World War III on a coronavirus and a post-war view of work
The 21st century has produced some of the most life-changing technological advances and inventions. From electric and self-driving cars to smartphones and smart watches; social networks and sharing platforms such as YouTube and Facebook to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics; the world as we know it, has changed Plenty.
It is not an exaggeration to say that we have even superseded Futurama’s 1000-year cryogenically preserved Philip J. Fry’s experiences after he was revived in the 31st century in many respects . Our technological advances in less than three decades have truly dwarfed the visionary creations of Matt Groening (a 13-time Emmy winner also behind the Simpsons) who created the show in mid-1990s.
Indeed, life in the 4th industrial revolution has changed relatively fast. All these technological developments have further allowed us to not just change the way we socialize with and meet one another, but also the way we, companies and employees, are capable of working. Employees working remotely, corporations expanding their mission and product offerings all over the world, and employment contracts becoming more flexible and nontraditional are no longer mere anomalies. Such are in fact on a rapid rise with the growth of the so-called gig economy where people rely on gigs to make ends meet. Despite growing populist and regressing views as well as an increasing number of nationalist or protesinist governments around the world in recent years, a free market economy is still a dominant force today.
Over the past 3 months, change has been unusually faster than what we’re used to. Its rate has been unprecedented in the recent history of humankind. This change is not due to a 5th industrial revolution of sorts. It’s one narrated by need. By a greater force, yet coming from the smallest of all beings. A virus named COVID-19 or the novel SARS-CoV-2. Perhaps superimposed on some human incompetence and ineptitude. But for the most part by nature as we know it.
The COVID-19 pandemic and losses of human life and livelihoods as a result of it have been front-page and above-the-fold news daily with all media outlets regardless of political, technological, and social views. One the one hand, we seem to be heading towards a colossal global recession seemingly orders of magnitude worse than the 2008 housing market correction and the subprime mortgage crisis. On the other hand, progressive decisions regarding how we work and live, driven by a need to respond quickly to manage risks and reduce losses, appear to have expedited much needed reform in many areas. Education has been steadily moving online.
The gen-z learners have been known to prefer YouTube education to one involving boards and chalks or markers. But universities had for the most resistance despite being threatened by MOOCs, the likes of EdX, Coursera, Udemy, Udacity or startup “universities” like the highly successful Lambda School. Yet, in a matter of a week or two, the majority of universities in North America have gone almost fully online. The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada had a number of online or blended courses prior to the pandemic but the administration took more than 200 undergraduate courses online after a week of cancellations to prepare for the shelter-in-place or physical distancing decrees from experts and governments. And for the most part, very successfully.
Remote work and work from home (WFH) were frowned upon by a majority of employers and managers. Same people moved their entire teams in a matter of days to behind the screens of Zoom, Skype, Google hangout/meet, and a dozen other video conferencing platforms previously only used to connect to staff on work travels. They reached out to their staff’s home offices, kitchen tables, and bedroom dressers, all to protect their health and safety. And those of the communities and cities they belong to. For many sectors and job functions, WFH can work well and perhaps even better when you factor the impacts on work-life conflicts, commute times, traffic, pollution, cost of transportation, and even job satisfaction. But this is not achieved by just changing where bums touch seats. It requires careful planning and execution.
Another place needing proper planning and strategizing is where universities and industry intersect: the talent supply chain. In recent weeks, a large number of jobs for new grads, internships, and summer jobs have been either cancelled or delayed in response to the challenges and uncertainties arising from the pandemic. While understandable and justified in many cases, in many others lack of foresight and prudent planning is worrisome. The situation is so bad there are now sites, platforms, and social media accounts solely dedicated to aggregating the latest updates on what is on and what is gone. There is even a Twitter account that tracks the status of 2020 internships.
Academics and industries in demand of tech and engineering talent should have every reason to be doubly concerned with the cancellations of “professional experience” (PE) positions such as internships, coops, and summer jobs. Let’s explore why.
With the rise of the gig economy combined with the out-of-this-world (and I mean literally) thinking of genius entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, we seem to be constantly pushing the frontiers of technology both in terms of reach and capability. It is no surprise that the engineering and STEM fields account for many of the top jobs of the future. From software and biomedical to clean energy, the engineering or more generally STEM opportunities are becoming increasingly the dominant drivers.
