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  • Automation Will Not Kill the Need for Human Skills In Manufacturing, Says Allegion CEO

    Automation Will Not Kill the Need for Human Skills In Manufacturing, Says Allegion CEO

    “Where you have a high variation you’re always going to have the need for human input,”  says Dave Petratis, CEO of Allegion. “If your manufacturing designs or products have very little labor input, let’s say like a cell phone, you can automate that. But where you add variation to the product that’s being developed or manufactured it requires labor. I can think of a variety of industries where automation will not kill the need for human skills in manufacturing globally.”

    Dave Petratis, CEO of Allegion, discusses the impact of technology and automation on manufacturing jobs in an interview on Bloomberg Markets and Finance:

    The Real Breakthrough That’s Coming is Digitization

    We see the growth in manufacturing in technical jobs where people are able to manage those automation schemes at higher levels of pay. I’ve been a part of that manufacturing story over my 38 years and have lived that. I think there’s a great underlying story. American manufacturing is doing a great job of driving productivity inside the factory. That’s why the goods and services produced have never been higher, but the skills of those jobs are at a higher level.

    That puts challenges on manufacturing like Allegion. At Allegion we have advanced the capabilities of automation in our style of product and it never ends. The real breakthrough that’s coming in the next decade is digitization. This is how we use information technology, artificial intelligence, and information to be smarter manufacturers.

    Automation Will Not Kill the Need for Human Skills In Manufacturing

    I challenge that (the assertion that technology will replace humans). Where you have a high variation you’re always going to have the need for human input. If your manufacturing designs or products have very little labor input, let’s say like a cell phone, you can automate that. But where you add variation to the product that’s being developed or manufactured it requires labor.

    An example of that would be right here in the Indianapolis where we have manufactured here for over a hundred years and shipped globally. We produce 2,200 variations of an exit device which is in the building that you occupied today. It requires human input because of the variation. I can think of a variety of industries where automation will not kill the need for human skills in manufacturing globally.


  • How IBM is Using AI to Improve Hiring and to Retain and Retrain Employees

    How IBM is Using AI to Improve Hiring and to Retain and Retrain Employees

    “We are the number one destination for Gen Z on Glassdoor,” says IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. “I get 8,000 resumes a day. I don’t make them go hunt for jobs. The AI talks to them and we ask very nicely and get permission, share this with me, share that with me, share this LinkedIn review with me, share this resume, and instead of you looking for jobs I’ll serve up jobs to you that actually match you. Our match rate of applying is 30 percent. With anybody else, it’s about nine percent.”

    Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, discusses how they are using AI to improve hiring and to retain and retrain employees in an interview on CNBC:

    AI Will Change 100 Percent of Jobs

    The original genesis of this was a belief that AI will change 100 percent of jobs. But if you’re going to really get the benefit of it you have to change how the work is done. We chose to make HR, my HR leader chose to make HR, really the role model example of that. She has done a fantastic job putting AI in end to end. She tracks (the value of this AI approach) and we have now just from the AI alone, my HR function has saved $300 million from just doing that piece of it. In part, it helps the employees, because it completely makes HR employee centric. You don’t do things to people, you do it for them. It’s consumer-centric because of how we apply the AI. The other part of it is there’s productivity on the other side. Both are important right now.

    Our experience has been and I’ll just use HR as an example. On the one hand, we were able to replace a lot of routine work. In the case of HR, our HR staffing went down by 30 percent. However, the people then doing the job of HR, they do far more non-routine work, their salaries all went up or their skills went up with it. You’re going to have this trade-off where technology will drive productivity but then it will also drive you and me to do our job different. It sits at that intersection.

    Good for the Employee and Really Good for Business

    This includes how we recruit today. We are the number one destination for Gen Z on Glassdoor. I get 8,000 resumes a day. I don’t make them go hunt for jobs. The AI talks to them and we ask very nicely and get permission, share this with me, share that with me, share this LinkedIn review with me, share this resume, and instead of you looking for jobs I’ll serve up jobs to you that actually match you. Our match rate of applying is 30 percent. With anybody else, it’s about nine percent.

    It just shows this effectiveness for using the AI for things like a manager who says I’m doing salary. We do something to be sure salaries are fair, no unconscious biases that are in there, and then as well, proactive retention. That is the ability to use many pieces of data to say this person is likely to quit in the next six months, so do something now so that never enters their mind. We’re 95 percent accurate and have saved $300 million in replacement costs from that. These are both good for the employee and it’s really good for business.

    We’ve Got to Make This Era of Technology More Inclusive

    It’s not just driven by that (job demand driven by booming economy). I think you’ve got married here this idea that technology is going to change everyone’s job. It means reskilling of your current population. This is also so they’ve got the skills that apply for the future. I think this point of the word transparency, being clear with every employee, is their skill in the market hot or not so needed (based on) demand? Also, for your strategy, is it needed or won’t be needed for the future? We update that every quarter, that matrix, and we share it with employees. They know where they are and they say yes, I’ve got to move here and we use AI to help them move to a new area.

    What’s happening in the market, whether or not there were IPOs, this would be happening anyways, this remake of skills. It means reskilling your current population. It means a strong belief that we’ve got to make this era of technology more inclusive. Six-year high schools where community colleges and high schools are combined together. We’ve been working with 500 other companies and with those schools and there’s a pipeline of 125,000 kids coming through. Now, 15 percent of our hiring was of less than 4-year college graduates. If you’re going to make this era inclusive, the technology is moving so fast, you’ve got to make it so more people can have a job in this world.

    I just shared with the CHROs, one of the number one issues we see is we as employers over-spec the jobs that we go to hire for. We write down so many credentials they should have and it’s not true. If you’re your cyber analyst, which there’s going to be two million open jobs, let me tell you how many people can actually fill that that don’t have to have all those credentials. If I just talked about making this era for this country inclusive it’s that. It’s 15 percent and particularly the middle of the country is where we’ve done that hiring.

    How IBM is Using AI to Improve Hiring and to Retain and Retrain Employees


  • How To Keep Your Remote Employees Feeling Connected

    How To Keep Your Remote Employees Feeling Connected

    Video meetings, persistent team chat, and consistent in-person connections are all important for keeping a connected feeling with remote employees, says Lisa Walker, Vice President of Brand & Corporate Marketing at Fuze. “Remote employees will always talk about how they feel disconnected from HQ and disconnected from the company,” notes Walker. “That’s just one of the things you always hear from people who are remote.”

    Lisa Walker, Vice President of Brand & Corporate Marketing at Fuze, discusses how to keep your remote employees feeling connected in an interview with Logan Lyles of Sweet Fish Media on the B2B Growth Podcast:

    There is Just a More Personal Connection With Video

    What’s really interesting in managing a distributed team is the importance of video meetings. We know that if a leader turns on video then the rest of the employees on the call will turn on video as well. You have to lead by example there. The nice thing about video is that you are seeing everybody. There is just a more personal connection when you are able to see everyone.

    What I say to both managers and employees participating in video call is that it is all about creating the perfect frame. You don’t have to have a clean house, but you have to have a clean shot of yourself in the video. There is kind of a personal brand here. If you have a large team on a video conference from around the country or around the world, everyone has that opportunity to present a personal brand moment. You should be curating at least one good frame. There could be chaos around that frame but there is an opportunity for you to be consistent on that weekly team call.

