KitUp Training

For years now, story after story has been written about the challenges finding true entry-level work. Job descriptions that ask for years of experience. Demands for skills and competencies that usually are developed through real-life experiences. And as the job market continues to contract, and new graduates are finding it more difficult to get into workplaces, we must ask how we re-imagine entry-level work.

In short…

The unemployment rate for young adults has trended higher since the recession in 2008. With new learning technology and increased cash flows, many companies outsourced onboarding and learning development and cut costs by recruiting for lower paying, lower positioned jobs outside of the US. During the pandemic, and with a massive increase in remote and hybrid work paired with the collective disposition due to COVID, people early in their career began losing out on the attention, opportunities, direct learning needed to build stronger competencies.

Then came generative AI, which further allowed companies to limit the need to hire new incoming staff, when a more seasoned employee with enough training on prompts can get it done faster. This with external factors have brought new challenges to entry-level job seekers.

So, what can we do?

Rebuild entry-level positions with robust onboarding and team development.

Entry-level must mean entry-level. While some companies have adjusted job descriptions that remove unnecessary education requirements, there is a substantial gap — due, in part, to increased workforce development responsibilities placed on post-secondary institutions. Historically, most work knowledge was gained predominately through apprenticeships, trade schools, and on-the-job training. The learning was not just how to get the job done but also learning the interpersonal dynamics and coordinating resources in place.

Workplaces must rebuild strong onboarding and ongoing development for early career staff. Increased apprenticeships, mentoring, and shadowing is critical for situational awareness and modeling. However, learning institutions have been pressured to prepare people specifically for the workforce, which is consistently undergoing significant shifts, especially in the last 30 years with the rapid increase in tech companies.

Don’t replace early learning opportunities with AI prompts.

While for some organizations it may be more productive to use generative AI, it’s critical to have the knowledge and experience to effectively assess for accuracy. More people are using generative AI as it is integrated into the new tech we use every day. And consistently, we find that it can be unreliable, “hallucinate”, have bias towards pleasing the user. There are uses for generative AI that can accelerate current work, yet, recently, it was reported that around 95% of companies found no significant benefit.

Trial and error, learning from mistakes, and doing it the “hard way” builds intimate knowledge of how things work and why they work. People with more experience can identify these errors. But what happens when they are no longer with the organization? We must keep those opportunities for growth and learning viable and simultaneously develop skills with any new tech.

Create meaningful opportunities for growth, co-ownership, and stakeholder-ship.

Along with the slog of the work itself, people want to know there are clear opportunities to grow, which doesn’t always mean into management positions. Especially now, assessing alternate organizational structures and non-supervisory leading positions can help elevate experienced employees and open up the chance to bring new employees in. This can include promotional opportunities, profit sharing, and opportunities for a stake in the company/organization ownership.

Recently, I oversaw a large team that comprised of multiple streams of work. Based on the nature, promotional opportunities were difficult because the skills needed to effectively supervise the team and manage the work were different from the work itself, and the gap between senior-level manager and team member titles was structurally wide. After much advocacy, research, and convincing, I created multiple specialist positions that designate expertise and experience to help shape and make decisions but not have direct supervisory responsibilities. These were designed to be both final and stepping-stone opportunities that built a pipeline for growth and rewarded team members who didn’t want to manage or were not yet ready to manage but wanted to have more leadership opportunities.

And as usual, I must be honest. While there is no easy way to address the current challenges as one company or organization, there are ways to begin shifting towards a better approach, with elements of past success and the resources and knowledge of today. Each organization has different needs, demands, resources, and opportunities. What opportunities do you believe people and organizations have to help shape and prepare for the continuing shift?

The future of every organization depends on the people they develop today.

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