Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Karl Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Think about where you are in your career versus where
Speaker 1: you want to be in your career and the moves
Speaker 1: required to get there. It's the subject of a brand
Speaker 1: new book co written by three business school professors, including
Speaker 1: our next guest, Ethan Bernstein. Ethan Bernstein is Professor of
Speaker 1: Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He joins us from Boston.
Speaker 1: The brand new book is Job Moves, Nine Steps for
Speaker 1: making Progress in your career. Ethan joins us from Boston
Speaker 1: this afternoon. Ethan, good to have you with us. How
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tim. I'm doing great. How are you?
Speaker 1: We're doing well. Thanks. Excited to talk to you about
Speaker 1: this because it's actually based on a Harvard Business School
Speaker 1: course and research that the three of you have conducted
Speaker 1: with over one thousand professionals. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you made this book? I almost said
Speaker 1: how you built this book because it is something that
Speaker 1: you guys spent years building and it.
Speaker 2: Is based on new product development. But look, this was
Speaker 2: the genesis of the book let's start with some numbers.
Speaker 2: Every year, roughly a billion people change jobs on average.
Speaker 2: People do a job move roughly every four years these days.
Speaker 2: And what we know is that hundreds of millions report
Speaker 2: that they're disappointed with the outcome from their switch. You
Speaker 2: ask an audience the fastest they've ever gone from taking
Speaker 2: a new job to realizing it's not right for them,
Speaker 2: and usually as many as three quarters, say less than
Speaker 2: a year. And maybe they ended up in a new
Speaker 2: role they've quit quietly, and maybe they start a new
Speaker 2: job search just months after arriving a new job. Whatever
Speaker 2: the case, I personally find that frustrating people invest a
Speaker 2: lot in a job move, and so do their families
Speaker 2: and communities. The ROI should be better, and so in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, now fifteen years ago, we decided
Speaker 2: to do some research on job switching to try to
Speaker 2: make it better. And our research over the past fifteen
Speaker 2: years that's followed and supported over a thousand job seekers,
Speaker 2: shows that we actually can help. It starts with a
Speaker 2: simple reframe that we stole from the world of product
Speaker 2: design and the jobs we've done.
Speaker 1: Theory.
Speaker 2: Just like people hire products or services to make progress
Speaker 2: in their life, we find that people try to hire
Speaker 2: their next job as much as their employer hires them
Speaker 2: to make progress in their career. And that's the premise
Speaker 2: in the framing behind the book.
Speaker 3: Can I just say, wait, I'm not sure if I'm
Speaker 3: following you, but I've often talked when I talked with
Speaker 3: younger individuals or folks in my family who are younger,
Speaker 3: you know, and starting out their job career, and I'm
Speaker 3: kind of like, you need to interview too for the
Speaker 3: job that you want as well as companies interviewing you.
Speaker 3: This is a process, but there's two sides to it, right,
Speaker 3: Like you really need to kind of figure out where
Speaker 3: you want to go, what you're looking for, and really
Speaker 3: kind of know what you might be stepping into. Is
Speaker 3: that fair?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's a supply side and the demand side, and
Speaker 2: that's why that's why we you know, Bob is is
Speaker 2: a guru, a genius in new product innovation. He's invented
Speaker 2: more products than any human being I know, and so
Speaker 2: he brings to the table the work that he did
Speaker 2: with Klay Christensen, who is well known for it's work
Speaker 2: on innovation around jobs. He'd done this idea that when
Speaker 2: consumers buy a product they hire that product for a
Speaker 2: struggling moment in their lives that the product helps them solve.
Speaker 2: There's a root cause that leads them to purchase not
Speaker 2: just the attributes and features of the product, but how
Speaker 2: the experience they'll have with it. And we find truly
Speaker 2: that's how people do and should think about the next
Speaker 2: step in their career when they make progress through a move,
Speaker 2: and that progress is defined by a bunch of causes,
Speaker 2: we call them pushes and pull forces that help them
Speaker 2: make that progress by hiring that next job, that next organization.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's even a role within their organization for the
Speaker 2: job to be done in their career.
Speaker 1: Ethan Bernstein, Professor of Business Administration. We're speaking him threat
Speaker 1: with him right now. He's at Harvard Business School. Professor,
Speaker 1: you mentioned two other names, Michael Horn and Bob Musta,
Speaker 1: who are the co authors of the book. You co
Speaker 1: wrote the book with those two other individuals. You also
Speaker 1: just mentioned Clayton Christensen, and I think anyone who's gone
Speaker 1: to business school certainly understands what a legend he is
Speaker 1: in the world of business, even of course outside of
Speaker 1: business school as well. He passed away just about almost
Speaker 1: five years ago at this point, can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about his influence on the project and this
Speaker 1: whole idea of disruptive innovation.