    Video Meetings Help Remote Teams Feel Connected

    Every time that team call happens and that video flips on you know what you are getting from people. That’s what we are talking about in terms of work mode. You have to create environments where you can be productive. One of those important environments is video. I think it is really important as a manager to have those video meetings. In those video meetings when you get together, start with a few of those conversations that are more personal and then segway into company updates.

    Remote employees will always talk about how they feel disconnected from HQ and disconnected from the company. That’s just one of the things you always hear from people who are remote. Make sure that you are getting ahead of things your team may be hearing about the company. It’s important that you give a very transparent company update when starting a video call. Then get into the team stuff. Just do those first two things off the bat to make sure the team is feeling connected.

    Keep a Persistent Team Chat Going

    Second, for me is chat. Some people do it over Slack. We obviously here do it over Fuze. There are lots of different tools out there. Keeping a persistent team chat going in that asynchronous communication is just a great way to have the team feel bonded. They will talk about personal and professional in that chat stream and that’s fine. For specific projects where it needs to be more formal, you can create those project chat streams that are separate.

    Fuze Team Chat Platform

    Bring People Together In Person

    The third thing, which is the hardest, because it cost more money, is bringing people together in person as often as you can. For us, within the marketing team at Fuze, we do that twice a year at a minimum. We just did that this past week. It was wonderful. We had our sales kickoff and then we stayed together as a marketing team yesterday and had that time together. Make sure that you are finding those opportunities and making the case for budget if you need to.

    The other thing that a lot of managers don’t do and is a potential missed opportunity is that when you are out in other cities meeting with customers or at a conference if you have an employee within striking distance, meet them. Even if there is no office there, take them to coffee or lunch. Take those opportunities, don’t just fly in and out. If you have employees in that region, find a way to go have a personal connection with them and meet face to face.

    >> Listen to the complete B2B Growth podcast interview.

    What is Fuze?

    Fuze sees itself as part of the future of work movement. Digital technologies are generating significant opportunities for both people and companies alike. Employees are demanding consumer-like experiences to match technology in their personal lives, with greater flexibility on where and how they work. Work is personal and employees want the opportunity to choose their workstyles, schedules, and tools.

    Fuze – Part of the Future of Work Movement


  • Can AI Replace Your Boss?

    Can AI Replace Your Boss?

    Smart managers are the backbone of any business – but when leadership is running on empty, things can start falling through the cracks. When tasks begin piling up and managers’ attention is pulled in every direction, AI tools can step in to help.

    Leadership roles in departments from payroll to administration services face up to 96% chance for computerization in the near future. But automation overhaul isn’t exactly a new concept; retail workers, service industry staff and everything in between has fallen risk to AI-replacement. Why should managerial work be any different? Machines can gather information, analyze the data, learn from past events, and most importantly, recommend solutions in the same way a human manager could, albeit much faster. But reliance on such programs doesn’t necessarily mean we are without responsibility; too much pressure on automation can lead to disastrous outcomes.

    For Amazon, this took form in their “state of the art” hiring AI that was built to help fast-track the hiring process. With already over 600,000 employees on payroll, hiring is a big job for Amazon and this AI algorithm was expected to change the game. Until it didn’t. In order to teach the algorithm, it was fed ten years worth of resumes to identify successful hiring patterns. The previously male-dominated industry was evident in these successful hires and as development continued, the algorithm began to pick up on the pattern of gender discrimination. By 2018, the program was scrapped as the AI began penalizing resumes including the word “women” and filtering out listings of all-female colleges.

    Hiring is perhaps one of the most personal and one of the most difficult of all business operations, especially for small business. Today, over half of small businesses use some form of tech to help move along recruiting, but smart leaders know there’s no substitute for a meaningful, in-person interview. The takeaway for automated management and its imitations is along a similar vein to AI in any other position – it simply lacks the human touch. So when office managers and project managers are spending their creative energies on mundane and repeatable tasks, they cannot away lead their team effectively. Here’s the AI that changes everything.

    AI gives us a great opportunity to truly “work smarter, not harder.” Products specifically designed to reshape office management, like Managed By Q, turn regular tasks into a localized and cohesive platform. In this program, managing scheduling from maintenance to interviews is a snap, employees may submit requests with minimal workflow interruptions, and booking, communication, and billing are handled on a single place. Project management standards get a new look as well with AI tools that help break up even the most complicated projects into simple, easily achievable tasks. iCEO is one such platform that not only helps keep traditional employees on task and in communication but also communicated with freelancers and gig workers to manage progress that keeps everyone on the same page.

    More than four in five businesses believe they could benefit from bringing in better tech, but that’s only half the battle. In spite of this, one in five businesses thinks it’s just too much of a hassle to buy and implement new tech. Here’s where to start. This infographic details the powerful new tools of the trade for managers, how they are helping us lead our teams better, refocusing daily operations, and finally giving us the time to concentrate on what matters. Will AI replace your manager? Let us know in the comments.

    Can AI Replace Your Manager?
    Source: MBA Central
  • Make School – This Revolutionary Tech College is Free Until You Get a Job

    Make School – This Revolutionary Tech College is Free Until You Get a Job

    A revolutionary new tech college, Make School, is offering students the option of free tuition and $1,500 a month living expenses on the condition that they sign an Income Share Agreement. Under the ISA students will pay for their tuition only after they are hired. This business model creates a culture where the school has a vested interest in the student succeeding in the real world as quickly as possible.

    Since this is a business and not a charity, there is a huge potential upside for Make School if the student does well. Under the ISA the student agrees to pay back as much as 20% of their gross salary for up to five years.

    Income Share Agreement (2018)

    Jeremy Rossmann, co-founder of Make School, discussed the institutions’ unique student success focused business model on Fox Business:

    School Transfers Risk Away From Student to Make School

    A lot of it is about transferring the risk away from the student into us to hold the institution accountable. It’s the right thing to do and it’s really good for our culture. It keeps us focused on student success and making sure that students are getting the careers they want after graduation.

    We monetize it because our students are successful. We do a great job of preparing them for hiring in careers in tech and they go on to work in jobs that pay them good salaries and they pay us back. We had a student just this week get a job offer from Google actually.

    Companies Across Sectors Are Hiring Software Engineers

    We’re seeing hiring with the usual suspects of course; Facebook, Google, Apple, Tesla. They’ve hired out of our program. A lot of medium and small startups have as well. The common trend that we are seeing is that all companies are becoming tech companies. Companies need to have a digital presence. They need to have digital products to accompany offerings.

    Companies across sectors are hiring software engineers. Those software engineers are being sought after to create products that are ultimately the kind of products that we are training our students to build. That’s the kind of jobs we are filling and we are seeing a huge shortage of in that area and a lot of appetite for our graduates.

    Our Business Model Can Absolutely Work

    I think it is a business model that can absolutely work. We are not charitably funded. We are privately funded. If you do it right and your institution is delivering on the promise that it has made then this is both good for the student and offsets a lot of the risk that they are taking in traditional colleges and it’s good for the school.

    The school can actually be sustainable with this model. We’ve seen that play out as the students have gotten employed. I don’t think it has to be a charitable model. It absolutely can be done with a good return on investment for both the school and the student and the investors.