With the addition of remote working capabilities for some and the evolution of our free market economy, employers have been faced with the challenge of how to shift to a new mindset of accommodating and thriving in this new domain. In this mode of operation, the fight for tech talent has been real. PE positions not only allow for a better selection mechanism to find the next set of human resource acquisitions (companies like Google and Facebook have for long used their summer PE positions like a 3–4 month “job interview”) but also help with the employers’ brand and culture awareness on college campuses. They also provide much needed financial aid for many whose student debts have now surpassed one trillion dollars in the US alone. Benefiting from these industry opportunities, students who engage in PE instances typically make better education choices (e.g., elective courses they pick after their PE), perform better academically, and have a higher chance of landing a satisfying job fresh off the campuses, even if it’s not by going back to where they spent their PE months. Though, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the intern retention rate is approximately 70% — this means that only 30% of interns do not land a job at the company afterwards.
It is thus not a surprise that most top engineering schools have increased spending and support in the areas of PE and embedded experiential learning (EL) in recent years. The value proposition is very clear for all stakeholders: students, academic institutions, and the companies all win. This is what I call a “beyond-win-win-win” scenario. And now, all that is in jeopardy. Just like the size and extent of the global recession we are going to land on, the loss associated with the mass reduction of PE opportunities for our post-secondary students is very hard to estimate. A wait and see strategy is not acceptable.
Let’s face it. When the dust of this pandemic settles, just like the era after World War I and World War II, the world will be a new world. Humanity will look at everything from social interactions to supply chains very differently. Some jobs will disappear a lot faster than we imagined. Some will change in nature. And, as the conservation laws would dictate, there will be new spaces filled with new opportunities. As we move to a new world, here are two sets of recommendations for two communities with significant impact. Let’s best prepare for “life after COVID-19”.
What can students and new grads do?
The following list can prove valuable to turn challenges into opportunities (and of course do not forget physical distancing and helping those in need when possible):
1- Reach back to your school’s career centre or corporate relations (CR) team for support,
2- Go online: explore, network, and connect,
3- Adjust and calibrate your PE expectations and have an open mind,
4- Consider opportunities in other sectors and geos (international?),
5- You’re a learner and problem-solver: whose problem is a best fit (forget traditional barriers of disciplines),
6- Flex your entrepreneurial muscles, or train your inner intrapreneur: weak economic times have created some of most valuable and innovative companies we know today,
7- Start that personal or volunteer project, and finally,
8- Learn better and faster online.
What can employers do?
1- Talk to university career centers and CR offices you worked with to post your job descriptions in the past openly. They know the pain points and are talking to all levels of government and planning to minimize the negative impacts. Chances are they have creative ways to enable you to continue benefiting from the PE students to get creative and inexpensive work done while also securing employable talent for the near future (equally valuable is identifying the bad apples or misfits who’re just great at traditional interviews).
2- Have an open mind, apply design thinking, and exercise a flexible and creative approach towards your 2020 and 2021 hires. You never know, what you learn here out of sheer necessity or as we hear often these days, “out of an abundance of caution” might actually stick around for way longer and benefit you on a longer run. So stay ahead of this gnarly curve.
3- Do not reinvent the wheel. WFH or remote work might work for you. And if they do, there is plenty of know-how around them. Consult the literature and the pros of this game. Innovative pro-remote-working companies, such as Remote Year, have offered some insightful tips and strategies to follow to better enhance workplace productivity and improved employee morale and happiness.
Symba, a startup based out of San Francisco, is a prime example of ventures in the business of facilitating remote internship opportunities for both employers and interns. Since the onset of the virus, they’ve received a voluminous amount of requests from various companies and students regarding internship cancellations.
InsideSherpa, is another example of an organization that is facilitating online employment experiences. Some sectors such as healthcare and various essential businesses have actually seen a surge in demand and business. They might be having a totally different problem: how to target, hire, and deploy new people to operate well. Companies like Mesh AI, a technology startup and category leader in “socially intelligent staff scheduling” cloud platforms, enable employers and managers to communicate and coordinate shifts and other work issues with many staff at scale.
There is know-how. And there has got to be the incentive for all to act. It is a time of war. A global war against a pandemic that has taken many thousands of lives already and is threatening entire business sectors.
This is where predictions of Futurama juxtapose those of Nostradamus.
Who are the students, universities, and employers fittest to not only survive but also flourish beyond these trying times? Is there a COVID-19 beyond win-win for us all?