Speaker 2: So very personally, Clay was my dissertation advisor or one
Speaker 2: of them, and he's the person who brought us together,
Speaker 2: and so in that sense, Clay was instrumental in creating
Speaker 2: the space for us to create this book. In fact,
Speaker 2: the reason I met Bob Mesta in two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine and saw him interview a customer who'd bought a
Speaker 2: product to understand what the job he done that customer
Speaker 2: had purchased that product to serve was because Clay, let's
Speaker 2: even say vall and told me into the session in
Speaker 2: Aldridge holl Here at the Harvard Business School to see it.
Speaker 2: And that was that was the genesis for the idea
Speaker 2: of framing the book this way and doing the research
Speaker 2: that we did using those validated protocols that Clay and
Speaker 2: Bob created, but not on customers buying products, but rather
Speaker 2: employees choosing jobs. Michael Horn is a class of two
Speaker 2: thousand and six from here in education and upskilling guru
Speaker 2: who co authored a book with Clay. He co authored
Speaker 2: Disrupting Class and has since authored a number of books
Speaker 2: on education and upskilling, and so the three of us
Speaker 2: each bring something different to the table. I'm the HR
Speaker 2: Talent People professor, Michael is the education and upskilling guru,
Speaker 2: and Bob is the new product development wizard.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you something? And I feel like it's
Speaker 3: just a moment in time right now, and I've been
Speaker 3: thinking a lot about this. There's been a lot of
Speaker 3: writing about it, about the diploma divide and how that
Speaker 3: maybe explains the election outcome, and I kind of feel
Speaker 3: like it all ties in because we're going to talk
Speaker 3: a little bit later actually after you about people doing
Speaker 3: apprentice ships, which is not something that's very popular in
Speaker 3: the US anymore, but it is overseas. But I do
Speaker 3: think about education, and I do feel like employers still want,
Speaker 3: you know, academic pedigree, you know, they look for that,
Speaker 3: and yet we have a lot of Americans that don't
Speaker 3: necessarily have college degrees, and maybe that explains to some
Speaker 3: extent the political outcome that we just got in the
Speaker 3: US presidential election. I'm just curious if you have any
Speaker 3: thoughts that kind of tie some of this together.
Speaker 2: We're trying to help people match with organizations and with roles.
Speaker 2: That's what this book is designed to do. And in
Speaker 2: that sense, both sides, the supply side and the demand side,
Speaker 2: as we're talking about before, gets stuck in this what
Speaker 2: I will be or what someone has on their resume
Speaker 2: rather than what someone will do and how suited they
Speaker 2: are to the experiences. So when most people think about
Speaker 2: changing jobs, they tend to focus on the features they want,
Speaker 2: things like better hours, less travel, higher pay, a worthy title,
Speaker 2: and the employer and you know, they all sound great
Speaker 2: to me, and the employees think about, okay, so what
Speaker 2: can I put in my resume to fit all of
Speaker 2: those to make all those things level up? On the
Speaker 2: job description that says that they want entry level employee
Speaker 2: with five years of work, the work experience, it's it's
Speaker 2: all a sales job from person to person on the
Speaker 2: basis of the features and the attributes rather than the
Speaker 2: experiences and what will actually be done. And so part
Speaker 2: of what we're trying to do is make this a
Speaker 2: conversation instead about the forces. What are the things that
Speaker 2: are pushing someone away. We have fourteen push forces that
Speaker 2: we've found over these one thousand plus individuals we've interviewed,
Speaker 2: and what are the pull forces? What are the opportunities
Speaker 2: they see that pull them towards something, and when those
Speaker 2: things align, they create enough of a pull and a
Speaker 2: push aligned to overcome the habit of the present and
Speaker 2: the anxiety of a new solution that keep people in place.
Speaker 2: And it's not about all of those attributes. Those are
Speaker 2: nice things to have, but it's actually about the progress
Speaker 2: towards those pushes and through those pulls that someone is
Speaker 2: going to actually make. And so in that sense, it
Speaker 2: does align with the idea of diplomas and how we
Speaker 2: think about their role, because some things require it and
Speaker 2: some things don't. But we're not really talking about that
Speaker 2: because we're just thinking about the attributes rather than the
Speaker 2: experiences and the dues.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some incredible names that have blurbed the book.