  • How to Get Hired as a Software Engineer by Google

    How to Get Hired as a Software Engineer by Google

    Several young Google software engineers provided some great tips that will prepare you to get hired by Google. A key common denominator is to really know your stuff well because the main focus of the interview is going to be on technical skills.

    Google Software Engineers Oliver King, Tremayne Stewart, and Vivian Li offered their own experiences and tips for how to do well in an interview for a software engineering job at Google:

    What Are Coding Interviews Like?

    Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

    Really the big focus of this interview is going to be technical skills. Most interviewers are going to run a few warm-up questions, and then one main question that’s going to take the bulk of the time. So you can imagine a 30 to 35-minute interactive question.

    Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

    The questions themselves aren’t going to have the answer presented to you directly. You really have to understand what the question is asking and have an understanding of different data structures and algorithms to be like, okay, I can mix and match this together a little bit to make this happen. Then you can build on top of anything you have to do inside the actual interview.

    Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

    From my experience, all the interviewers from Google are extremely nice, so they are very supportive and helpful. Even though the first solution you come up with might not be the best, they will guide you through and give you enough hints, so eventually, you can get the best solution.

    What’s Your Best Advice to Solve Coding Questions?

    Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

    You definitely need to think out loud. First, ask clarification questions. Second, call out assumptions. Third, you need to explain your thoughts clearly before jumping into coding.

    Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

    It’s like: What are your Edge cases? Define those first. Is anything going to be null? What kind of inputs are you getting? So you can make sure that you know, your system won’t break halfway through. Definitely speak out loud so that your interviewer knows where your mind is on certain things. That’s when they can give you hints every now and again. Like, “Oh, maybe don’t use a HashSet; a HashMap might be a little better.”

    Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

    I think a lot of people come into it with the misconception that for every problem you’re given, you must find the algorithmically optimal solution. But it’s better to find some solution than none at all. That’s really easy to mess up.

    What Are Your Tips to Prepare for an Interview?

    Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

    The biggest piece of advice on how to do well at a software engineering interview is to not try to do well at the interview, but to do well as a software engineer in general. That comes with practice, and it comes with knowing your code. So you really have to do what you have to do to make sure that when you do get on site, you crush it.

    Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

    I’d recommend the Google Tech Dev Guide to make sure that your fundamentals are going to be strong for the interview. Make sure that you’re really good with at least one language because you’re only going to get to pick one when you do the interview.

    Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

    Prepare yourself. Get used to coding on a whiteboard. The difference between coding on a whiteboard and coding in an editor is that you don’t have any helpful tools to guide you through to finish the syntax.

    Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

    So it’s easy to just practice writing some code on a piece of paper where you don’t have that type of tool.

    Any Last Advice?

    Oliver King, Google Software Engineer

    I think there’s a misconception that you need to be the best engineer ever to work at Google. You don’t need to be an expert at algorithms, you just need to be good at them. You don’t need to know some really high-level complex data structures; you just need to know all the basic ones really well.

    Tremayne Stewart, Google Software Engineer

    You kind of think of Google as this super software-engineer-producing entity. But then you realize it’s people that have also been through your same process. They practiced, they worked, they developed to be who they are today.

    Vivian Li, Google Software Engineer

    Of course, Google likes to hire smart people, but don’t underestimate yourself — you can do it.


  • Kroger CEO: How We Compete for Software Engineers with Facebook

    Kroger CEO: How We Compete for Software Engineers with Facebook

    Kroger and all retailers are fast becoming tech companies and thus have the difficult task of competing with companies like Facebook for top tech talent. According to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, one of their secrets to recruiting software engineers is the promise of more responsibility quicker than anywhere else.

    Rodney McMullen, Kroger Chairman and CEO, reveals how Kroger competes with Facebook and the tech world for software engineers at NRF 2019, Retails Big Show:

    How Kroger Competes for Tech Talent

    In terms of the number of employees, I think you will have the same number but the skillsets will be a lot different. If you look at digital, for example, we have 500 people in our digital team. Within 2-3 years we will have a thousand. With software engineers, it is a completely different type of talent. Yes, we compete with (Facebook). It’s kind of fascinating.

    It’s important for people to eat. It’s important for people to eat things they like. If you come to Kroger you are able to help people get exactly what they want when they want it. You get immediate feedback on something that is incredibly important. If the customer likes it you see it immediately. If they don’t like it you see it immediately. So you get great feedback.

    More Responsibility Quicker Than Anywhere Else

    I always tell people when we are recruiting them, I guarantee you that you will have more responsibility quicker than anywhere else. We have 25-year-old and 30-year-old people running $100 million and $200 million businesses.

    On a couple of tests that we have going on right now, we have two interns that actually did the software work to get it in place. When their internship finished they went back to college and kept working with us to finish the project they worked on. It’s one of those things that you get a tremendous amount of responsibility incredibly fast.

    The Future of Retail

    I think the store will be multi-purpose. I think about one of our bigger stores. It wouldn’t surprise me if you had a small warehouse in the back of that store. You will use the same footprint, but half of it may be a physical store that is an experience space, half of it will be more warehouse efficiency space.


  • How LinkedIn is Using Machine Learning to Determine Skills

    How LinkedIn is Using Machine Learning to Determine Skills

    One of the more interesting reveals that Dan Francis, Senior Product Manager for LinkedIn Talent Insights, provided in a recent talk about the Talent Insights tool is how LinkedIn is using machine learning to determine skills of people. He says that there are now over 575 million members in the LinkedIn database and there are 35,000 standardized skills in LinkedIn’s skills taxonomy. The way LinkedIn is figuring out what skills a member has is via machine learning technology.

    Dan Francis, Senior Product Manager, LinkedIn Talent Insights, discussed Talent Insights in a recent LinkedIn video embedded below:

    LinkedIn Using Machine Learning to Determine Skills

    The skills data in Talent Insights comes from a variety of sources, mainly from a member’s profile. There are over 35,000 standardized skills that we have in LinkedIn’s skills taxonomy, and the way we’re figuring out what skills a member has is using machine learning. We can identify skills that a member has that’s based on things that they explicitly added to their profile.

    The other thing that we’ll do is look at the text of the profile. There’s a field of machine learning called natural language processing and we’re basically using that. It’s scanning through all the words that are on a member’s profile, and when we can determine that it’s pertaining to the member, as oppose the company or another subject, we’ll say okay, we think that this member has this skill. We also look at other attributes, like their title or the company, to make sure they actually are very likely to have that skill.

    The last thing that we’ll do is look at the skills a member has and figure out what are skill relationships. So as an example, let’s say that a member has Ember, which is a type of JavaScript framework, since we know that they know Ember, they also know JavaScript. So if somebody’s running a search like that, we’ll surface them in the results. I think that the most important reason why this is helpful and the real benefit to users of the platform is when you’re searching, you want to get as accurate a view of the population as possible. What we’re trying to do is look at all the different signals that we possibly have to represent that view.  

    575 Million People on LinkedIn Globally and Adding 2 Per Second

    Today, LinkedIn has over 575 million members that are on the platform globally. This is actually growing at a pretty rapid clip, so we’re adding about two members per second. One of the great things about LinkedIn is that we’re actually very well represented in terms of the professional workforce globally. If you look at the top 30 economies around the world, we actually have the majority of professionals in all of those economies.

