t let life just happen to you! As IBM CEO, Ginny Rometty says “Don’t let others define you. You define yourself!”
So if you are ready to take charge of your life and future, grab a copy HERE right now!
At Upskill Create we have created a FREE Community to help you update your skills so you can take charge of your career and secure your future. Here are some details about what we offer in this short 1 Minute 41-second video:
Here is the transcript from the video above:
Let me leave you with one final thought
Grow and improve, for without growth there is no life.
I like this quote from Gordon MacKenzie in his book, “Orbiting the Giant Hairball”:
“When you come into an organization, you bring with you an arcane potency, which stems, in part, from your uniqueness. That, in turn, is rooted in a complex mosaic of personal history that is original, unfathomable, inimitable. There has never been anyone quite like you, and there never will be. Consequently, you can contribute to an endeavor nobody else can. There is power in your uniqueness – an inexplicable, unmeasurable power.”
Keep becoming more of your unique self and you will never become obsolete!
Need some ideas? I’ve created this resource filled with 50 ideas to help you improve your life and secure your future.
Grab Your FREE Copy Here
What are you willing to do to ensure that you have job security?
If you’d like to learn more about earning badges that represent what the marketplace wants, join our community of like-minded people who want to make time for learning and encourage others to reach their goals. Click the JOIN NOW! button below.
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