Speaker 1: Read Hastings, the co founder and executive chairman of Netflix,
Speaker 1: writes that Job Moves is packed with stuff I wish
Speaker 1: I'd understood forty years ago. Followed these nine steps full disclosure.
Speaker 1: He's also on the board of Bloomberg. I just learned.
Speaker 1: But it kind of raises a point like, this is
Speaker 1: a guy we're talking about who's, you know, co founded
Speaker 1: a company that revolutionized media. He's worth seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index. Yet he says he
Speaker 1: can learn from this book. Who's it for?
Speaker 2: And We've had some very generous early readers, so I'm
Speaker 2: grateful to read and many of the others that are
Speaker 2: blurbed and have mentioned the book. The book is for
Speaker 2: primarily people who have had at least one job. It
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you can't benefit from it if you haven't,
Speaker 2: But if you've had one job, then you have a
Speaker 2: sense of what is pushing you away from that and
Speaker 2: what might be pulling you towards something else. In that sense,
Speaker 2: then it's also about people who are on some kind
Speaker 2: of quest, somebody who wants to make progress. So one
Speaker 2: of the things we did with these sixteen pulls and
Speaker 2: fourteen pushes, we then looked at for patterns, and we
Speaker 2: found four patterns are typically on one of four quests
Speaker 2: they might be trying to get out. Those are people
Speaker 2: who are trying to reset what their job is expecting
Speaker 2: of them and how it manages them in that daily life.
Speaker 2: It might be about people trying to just take the
Speaker 2: next step. They actually like both parts of them. They
Speaker 2: just feel like they're ready for something else. They're trying
Speaker 2: to get ahead, and the world is sort of designed
Speaker 2: for those people. That's what we call progression rather than progress.
Speaker 2: Hey one on the off Oh.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, please finish your thought forgive me.
Speaker 2: I say, on the off diagonals though, Some people are
Speaker 2: just trying to regain control over how they're managed, but
Speaker 2: they like what they're doing. Some people are trying to
Speaker 2: regain alignment around what they're being asked, what capabilities of
Speaker 2: being asked to use, but they love the environment around them.
Speaker 2: Each one of those quests has a different set of
Speaker 2: advice that's good for a person. And so when I
Speaker 2: hear someone like read, who I think has probably seen
Speaker 2: at all, say that, it probably means that he's imagining
Speaker 2: that if he'd known sooner the way in which to
Speaker 2: use that common language, he could have more quickly come
Speaker 2: to the conclusion that he was on this part particular quest,
Speaker 2: and therefore this kind of step was best for him
Speaker 2: at that stage in his career.
Speaker 3: One thing I want to ask you. There's a story
Speaker 3: that's up on the Bloomberg today about recent college graduates
Speaker 3: are feeling a cooling US labor market. The gap between
Speaker 3: the unemployment rate for recent grads and the overall rate
Speaker 3: for Americans with a college degree widened to two point
Speaker 3: eight percentage points in September. This is data from the
Speaker 3: New York Fed. It's the largest on record going back
Speaker 3: to nineteen ninety aside from a few months early on
Speaker 3: in the pandemic. And I guess what I want to
Speaker 3: ask you these nine steps that you talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: is it only do you have the ability to follow
Speaker 3: it in a strong job market? In other words, I
Speaker 3: guess you know it's easy to kind of put your
Speaker 3: priorities and think about things when there's lots of choices,
Speaker 3: But when things are a little bit more difficult, is
Speaker 3: it tough to do that?
Speaker 2: When the three of us got together to write a book,
Speaker 2: it's an excellent question. I'd write a book about careers.
Speaker 2: We promised ourselves we wouldn't write a book about the dream.
Speaker 2: We would write a book about trade offs, because ultimately,
Speaker 2: that's what a good career looks like. It's a bunch
Speaker 2: of trade offs that you make with priorities attached to
Speaker 2: one or the other piece of that. That's why different
Speaker 2: quests are different people at different times, and most of
Speaker 2: so filter through them over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So just got twenty seconds. So I want to
Speaker 3: let you just wrap it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so really, honestly, it's about being able to
Speaker 2: tell your story for your particular moment, and then you're
Speaker 2: not competing with a thousand people for the job. You're
Speaker 2: competing with three. And that's actually better in a tight
Speaker 2: labor market. So the more work you do, the better
Speaker 2: off you'll be, even in the kind of labor market.