    LinkedIn is the World’s Largest Aggregator of Jobs

    I think there’s often a perception that most of the data’s directly from LinkedIn, stuff that’s posted on LinkedIn and job status is one notable exception to that. Plenty of companies and people will post jobs on LinkedIn, and that’s information that does get surfaced. However, we’re also the world’s largest aggregator of jobs. At this point there are over 20 million jobs that are on LinkedIn.

    The way that we’re getting that information is we’re working with over 40,000 partners. These are job boards, ATS’s, and direct customer relationships. We’re collecting all of those jobs, standardizing them, and showing them on our platform. The benefit is not just for displaying the data in Talent Insights, the benefit is also when members are searching on LinkedIn.com, we’re giving them as representative a view of the job market as possible.

  • Accenture NA CEO on Creative Ways to Fill Jobs for the Digital Transformation

    Accenture NA CEO on Creative Ways to Fill Jobs for the Digital Transformation

    The CEO of Accenture North America, Julie Sweet, says that they are still seeing a very continued big focus by companies on digital transformation. The problem is that there are not enough workers with the right skills. Sweet believes that the US should not only upskill current workers through training but should also pivot our educational system for the jobs that are going to be created in the future.

    Accenture just opened a new Innovation Hub in Seattle which will create 300 highly skilled technology jobs by the end of 2020 and expanding its U.S. apprenticeship program.  The apprenticeship program provides under-represented groups greater access to innovation-economy jobs.  Accenture’s national program will grow to more than 150 apprentices by the end of this year, building upon the success of the company’s apprenticeship programs in other cities, including Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, and San Antonio.

    “Our investment in Seattle ensures that we have the critical talent and capabilities to help our clients create, implement and scale solutions for the digital economy,” said Sweet. “We are an innovation-led company, committed to helping this important market continue to grow and flourish as a tech destination.”

    Accenture’s innovation hub in Seattle is part of a network of U.S. hubs including in Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; metro Detroit; Houston; New York; metro San Francisco and metro Washington, D.C.

    Julie Sweet, Accenture North America CEO, discussed the current digital transformation and the need for companies to be creative in filling the current 6 million job openings on CNBC:

    We Are Still Seeing a Big Focus on Digital Transformation

    Companies are spending more on cybersecurity every year and unfortunately, the breaches keep happening. We expect right now that this to be a very fruitful career for many people for a long time and we’re seeing it in our business also. We have a $2 billion business today, growing double digits. People being hired are everything from people out of high school or in two-year degrees to much more sophisticated people that are doing advanced threat intelligence.

    What we are seeing is still a very continued big focus on digital transformation. Companies are saying there’s a lot going on in the market, there’s a lot of disruption and we’ve got to find the ways to cut costs in order to invest to become a digital business. If you think about it, half the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 no longer exists today and so the real way to succeed is to become a continuous innovator. They either merged or they went out of business. The key to innovation is accessibility and it’s no longer Silicon Valley, it’s around the world.

    Lots of Tech Job Opportunities for Those Without 4-Year Degrees

    There are also a lot of opportunities now for two-year degrees. In fact, we now have an apprenticeship program where we have a 150 professional apprentices with two years or high school degrees working in tech jobs. We’ll have 300 next year and we see that as a real opportunity for the US to do mid-career reskilling and to close the skills gap as well as bring people who’ve been left behind.

    It can be a mistake to go for a four-year degree for some people. I would go back to a parents advice to their children in terms of what are the kinds of jobs that are going to be created and what are your interests?

    Accenture North America CEO Julie Sweet earlier this year elaborated on what the country should do to find workers skilled in digital, cloud, and security:

    There Aren’t Enough Workers with the Right Skills

    It’s not so much that there aren’t enough workers, it’s that there aren’t enough workers with the right skills. If you look at unemployment today there are about 6 million jobs open and there are about 6 million people looking for jobs. They don’t have the right skills.

    One of the things we’ve been focused on at Accenture is reskilling our own workforce as we have pivoted our business to where our clients need to go which is around digital, cloud, and security. There’s been a lot of industry discussion about the need to invest and really both upskill our current workers and pivot our educational system for the jobs that are going to be created in the future.

  • Former Microsoft COO Concerned About US Universities vs. China: ‘The Big Risk for Tech is Talent’

    Former Microsoft COO Concerned About US Universities vs. China: ‘The Big Risk for Tech is Talent’

    Former Microsoft COO Bob Herbold discussed in an interview (below) the fact that computer science and engineering schools are now competing strongly with US universities. He says that even though the US tech sector continues to be strong, the big risk is talent and China has significantly strengthened their universities:

    We (the US tech sector) continue to be strong, but the big risk is talent, frankly. What’s happening in China is that they are pouring a ton of money into these massive research centers. Secondly, they significantly strengthened their universities. So today, if you rank the top ten engineering schools in the world, such as U.S. News & World Report just did, you get five of them basically in Asia which is a real surprise compared to ten years ago.

    The schools are good, the government is pouring in a lot of money, and what’s happening in the US is we are actually telling these kids who are getting master’s degrees and PhDs in computer science and engineering, we say to them, look, we don’t necessarily want you around. That’s the signal that we are sending them. It’s absolutely the wrong signal.

    They have gotten caught up in this immigration flap, which is again an issue that keeps being kicked around. What’s happening is that in 2011, 45 percent of graduates from Asia would go back home. Today, that number is 80 percent. They’re going back home to good jobs and to environments that welcome them because they know that long-term their military and their industry is dependent on great technology.

  • SAP: Imagine if We Can Work Together and Make Inclusion a Fact

    SAP: Imagine if We Can Work Together and Make Inclusion a Fact

    SAP Chief Strategy Officer Deepak Krishnamurthy said at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, “Imagine if we can work together and make inclusion a fact.” Additionally, Alexa Gorman, who is SVP, Head of SAP.iO Foundries Europe announced the creation of a dedicated accelerator program for women and diverse-led enterprises in Berlin, Germany.

    SAP Chief Strategy Officer Deepak Krishnamurthy discussed enterprise inclusion strategies at the Web Summit:

    Inclusive Entrepreneurship Across Everything We Do

    Over the last 20 months, SAP.IO has worked with nearly a hundred companies across the spectrum of both the fund and the foundry. That’s a big number given that we have been around only for 20 months. But what I’m really proud of is the fact that over 40 percent of these companies were either founded or have a CEO who’s a diverse entrepreneur or women entrepreneur. That is something that you probably don’t see in the industry much where the average number of startups that are either women or diverse entrepreneur founded is probably around 20-25 percent.

    Why is this important for us? It’s important because we want to be able to have an inclusive entrepreneurship across everything that we do. The statistics are there, so you know that less than 10 percent of venture capital funding goes to women, less than 2 percent goes to black and Latino founders, and less than 0.2 percent goes to black and Latino women founders. The statistics are pretty horrible and we need to make a difference and the difference needs to be made at three levels. It’s got to be at the financing level, it’s got to be about creating the right community, and it’s got to also be in terms of how you set up your team.

    Women and Diverse Entrepreneurs Driving Impact

    What SAP.IO decided to do was the first foundry cohort that we ran in San Francisco we said it’s going to be a women cohort. We had seven amazing startups founded by women, that is the first thing that we did in the US. This was so successful that we said why run just a cohort? Why don’t we just go and run a whole location focused on women and diverse entrepreneurs? So in the summer of 2018, we had ten great startups with women-led founders that came in and worked on B2B SAAS products and solutions jointly with us. That’s what New York is all about. New York is going to be about women and diverse entrepreneurs driving impact with our customers.

