Career Advice: Be Hands-On Problem Solvers
A new book by economists Richard Murnane and Frank Levy confirms the guidance Prof. Yabut’s been giving lately to job seekers and students: find a career that’s hands-on and challenging (to avoid both outsourcing and obsolescence). Of course, the Harvard and MIT professors use fancier language (and a lot of charts), but reach a similar conclusion in The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market (Princeton University Press and Russell Sage Foundation, June 2004).
You can find a good summary of their findings (and even an important chart), in a Harvard Monthly Q&A (May 2004). Their insights include:- We will eventually return to full employment. But it will be full employment with a different set of jobs—the jobs lost to computerization and to other countries are not coming back. This is the essence of the book—how computers are driving long-term change in the U.S. job market and in the skills the job market now demands, and how the right kind of education creates the essential skills for success in future job markets.
- “Check red” We argue that the jobs growing in number share two general skills that computers cannot replicate. One is expert thinking the ability to solve new problems that cannot be solved by rules. (If the problem could be solved by rules, a computer could do it.) The second general skill is complex communication, the ability not only to transmit information, but to convey a particular interpretation of information to others in jobs like teaching, selling, and negotiation.
- Carpenters, plumbers, and mechanics and other craftsmen can’t be off-shored—they have to work at the site of the problem. But more important, their work can’t be automated because they constantly encounter new problems for which they have to construct new solutions—they are constantly applying expert thinking skills.
- Lliteracy and math are critical skills necessary to acquire the knowledge to be an expert thinker in any field. The skills needed to be good at complex communication and expert thinking can be taught in any subject area: English, history, science, etc., and need not compete for space in the curriculum.
The professors have a lot of ideas on how to educate and train a workforce for these high-end, challenging jobs. As usual, Prof. Yabut reminds the squeamish to stay away from law.
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