Speaker 2: Looks like we're heading.
Speaker 3: Into Well, fun to check in with you, Ethan. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much. Congratulations on the book. Ethan Bernstein, Professor
Speaker 3: of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. The book is
Speaker 3: called Job Moves, Nine Steps for making Progress in your career.
Speaker 3: Right you are listening and watching Bloomberg, we're talking apprenticeships.
Speaker 3: That's next. So in prepping for this next segment, came
Speaker 3: across in Bloomberg opinion column was late last year asking
Speaker 3: the question can apprenticeships restore the American dream? And the
Speaker 3: column went into how apprenticeships in America were nowhere compared
Speaker 3: to every other developed country their stats around one year ago,
Speaker 3: noting that the US had half a million apprentices that's
Speaker 3: three tenths of one percent of the workforce, seventy percent
Speaker 3: of them tim in construction trades.
Speaker 1: Okay, that contrasts with the apprenticeship giants of Central Europe.
Speaker 1: They've got ten to fifteen times more apprenticeships per capita
Speaker 1: than we do. Even the UK, Australia and Canada they're
Speaker 1: eight times bigger than we are.
Speaker 2: We know that.
Speaker 3: We've had guests on talk about what's going on, certainly
Speaker 3: in Europe in particular. One generation ago, though they looked
Speaker 3: a lot like the United States, with relatively small apprenticeship sectors,
Speaker 3: almost all in construction. Today it's very common for workers
Speaker 3: in those countries to launch a career in tech, our healthcare,
Speaker 3: or even financial services, all happening through an apprenticeship.
Speaker 1: We've got with us somebody who knows quite a bit
Speaker 1: about this. Bertina Chicarelli is CEO of the nonprofit and Power.
Speaker 1: It works to move people and poverty to the middle
Speaker 1: class through tech, skills, training and job placement programs. We've
Speaker 1: gone up with her in the past. Pleased to have
Speaker 1: her back with us this afternoon. Brittina, how are you.
Speaker 4: I'm sure, I think it's great to be back. Thank
Speaker 4: you for having me.
Speaker 1: You know, since we last spoke to you, I've actually noticed,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's just I've been looking out for it,
Speaker 1: but I've noticed more and more people talking about these
Speaker 1: so called trades, and part of it, I think is
Speaker 1: because a lot of it has to do with there's
Speaker 1: a real lack of plumbers electricians in this country and
Speaker 1: it's driven up prices for these home services. They're also
Speaker 1: just great careers to be in. Are now we thinking
Speaker 1: differently finally in the US about apprenticeships. Again, this is
Speaker 1: not the type of this is not the exact type
Speaker 1: of apprenticeships you focus on, But are we thinking about
Speaker 1: different differently as a society?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, without question, and in fact we are saying enough
Speaker 4: taken apprenticeships in the traditional trades, But there's also been
Speaker 4: a great, great rise in the interest of apprenticeships for
Speaker 4: non traditional pathways like technology, which is never been deeply
Speaker 4: invested in apprenticeships until now. Right, we find that right
Speaker 4: now today that's about sixty thousand manufacturing apprenticeships. There's only
Speaker 4: about ten percent of that, a little over six thousand
Speaker 4: today that is in tech. But tech happens to be
Speaker 4: the fastest growing sector for apprenticeships, growing at two and
Speaker 4: a half times annually per years. So I think that
Speaker 4: we've got great promise in some of these non traditional
Speaker 4: pathways to bring people into the IT sector.
Speaker 3: Help me out how does it work, because I do
Speaker 3: feel like somebody says, well, I'm in an apprenticeship, They're like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean.
Speaker 3: Like, there is certainly a stigma I think in the
Speaker 3: United States, and we've just been talking about college degrees
Speaker 3: versus not and elections and all of that, and kind
Speaker 3: of trying to understand where we are as a society,
Speaker 3: not just certain pockets, but everybody and not everybody has
Speaker 3: a college degree. So tell us about these apprenticeships, what
Speaker 3: they're like, what kind of jobs, what do people ultimately
Speaker 3: get paid?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 4: So you know, if you think about it, most Americans
Speaker 4: don't have afore your degree, and I think that's what
Speaker 4: traditionally why traditionally the construction trades and apprenticeships in those
Speaker 4: fields have been so popular and a past to the
Speaker 4: middle class. Arguably apprenticeships in tech are the same thing.