    This is making a huge difference. You cannot go and say that I’m just going to run a women-only program or a minority program for startups. You have to rethink how you do this fundamentally as a company. One of the things that we did was that our entire management of SAP.IO that’s running the foundry, over 80 percent, five out of the six accelerators are run by women. That means that you take the cognitive bias out of the equation.

    Imagine if We Can Work Together and Make Inclusion a Fact

    So you’re starting to invest in women and minority entrepreneurs in a much more proactive way. The industry average is more like 25 percent. Having 80 percent of the accelerators led by them makes an enormous difference, not just in terms of recruiting and attracting the right level of women entrepreneurs but also in terms of how you work with them, how you support them. and how you help them scale. If you look at the entire team more than 60 percent of a team is diverse. Again, this makes a huge difference in terms of how you take diversity not just as an afterthought, but keep it front and center.

    We all know that diverse teams have better outcomes in terms of startup exits. Typically startups with diverse teams have a 10-15 percent higher exits and higher returns and the idea of having a diverse team that’s managing both investment and acceleration enables a culture of diversity that goes from the top down. That’s the idea of enabling inclusiveness and diversity from the get-go.

    We all know that diversity is a fact. We also probably know that inclusion is a choice, but imagine if we can work together and make inclusion a fact, where It’s no longer a choice. Every company comes together and makes inclusion in terms of how we work with startups a priority and make this a real thing rather than doing something as a one-off basis.

    Alexa Gorman – SVP, Head of SAP.iO Foundries Europe at SAP, announced accelerator program in Berlin at the Web Summit:

    Launching the First Accelerator Program in Berlin

    We started the foundry journey in Europe just over a year and a half ago with the foundry in Berlin that we opened. I’m really proud to say by the end of this year we will have accelerated just over 30 startups in areas such as machine learning, AI, but also industry 4.0 and the manufacturing space. What we offer the startups that come to us is to really be able to accelerate through integrating into SAP’s product portfolio, but then also access to the 400,000 plus customers that we bring. We started in Berlin last year where we’ve run three programs and are currently in our third program there. We just opened Paris in October and are accelerating six French startups. In general, we like to call the startups that we accelerate the rising stars.

    I’m thrilled to be here today, of the 30 startups that we have accelerated I think we have about eight that are actually at Web Summit and are seeing phenomenal interest both from investors and from B2B companies that are interested in using their solutions. I’m also thrilled to be here today because we have an announcement. In line with what Deepak was mentioning, we’re actually launching the first accelerator program in Berlin, kicking off in March and running until June for the underrepresented minority. We will have a cohort there that will get the access and the mentorship that Deepak mentioned in the B2B SAAS spaces. It’s something that hasn’t been done or one of the first of its kind anyway in Europe and we’re basically opening applications today here at Web Summit. If there are startups here who are in that space we’d love to hear from you. Please go to SAP.IO and you’ll see all the details and the opportunity to apply.

    Deepak Krishnamurthy: We Would Love to Hear Your Dreams

    This is something that’s very important for us and we are confident that it’s going to make a big impact on the European ecosystem. If you are a startup we would love to hear your dreams, we’d love to understand how we can work with you and help you. If you’re a women or a diverse founder applications are open for Berlin, so please let us know how you can work with us. If you’re in the B2B space we can do things together that are going to be magical.

  • The Muse Founder Kathryn Minshew on the Importance of Trusting Your Instincts

    The Muse Founder Kathryn Minshew on the Importance of Trusting Your Instincts

    Kathryn Minshew, Founder & CEO of The Muse recently talked about the importance of making the important ‘irreversable’ decisions for her startup company. The Muse is a massively successful resource for people to craft and find fulfilling careers with over 50 million users.

    Although It’s not a job board you can find jobs on The Muse. Employers like to use The Muse to attract talent by telling a more authentic and compelling employer story.

    The Muse Founder and CEO Kathryn Minshew discussed the challenges of making decisions in a recent interview:

    I Wish I Would Have Learned to Trust My Instincts Earlier

    I wish I would have learned to trust my instincts. I started The Muse when I was 25, seven years ago. Because I was so young and was conscious of my inexperience I sometimes let other people overly influence the decisions that I made because it felt like I was so new to starting a business.

    Looking back, my instincts actually served me pretty well. Sometimes I trusted them and it was absolutely the right decision and there were other times I overruled them and went against my better judgment and I regretted it.

    As CEO You Bear Ultimate Responsibility for Success or Failure

    When you are a leader, particularly when you are the CEO of a startup company, at the end of the day everything that goes wrong or doesn’t work out you bear the ultimate responsibility for success or failure. When something happens that is a failure and you knew better, you overruled your own instincts or you let someone else make a decision that you really felt deep in your gut probably should have gone differently, I think those are the hardest mistakes to live with.

    I would rather trust my instincts and make the calls and deal with the results good and bad.

    Divide Decisions Into Two Categories

    Getting better at making decisions, especially small decisions is something I am absolutely working on right now. As you build a company, especially if you are trying to do something that no one has ever done before, you are solving countless problems and making countless decisions and that can be exhausting.

    I’ve tried to get better at dividing decisions into two categories, first, decisions that are reversible. These decisions I try to make quick and often try to delegate. You can get bogged down as a leader in overanalyzing these decisions, which I have definitely been guilty of. I’m working to just insure; how big is this decision, what are the impacts of getting it wrong, can we change our minds? If the answer to those is a green light I try and make it quick and move on.

    The other types of decisions are the bigger thornier decisions. It depends; is this a guiding light or principals decision or is this a structural or tactics decision?

    A Decision Making Metaphor I’ve Been Thinking About

    Here is a metaphor I’ve been thinking of. In the early days of starting a business, you are almost an explorer, so think sort of Louis and Clark, you are charting the wilderness and you have an idea. You have a small team, but ultimately you are deciding where to go. At some point, you find your market fit, your sweet spot and then you start building a town.

    You can be an explorer with great instincts with some level of training, or very little training in some instances, but when building a town you may want to actually bring in plumbers, electricians, people that have deep technical expertise. For things like that, I would empower those people, let them make decisions, and really lean into their skill sets because you hired them for a reason.

    You Can’t Delegate the Big Picture Direction Decisions

    When it comes to principals, the core ethics, the values, the big picture direction questions that’s where you can’t delegate because those are the most weighty and also the ones hardest to undo. People talk a lot about building culture, but changing culture is very hard. I think understanding where decisions fall and how reversible it is is a really important tactic for deciding how to delegate or when you need to just make a decision.

  • Uber is Planning to Start an On-Demand Staffing Agency for Businesses

    Uber is Planning to Start an On-Demand Staffing Agency for Businesses

    Uber is preparing to launch a new on-demand staffing business ahead of its first initial public offering. Called Uber Works, the new business could show prospective investors that the company can be a strong and lucrative platform for on-demand services.

    Uber is banking on the fact that their “on-demand” transportation model was a huge success. The company is also betting that its massive database of contractors can be utilized to serve as temporary staff, like security personnel, waiters, or cooks, for corporate functions and various events.

    While Uber Works is targeting people who are not Uber drivers, there’s no denying that the program could also help the company retain its drivers, or “partners,” by providing them with an alternative means of making money.

