If you were a job seeker 30 years ago, guess what you were doing on a Sunday? You were likely leafing through a heavy, bulky Sunday newspaper, yanking out the “classifieds” section, and sitting down to circle some ads. Maybe you had also signed up with an employment agency.
Either way, you were definitely not visiting Monster.com, Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, or any other job boards, because they didn’t exist yet. The internet we know and love—the world wide web—wasn’t introduced (publicly) until 1993. Now, you’d think that in 30 years, job seeking would have become so much easier, right? Nope.
“Despite all of our amazing technology,” says Rob Sentz, CINO of Emsi, a go-to analytics firm that tracks workforce data, “people are often really disconnected and disoriented when it comes to finding the right work and opportunity.” Thus, employers and job seekers are still not connecting as well as they could be.
Education, too, is the same critical link today as it was in 1991: “Education is [still] seen as a way to gain knowledge and skills that can be used to communicate and demonstrate your ability to enter the world of work,” says Sentz. In other words, a good education is currency—it's an opportunity for you to land a great job.
People. Work. Education.
“We [have] three very different spheres we are trying to align,” says Sentz. How will this alignment be made? Through data.
And you know what has changed in 30 years? Data: the way we collect it, analyze it, and apply it. The technology of 2021 can sort through massive amounts of information at a speed and capacity that humans (especially humans from 1991) cannot match—enabling Emsi to scan resumes, job postings, and higher-ed curricula to determine workforce trends and labor demands. It’s information that we at MBS use to shape curricula. By creating the alignment mentioned above, “[it will be] easier for people, education, and work to connect," says Sentz, “which creates prosperity for all parties involved.”
Win, win, win. View on to learn more--and Happy Sunday!