Speaker 4: And by the way, many of these jobs don't require
Speaker 4: a college degree. What they do require are skills, certifications, credentials.
Speaker 4: And this is how it works. It's organizations like empower
Speaker 4: that provides that if you will free apprenticeship training that
Speaker 4: skills up populations that are often overlooked in certain segments
Speaker 4: of our labor economy, like tech. And what I mean overlooked.
Speaker 4: It's individuals who might be veterans, young adults from underserved communities,
Speaker 4: people without college degrees, but who are motivated and have
Speaker 4: all the apt and the appetite to do well in tech,
Speaker 4: but they need the opportunity to get those skills. So
Speaker 4: that's where organizations like empower and community colleges can play
Speaker 4: a really important role. We make it easy for them
Speaker 4: employer partners to become apprenticeship sponsors. So if you've got
Speaker 4: a skilled pipeline of talent ready to go that has
Speaker 4: those industries recognized certifications, the next step is our o
Speaker 4: employer partner to say, let's structure a six month learn
Speaker 4: to earn type of program where an individual gets those
Speaker 4: on the job skills that make them fantastic long term
Speaker 4: employees of that company and often frankly outperform those who
Speaker 4: might have polish degrees.
Speaker 1: Brittina, I could imagine somebody listening right now saying, wait
Speaker 1: a second, this sounds a lot like an internship, but
Speaker 1: by a different name. What would you say to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually very different. First of all, apprenticeships, so
Speaker 4: whether they are registered by the Department of Labor or
Speaker 4: whether they're company sponsored, typically have a commitment to hire
Speaker 4: that individual full time once the apprenticeship period has ended. Right. Typically,
Speaker 4: apprenticeships are for a much longer duration. Oftentimes internships are
Speaker 4: three months between college semesters. Apprenticeships tend to be the
Speaker 4: full time six to eight months, sometimes up to a year.
Speaker 4: So there's a real commitment and an investment that a
Speaker 4: company is making to say, now that I have this
Speaker 4: individual who's skilled up, I want to convert that person
Speaker 4: to full time. And by the way, and the tech sector,
Speaker 4: about ninety percent of apprenticeships convert to full time.
Speaker 3: All right, So talk about those full time jobs. What
Speaker 3: are they paid. I'm curious about kind of the payoff literally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's and it's good right through. We're talking
Speaker 4: healthy numbers. So these are jobs that again we're talking
Speaker 4: individuals without college degrees who oftentimes which often start about
Speaker 4: sixty thousand or so, and their jobs jobs in it
Speaker 4: infrastructures where we're seeing the greatest demand. So you know,
Speaker 4: we're talking for example, hardware installation, software support, hardware maintenance,
Speaker 4: computer systems and networking upgrades, big big emphasis in cybersecurity
Speaker 4: and cloud computing and project management. Right. These are just
Speaker 4: really core skills that any company needs, whether it's a
Speaker 4: really large multinational global company like a city or an accenture,
Speaker 4: a mid sized company like a healthcare services firm, or
Speaker 4: a small business. Right, We've got a charter school network
Speaker 4: in the Bronx that is high rate. It appredces right.
Speaker 1: Left, Hey, we only have a minute left. But I'm
Speaker 1: a little puzzled as to why the US kind of
Speaker 1: got behind with this. Why is that? Very briefly, you know.
Speaker 4: I would say that it's just not necessarily in the
Speaker 4: DNA of understanding what it takes to earn a great income.
Speaker 4: And it's not to say that college a terrific. I'm
Speaker 4: the first advocate, and oftentimes once you get financially stable,
Speaker 4: you can go on and get that college degree. But
Speaker 4: I think we've really had a preference towards that four
Speaker 4: year degree. And I think the reality is there are
Speaker 4: millions of people who benefit from an apprenticeship program that
Speaker 4: land them a middle class good job that can help
Speaker 4: build wealth over time.
Speaker 3: Very cool, Yeah, very interesting. I also wonder too, if
Speaker 3: companies at this point are thinking about survivability. How many
Speaker 3: executives HR CEO that talk about partnering high schools even
Speaker 3: to make sure that they've got the future workforce.
Speaker 1: It's really I mean, Diamond talks about this a lot.
Speaker 3: Rethink, rethink. Britina Chicarelli, chief executive Officer at and Power,
Speaker 3: joining us once again from Brooklyn, New York. So appreciate it.
Speaker 3: You're listening and watching Bloomberg