    Some of the ride-hailing company’s drivers are already moonlighting at Uber Eats, the company’s food delivery platform. Aside from the additional income, opting for a staffing job can also break the monotony of driving the whole day.

    Sources have reported that the Uber Works project had an initial trial run in Los Angeles before being developed further in Chicago.

    There’s no word yet on when Uber Works would be formally launched. However, the company is said to have already started its recruitment drive. Job ads stating that a Chicago-based special projects team is looking for applicants that have a “strong interest in the on-demand labor space” have already been posted.

    Uber Works will reportedly operate in the same vein as Freight and Uber Eats. The former connects shippers with the appropriate truckers. The latest “internal start-up” will fall under the office of Rachel Holt, the present head of Uber’s “new modalities” department. Holt’s division is in charge of the company’s multi-modal transportation drive. Aside from ride-sharing, the department is also expanding into scooters and bike sharing.

    On-demand staffing is said to be among the numerous initiatives Holt’s division is studying. However, there’s no guarantee that Uber Works or any of these other projects will become the main business line.

    [Featured image via YouTube]

  • 4 Ways to Identify Talented Salespeople for Your Business

    4 Ways to Identify Talented Salespeople for Your Business

    Do you know why a lot of businesses fail? It’s not because of poor products or service or bad accounting. Most small businesses don’t survive past five years because of the lack of sales.

    As your business starts to grow, you start looking for people who will push your products. Finding and hiring salespeople is critical for any company. However, finding the right applicant for the job is a complex process, especially since many employers don’t know how to recognize talented salespeople. Here’s watch you should look for:

    4 Ways to Identify Talented Salespeople

    1. Look for Passion, Not Just Knowledge

    Sales is a dynamic job, and a salesperson who’s passionate about their product has a greater chance of closing deals. Look for someone who’s excited about meeting new prospects and who’s happy to find a solution to a client’s problem through a well-crafted sales solution. You can easily see an employee’s passion through their body language. A company should also take steps to keep their workers’ passions alive. 

    • Teach them everything they need to know: It’s hard to be passionate about a product you don’t fully understand. Make sure each salesperson is knowledgeable of all aspects of the product, from the technical to the aesthetic, from its history to future plans.
    • Keep your team engaged: A salesperson who’s deeply invested in a product is one who’s passionate about it. Engage your sales staff by listening to their feedback and keeping them in the loop whenever there are changes in your product. Recognize their contributions and provide them with a chance for career growth.
    • Share the success: Market your product to your people too. Treat employees to lunch or host a small party when the company wins an award or receives good feedback. Making an effort to inform your sales team about the company’s success and acknowledging their contribution will enhance their pride and stoke their passions.

    2. Look for Real Experience, Not Just Qualifications

    Qualifications still matter when hiring, especially if you’re considering tapping someone young. Candidates with a degree in marketing and sales are better choices than applicants without actual sales experience or who studied a different major.

    However, there’s no substitute for experience. Candidates who have worked in sales for years or have been a part of multiple organizations have a definite edge. In this situation, employers can even overlook the applicant’s qualification as the skills accumulated by dealing with diverse clients and selling a wide range of products is invaluable.

    3. Look for Adaptability, Not Just Competence

    You need competent salespeople if you want your business to survive. These days, you need people who are not only competent but adaptable as well. Employers need people who can develop a new skill or who can learn how to sell a new product or service quickly, even if their background is in an entirely different niche. Rival companies roll out new products consistently, and there are always threats from startups. So your sales team has to be flexible enough to adapt to an ever-changing environment.

    4. Look for One With a Strong Sales IQ

    The best salespeople all share specific characteristics. They are great at developing relationships, have high EQ (emotional intelligence) and can easily understand what people want. They have tremendous empathy and are good at reading body language. And, they are good listeners. They hear what the customers are looking for and they can convince them that their product is exactly what they need. All these traits come together to make for a strong sales IQ.

    However, it’s hard to find someone who embodies all these traits. Big companies have the luxury of hiring several people who can handle different sales processes. For instance, they can hire one who’s in charge of building relationships, another one who can pitch the product and someone who will close the deal. But small companies can only hire one or two people. If you’re lucky, you can find someone who has great sales IQ. If not, choose someone who has the strongest sales IQ and be ready to provide them with the training and support they’ll need to grow.

    Conclusion

    It’s a challenge to find talented salespeople today. So once you have finally hired the right person for the job, make sure you hold on to them. Show that you appreciate them. While incentives are a good way of encouraging your employees, it’s better to make them feel that their job is secure, regardless of whether they hit their sales target or not. Relevant training, good leadership, and a supportive environment also go a long way in ensuring you won’t lose good people.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Thinking About Using AI to Recruit New Staff? Amazon’s Failed Experiment Might Have You Thinking Twice

    Thinking About Using AI to Recruit New Staff? Amazon’s Failed Experiment Might Have You Thinking Twice

    Companies that are planning to use artificial intelligence for recruitment should think twice before doing that. A new report revealed that Amazon’s AI machine learned gender bias and weeded out women as potential job candidates. The machine even downgraded applicants based on the school they attended.

    A growing number of employers are using AI to boost the efficiency of their hiring process. The machine can be utilized to evaluate resumes, narrow down a list of applicants, and recommend candidates for the right post within a company. It can then pass on its findings to its live counterpart for human assessment. While AI is an effective tool for screening resumes, it has been shown to develop bias, as proven by Amazon’s experiment.

    Reuters reported that the retail giant spent several years developing an AI that would vet job applicants. The machine was trained to look at the resumes that the company received for the past ten years. But as most of these applications were from male applicants, the patterns the AI identified were strongly oriented to that sex. In short, Amazon’s AI learned gender bias.

    For instance, the AI developed a preference for terms like “captured” or “executed,” which were words commonly used by male engineers. The machine also began to penalize applications that included the word “women” or “women’s.” So describing yourself as the head of the “women’s physics club” was a strike against you.

    A source familiar with Amazon’s AI program also admitted that the machine even downgraded applicants who graduated from two all-women’s universities. The names of the universities were not specified in the report.

    The bias shown by the AI’s algorithm became noticeable a year after the project started, and Amazon admittedly tried to correct its AI. The company’s engineers initially edited the system to make it neutral to these specific words. However, there was no way of proving that the machine would not learn another way to sort candidates in a discriminatory manner.

    The project was eventually shelved in 2017 because company executives lost confidence in it. The AI also reportedly failed at providing choices for strong and effective job candidates.

    Fortunately for Amazon, the AI hiring experiment was just a trial run. The machine was never utilized by a larger group and was never used as the main recruiting agent. Nevertheless, the possibility is high that a qualified applicant was weeded out simply because she was a woman and did not think to use a masculine term like “capture.”

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec Tells the Story of How an Employee Scammed Him

    Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec Tells the Story of How an Employee Scammed Him

    Even successful entrepreneurs can be scammed, just ask Shark Tank investor Robert Herjavec. In a recent Inc. video clip (below), Herjavec explains how the sales manager of his first startup scammed him out of business.

    Robert Herjavec of Shark Tank and founder of The Herjavec Group on how he was once scammed by an employee of his first business:

    Funniest thing that happened to me in my first company, and it’s actually only funny now because I’m sitting here and have money. So I start my own company and things are going great. I have great employees, we’re growing and all of a sudden our marketing head, Jennifer, quits. She’s got a different job. Everything’s great, we’re cool.

