The Future of Work: The McJob Imperative

Coauthored by?Chris Shipley ?

American enterprise owes a debt of gratitude to McDonalds. And ice cream shops, local grocers, community swimming pools, diners, and even next-door neighbors. Theses, among many others, were our first employers. They weren’t glamourous jobs, by any measure. Some even denigrate them as the “McJobs” of our workforce. But let’s be clear about one thing: they taught us how to work. And for that, big business, and frankly all employers and coworkers, should be grateful.

First Jobs

As teenagers, we yearned for two things: the independence that having our own money provided and the variety of ways we could earn that money, even without much skill.??In our instance, before we had both graduated from college ready to begin our “professional” careers, we had already each held nearly two dozen jobs. From babysitter to painter, camp counselor to grocery store bagger, department store clerk to office temp, these jobs offered one thing in common: they taught us how to work.??How to show up on time, dressed appropriately, ready to work. Here is a great list of first job lessons . What did you learn on your first job? Please let us know in the comments.

From these varied tasks and jobs we learned a tremendous amount about people, and more importantly, ourselves. We learned how we were perceived and valued.??We learned when and how to speak to different audiences. We learned to decipher motivations and assuage egos. We learned about power and how to use it effectively. We learned what types of managers and leaders we wanted to work for and the types we wanted to be ourselves in the future. We learned the importance and value of showing up, owning it, and taking more responsibility than given. We learned to manage our own expectations as well as others—this last one is a continual struggle.?

Whether you attend university or a post high school training program or nothing at all,?your professional career starts somewhere. Most likely, you have a pre-professional job or two in your history. In fact, we would bet that’s where you learned the foundations of how to work and how to work with and for others.?If your first job was your first professional job, we venture to bet you struggled more than most to learn the all important non-cognitive skills of work. As the fourth industrial revolution marches on, we predict a gap in early work experience will be a greater disadvantage than almost any other gap.

Everyone I Work With Is A Moron.

Recently, Heather had occasion to help her niece start her path in work. Where we showed up and secured entry jobs with seemingly little effort, Heather’s niece went to no less than 30 places to secure her first work experience. (She is now a fry cook at a summer clam shack).??On a recent evening, she returned from her shift to announce to Heather that “Most of the people I work with are morons”.???“Honestly, get used to it,” Heather advised her. She then went on to school her niece about the differences between individual performance in the classroom and the collective performance of the workplace.

Much of work is much more than the job at hand.??You learn that not everyone works at your level, and that you are undoubtedly failing to meet someone else’s expectations.??This understanding of your value and the value of others is an important part of self-awareness.??

Workers Age 30 And Younger On The Sidelines

Unlike school, where faculty set the milestones for individual success, work is a team sport.?Entry level, pre-professional jobs always helped young workers make that transition from individual to collective achievement.??That may be changing, however.??A recent report in the?Washington Post noted that, “Workers age 30 and younger are staying on the sidelines at rates not seen since the 1960s and ’70s, when women weren’t yet?entering the workforce ?at the level they are today.”

Researcher?Paul Harrington, ?director of the center for labor markets and policy at?Drexel University , finds that only 26% of youth are currently employed. Interestingly, he also found that there has been a rapid influx of older workers into traditional teen jobs.??Countless social and economic pressures account for this change in the workforce, and no doubt that high among them is the disruption of the manufacturing-based economy. Service and knowledge-based jobs are displacing traditional workers, and investment in re-training isn’t keeping pace. Out of work and out of fresh skills, mid-career workers resort to the low-skilled jobs they knew in their youth. For more information about this phenomenon, please see our article The Hard Truth About Lost Jobs: It is NOT About Immigration .

The Growing Importance Of Uniquely Human Skills

The decline in young people engaging in these early jobs will signal bad news for American business who – perhaps unknowingly – have come to depend on early non-professional jobs to give the workforce the uniquely human skills[ii] they need to succeed in a workplace that will increasingly depend on non-cognitive skills such as motivation, self-awareness, and social competence in order to learn and adapt to the rapidly changing conditions of work.??(For more information on this, see Seven Facts On Non-Cognitive Skills From Education To the Labor Market (Hamilton Project).? Uniquely human skills such as collaboration, communications, and creativity increase in value as routine and predictable, if cognitively intensive work, can be done by automated platforms, software, and systems.??

It’s important to understand the economic implications of this transfer of work tasks from humans to algorithms. As technological systems from software to robotics take over more and more routine and predictable tasks, jobs in the middle class are evaporating first, and with them the erosion of the middle class (per Pew Research, we have lost?10% of the Middle class in the last 45 years already). Middle skill jobs in blue- and white-collar sectors often focused on routine cognitive and physical processing—the hallmarks of the last industrial revolution. Those tasks are now easily assumed by technology in the fourth industrial revolution.

These early jobs teach us to these skills, whether it’s learning to work with “morons”, as Heather’s niece might ineloquently say, or fully understanding the value you contribute to an organization. Early work, as much and arguably even more, than skills-based training and professional education, is the foundation for a productive career.?

Source: WSJ | College Grads Face Skills Gap In the Workforce

STEM or STEMPathy?

By most expert opinions as technology continues to assume more and more routine and predictable tasks, the demand for uniquely human, non-cognitive skills will continue to rise. David Deming's work focuses on social skills-- a core component of uniquely human skills-- concluding that STEM skills alone are insufficient for job security. In fact, in a recent Harvard Business Review article, Deming contends "Research: Technology Is Only Making Social Skills More Important". Thomas Friedman of the NYT refers to STEMPathy jobs -- those that combine STEM skills with empathy and other uniquely human skills. In our view the sooner young people can engage in the workforce the better to hone these skills the better equipped they will be to adapt and thrive in the future of work.

So, the next time you’re interviewing a job candidate who’s put in her time at McDonalds, don’t be so quick to dismiss the value of that “McJob”.??As importantly – and perhaps a relief to our fellow job hoppers -- the tide is turning;??experience in multiple companies, roles, and cultures can evidence an individual adept at adapting to change and thriving in the emerging world of work in the fourth industrial revolution.?

Afterward and Request for Engagement

It’s quite likely that much of our interest in the future of work began back then, more than 25 years ago.?Or, maybe, we are just now trying to rationalize our early resumes as unfocused job hoppers. You decide.??

So, tell us what was your first job or jobs and what did you learn?

[i]1)McJob is a trademark of the McDonald’s Corporation?https://www.trademarkia.com/mcjob-85267140.html

[ii]Note: we use the terms “uniquely human” and “non-cognitive skills” rather than ” “hard skills” and “soft skills”. The hard/soft skills terms originated in gendered notions of work and skills, where men did “hard” labor and women handled “soft” tasks These gendered notions, we believe, limits humans of any gender in the future of work.

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About The Authors

Heather McGowan ?and?Chris Shipley ?write, speak, and consult with education, corporate, and government clients on the future of work. They are currently writing a book on the topic.??You can learn more about their work at?www.futureislearning.com . More information on Heather E McGowan including speaking requests, please visit:?https://heathermcgowan.com

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