    As she’s leaving we’re kind of having an exit interview, it was great working with you, and all of a sudden she starts crying. I’m like oh my gosh, what have I done to her? I just loved working with you so much, you’re such a great boss, but there’s something I have to tell you.

    Bob, not his real name, who’s running sales for you, has a company on the side and he’s funneling half the deals to his own company. I looked at her and I’m like, no I’m too smart to have that happen to me. Jennifer, I don’t know what you’re talking about. So all of a sudden, I start thinking what if it is true?

    I go back to the deals that we have lost and I call one of those customers. I called them up and I say hi, just curious, why didn’t you guys go with us? Guy goes, I don’t know what you’re talking about, we actually did buy from you. My own sales manager had his own company on the side and he would take an order for us and he started another company with a similar name and it was taking those orders, fulfilling them, and cashing the checks.

    The minute you hire the first employee you have got to be careful. I’ve had people do horrible things to me in business, people that work for me, competitors, everybody. You’ve got to look out for yourself.

  • Deloitte CEO: The 3 D’s: Data, Digital, and Disruption

    Deloitte CEO: The 3 D’s: Data, Digital, and Disruption

    The CEO of Deloitte, Cathy Engelbert, calls the massive changes that are happening in business and society the 3 D’s: Data, Digital, and Disruption. These changes are bringing about new strategies of leadership and hiring and are requiring new skill sets of inventiveness and creativity.

    Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Business says that this disruption is the new normal and that this massively impacts hiring strategies: “The generation of employees that are entering now are coming from this connected generation and they think and work differently.”

    Cathy Engelbert, CEO of Deloitte and Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Business recently sat down with CNN’s Anderson Cooper to discuss disruption and how it is impacting business and beyond (watch video below):

    Cathy Engelbert: The 3 D’s: Data, Digital, and Disruption

    It’s a pretty amazing environment when you think about how to invest in AI, social, mobile, the Internet of Things (IoT), AR, VR, cloud, blockchain, or whatever shiny new tool or technology emerges. As a leader, you’ve got to make these choices. I call it the 3 D’s, data, digital, and disruption.

    Data, you’ve got to treat it like it’s the most valuable asset on your balance sheet, even though it’s not on your balance sheet. Disruption, it’s not the who anymore, it’s the what’s going to disrupt you? Then digital, AT&T is obviously investing a lot around the digital experience and the customer experience. You need a different leader in today’s day and age for that.

    Cathy Engelbert:  Worried About the Robot Apocolypse

    Think about the reskilling that is going to need to be required. Everybody is worried about the robot apocalypse and are we not going to be doing what we are today in 5-10 years? I read something the other day that said that this is more about mass redeployment, not mass unemployment. It is an interesting time and people are worried.

    I have a teenage son who came to me the other day and said, Mom, I’m afraid robots going to take over my job someday. I said thank goodness he’s actually thinking about this kind of stuff rather than playing video games. These millennials and digital natives and Gen Z’s are a little worried because that’s what they are hearing and reading and seeing.

    The World Economic Forum put out a study last year that said 65 percent of school children today will eventually have a job that doesn’t exist today. By the way, back in 1999 at the dawn of the millennium, the Department of Labor put out a report that said  65 percent of school children today will eventually have a job that doesn’t exist today. So it’s actually not a new issue.

    Thaddeus Arroyo: Disruption is the New Normal

    I like to look at this as disruption is the new normal. This isn’t just in terms of how our business environment is being disrupted. We live in a world now of constant change. The generation of employees that are entering now are coming from this connected generation and they think and work differently.

    I also think we are in a new era of leadership disruption in terms of how we approach modern problems. What wins in a world of constant change is creating a culture that can lead and create a north star to manage this change. We have to address a concept of leading in a world of change through constant evolution and moving beyond evolution to adaption.

    Most importantly, recognizing that the single most important thing is it still about people. Is it human-centered? I don’t care what business you are in, in some way you serve people and what we put together is put together by the teams that work for us.

    Thaddeus Arroyo: Creative but Collaborative

    So this disruptive element, how do you put together a culture that is creative at its heart but collaborative that in such a way you can embrace the current generations and tomorrows. We have to ask are you looking for incremental and linear improvement or do you begin the conversation of how do you want it to work?

    When you begin with how you want it to work you can do things that are transformative. And your culture has to create that because at the end of the day in this new disruptive world and the leadership model that we put in place culture wins.

    Thaddeus Arroyo: CIO is Now the Chief Innovator

    I think it has evolved. If you look at what we used to call the Chief Information Officer has moved because now the Chief Information Officer is the Chief Innovator. You can now tap into services rather than building those in the past.

    I think we are moving deep into the heart of this fourth industrial revolution and while there is a lot of anxiety that comes with that because what we will be doing is probably as disruptive as when we went from an agrarian to an information society. The reality is that the demand for this influx of human talent to do the jobs that we haven’t even defined today requires constant evolution to create those skills.

  • CareerBuilder CEO Says Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    CareerBuilder CEO Says Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    The release of today’s Jobs Report shows the lowest unemployment in the US since 1969 and CareerBuilder is now predicting that an additional 8,310,003 jobs will be created over the next 5 years. CareerBuilder CEO Irina Novoselsky says that technology is driving that growth, whether the job is a technology-oriented job or a traditional manufacturing job, technology skills are now required.

    Irina Novoselsky, CEO of CareerBuilder recently discussed how technology is driving jobs growth on Fox Business:

    Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    Technology is driving a lot of that growth. You are seeing it in two ways, both on new industries that are emerging such as AI, robotics, cybersecurity, as you would expect, and the high wage earners are seeing a lot of that growth in jobs like nursing and software development.

    We are also seeing a lot of growth on the low wage in industries that are really the American fabric such as manufacturing. What’s really driving some of the conversations around that is the technology aspect and the skill deficit that’s happening as part of that.

    The top is growing, the bottom is growing, and really the middle is stuck in a dilemma where they have to get more skillset if they are going to get there. They are either going to go up or they are going to be left behind.

    70 Percent of Jobs Have a Major Technical Component

    Employers are saying that 70 percent of their jobs have a major technical component, including in manufacturing. A machinist today has a big technical aspect to their job, more than even a few years ago. Consumers and employees are left looking at how do they upscale and career path in non-traditional ways?

    The four-year education model is really difficult for them, it’s budget constraint, time constraint, so they are looking for unique opportunities to get that education and that skillset and in non-traditional ways.

    Employers Have Turned to Training Internally

    One of the things employers are doing is creating that competency skill training internally. What’s happening is that there are not enough of the skilled employees to recruit. One of the largest things employers are dealing with is open roles for a very long period of time and they are maneuvering this talent deficit by taking it on themselves.

    One of the things that we are doing is no longer mandating a 4-year college degree for some of our roles. We are taking on the onus to bring in the people and train them ourselves. It’s a great opportunity for middle wage earners to start upscale and career pathing, learning the technology skill sets to move up or they are going to be left behind.

  • Upwork CEO Pushing to Build a Freelance Economy at Scale

    Upwork CEO Pushing to Build a Freelance Economy at Scale

    The world’s largest freelancing network Upwork raised $187 million in their initial public offering this week. They currently have 375,000 freelancers working for nearly 500,000 clients.

    Upwork is growing exponentially because of the network effect says Upwork CEO, Stephane Kasriel. “It takes a long time to build the network effect necessary to do this at scale. The spin wheel at some point starts to really accelerate. The network effect is one of the main sources of really strong competitive motes.”

    Stephane Kasriel, Upwork Inc. CEO discussed their new IPO and business model on Bloomberg Technology:

    Freelancers Use Upwork for More Freedom

    The specific segment of the freelance economy that we serve people tend to be highly skilled. Over 80 percent of the users on Upwork have a college degree and 34 percent have a post graduate degree. These are people that are truly doing this by choice. If the wanted a traditional W2 job they could easily get one.

    What they are getting through Upwork is they get more freedom. They choose to be their own boss. They get more flexibility, they can work from anywhere on the schedule they choose. They essentially choose their clients. On top of that, they typically make significantly more money than they would through the local job market.

    50 Percent of Freelancers Don’t Want to be Employees

    What we hear from freelancers is that they would rather receive a higher pay through Upwork and then choose their own benefits than work for a traditional employer. We surveyed freelancers and asked them how much money would a traditional employer have to pay you to convince you to take a full-time job with them and literally 50 percent of the respondents said no amount of money. This is really something choice as opposed to doing it by necessity.

    Using IPO Funds to Grow the Business

    We are going to use the IPO funds to try and get more new clients signing up every single day as well as getting the existing clients to spend more on the platform including cross-selling clients from one category to the other.

    We see a lot is clients start, for instance, by hiring developers on Upwork and then we get them to realize we also have designers on the platform and progressively one thing leads to another and they start spending across the 70 categories on the site. Ultimately, this is about creating more jobs on the platform because that is what we need more to fulfill the need for work that freelancers have on the site.

    The reason why investors have been really interested in the company is because of the competitive motes in this business. This is not an overnight success. This company has been around through the predecessor companies that merged together for almost 20 years. It takes a long time to build the network effect necessary to do this at scale.

    100 Percent of Upwork Freelancers Are From Word-of-Mouth

    Once you get the spin wheel going it feeds itself. Today, 100 percent of freelancers who signup on Upwork do so through word-of-mouth. Also, 80 percent of business on the buyers’ side come from free channels including word-of-mouth. The spin wheel at some point starts to really accelerate. The network effect is one of the main sources of really strong competitive motes. We think it is going to be really hard for others to imitate.

    We continue to innovate a lot as well and spend significantly on research and development. By the way, we use freelancers a lot too. There are 1,500 people who work at Upwork and 1,100 of them are freelancers. We are able to attract really really top talent from around the world to innovate and continue to push forward as we build this freelance economy.

  • Search Marketers Should Reframe Around Precision Marketing

    Search Marketers Should Reframe Around Precision Marketing

    If you are just starting your career as a search marketer, Amanda Richman, CEO of Wavemaker which is the second largest media agency network in the world, says that you should “reframe it around precision marketing instead of search.”

    Richman adds, “Folks coming up from the ranks the search have this great understanding around consumer intent. They understand how to optimize against certain signals. They should broaden that beyond the digital world to think about what insights they’re saying that they then act on that they could bring earlier into the strategy and planning process.”

    Wavemaker CEO Amanda Richman recently reflected on her career with Geoffrey Colon, Head of Brand Studio at Microsoft Advertising, and offered advice to those new to search marketing:

    What To Tell Young People Just Starting Their Career in Search Marketing

    It’s about the journey, not the destination. If you’re very linear and you think about your career and levels of advancement and steps and hard goals and in your mind at 24 you think here’s where I’m going to be in 20 years, prepare to be blown away and maybe blown out as well.

    You have to stay relevant and I’d say have a certain humility too. Acknowledge that you’re not going to master anything in this space. It’s constantly evolving, stay nimble, surround yourself with really smart people that you can constantly be learning from and your career is going to take some really interesting twists and turns and you’re going to enjoy the ride.

    Search Marketers Should Reframe Around Precision Marketing

    I would say first to step back and reframe it around precision marketing instead of search. Folks coming up from the ranks with search have this great understanding around consumer intent. They understand how to optimize against certain signals. They should broaden that beyond the digital world too to think about what insights they’re seeing that they then act on that they could bring earlier into the strategy and planning process.

    They might consider how they think holistically across an addressable television and other formats and obviously, within search itself, voice and other means, to actually get to that consumer intent and pay it off for brands. That is a tremendous skill set and an opportunity for them to really reframe from search expertise to broader precision marketing experts.

  • Amazon SVP on $15 Minimum: We Decided That This Was a Place We Could Lead Now

    Amazon SVP on $15 Minimum: We Decided That This Was a Place We Could Lead Now

    Amazon announced today that effective November 1st they are raising the minimum wage in the U.S. to $15 per hour. They are also raising the minimum in the U.K similarily.  Amazon senior vice president of operations, David Clark, says that the reason for doing this is that “we decided that this was a place we could lead now.”

    In a tweet Clark said, “Shared the new Amazon $15 minimum wage with the team here at LGB3 early this morning! Best All Hands Ever!!!” Bernie Sanders tweeted back, “What Mr. Bezos has done today is not only enormously important for Amazon’s hundreds of thousands of employees, it could well be a shot heard around the world. I urge corporate leaders around the country to follow Mr. Bezos’ lead.”

    Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos replied to Sanders tweet saying, “Thank you @SenSanders. We’re excited about this, and also hope others will join in.”

    David Clark, SVP, Amazon discussed why Amazon chose to raise their minimum wage with Bloomberg Markets and Finance earlier today:

    This is a Place We Could Lead Now

    This is really about the future. We’ve had a great year hiring and a great year of retention in fact. As we look forward we really said what do we want to be as an employer and what do we want our focus on pay to be? We decided that this was a place we could lead now. That’s why we went and moved now to the $15 in the U.S. starting November 1st. We are also moving to £9.50 across the U.K. and £10.50 in London effective November 1st as well.

    This is really us (and not a reaction to Bernie Sanders). We didn’t look at what people had to say or to our critics, we really stepped back and said what do we want our focus to be and how do we want our view on pay to be going forward? We thought long and hard about it and we landed on a place that says this is an area we can take a leadership position in and that’s why we went ahead and did it.

    Today is a Very Exciting Day for Our Employees

    Our average pay is over $15 an hour when you include all of the stock and incentive pay. What we are talking about today is a new minimum pay, minimum cash pay, which will be effective across the U.S. and across the U.K. We will talk more about what it means to the overall company bottom line in our earnings call later in the month.

    We are very excited about what this means for the company, what this can mean for customers over the long term. Today is a very exciting day for our employees as they receive this news coming up to the holiday season.

    Our focus on both price and selection are unchanged by this and we expect to continue with great prices, great service, and great selection for customers in the months to come.

    We Think the $7.25 Minimum Wage is Too Low

    What we believe is that $7.25 as a minimum wage in the U.S. is too low. We will leave it to Congress and the experts as to what that number should be. For us that number is $15, we think that’s a good place to be and we encourage other large employers to join us there. We think the $7.25 federal minimum is too low and we encourage other big employers (like Walmart and Target) to start the journey and join us at the $15 level. That would be great.

    We look at our wages and overall compensation structure in every part of the world every year. We will come back and look at it again in 2019 to determine if there is anything else needed at the time and we will do it every year going forward as have in the past.