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Forbes
06-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How To Succeesfully Navigate The Three Stages Of Your Career
Portrait of three happy coworkers smiling looking at camera in the office. Business concept. getty After graduating college, there is a mixture of exhilaration, and fear. This is not one of the best job markets for young adults. A 2024 report by the Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work, titled ' Talent Disrupted ,' found that 52% of recent four-year college graduates are underemployed one year after graduation. This means that they are working in jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree. Don't let this bother you. For many recent college graduates, they'll knock around for a while. Others who are lucky, will be on the fast track. Over the span of years, situations change. The initial hard chargers may burn out. If you keep trying, you'll find your way. A career will span many decades. Therefore, think in terms of visualizing your career developing over the years. It's more of a marathon than a sprint. Consider breaking down your overall career arc into three distinct parts . Each phase presents unique opportunities and challenges. It runs the gamut from launching a career after college to figuring out what to do after you're ready to retire. Early-career workers need to cultivate an array of relevant skills in their field. Mid-career professionals aggressively build their careers. Late-career workers can reinvent themselves through advisory or passion-driven roles. Ultimately, you'll need a financial plan for exiting the workforce, with a cushion of funds to allow you to enjoy your golden years. It may not be easy for some people. We're in a fast moving job market, economy, and workplace. The rapid acceleration of AI, automation, robotics and other technologies can change the game overnight. These tools have both the power to help your career thrive, or you may lose your position due to AI. Workers can't be complacent. Even if you have a good job and a nice compensation package, it doesn't mean it will last. The key is to continually move forward and be able to quickly adapt to changes. This includes getting training, finding a mentor, and learning new things to stay relevant and ahead of the curve. Upskilling is vital. A 2024 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report found 74% of workers prioritize growth opportunities, and platforms like Udemy offer courses in AI or project management The Early Stages Your early career stage starts after college. Some people graduate in a field such as software engineering with lots of opportunities and large compensation packages. Others may find themselves a little lost. They can't seem to find the right opportunity. Recent graduates face a competitive landscape, with Handshake's 2024 survey of 1,925 Class of 2025 students revealing that 57% feel pessimistic about job prospects due to market tightness and AI's impact. Don't despair. This has happened every generation. Getting the first job is mission critical. It gets your foot in the door. Try to learn as much as possible. Find mentors, coaches and sponsors who can offer advice and guidance. Volunteer for almost everything. You want to be the go-to person in the office. You'll cultivate a reputation for being a team player and delivering on your promises. Also, it shows that you can get along with coworkers, managers and clients, which isn't easy to do. Young professionals, particularly Gen Z, face a tight job market and AI-driven disruptions. To thrive, you'll need to focus on acquiring versatile skills, such as digital literacy and problem-solving, which a 2024 World Economic Forum report identifies as critical for 60% of jobs by 2030. Seek out roles in growing sectors like technology, healthcare, finance or sustainability, even if they require starting at entry-level positions. Your Mid-Career The mid-career stage , often spanning the 15 to 25 year mark, is a period of peak productivity. You've cultivated confidence and the respect of your peers and managers. If you're so inclined, mid-career workers should start working on ways to obtain senior leadership opportunities. As you are climbing the corporate ladder, it's the time when you start making progress and earning some real money. You'll want to start setting aside funds for the future. Look into opening a brokerage account, if you don't have one already. Find out about CD rates, mutual funds, ETFs, and money markets. While you may feel invincible as your mid-career is doing well, don't fall into the trap of overspending to keep up with the neighbors. Always remain mentally prepared. The job market is tough. You could one day find yourself tapped to be laid off. Workers will likely face disruptions, like AI automating roles. After a couple of decades have passed, you might be thinking about a change. It's normal to think about a career pivot or reinvention to stay fresh and motivated. Be Honest With Yourself At each interaction of your career journey, think about if you want to continue doing what you've been doing for so long. Consider thinking about new and different challenges. This is the mid-life career crisis, as you need to figure out what you want to be for the next phase of your work life. It will seem daunting. When you're middle aged and after starting anew, it's not easy. Design a plan of bold action. Think of what you're good at, enjoy doing, have some talent for and the chance to earn a good living. Then, research what it takes to make that leap and do it. Don't procrastinate. Start today, as time quickly flies by. Reinventing or Pivoting Reinventing your career can feel daunting, especially if you're accustomed to a high-paying profession, but lack passion for it. Fear of losing status or financial security often traps people in unfulfilling jobs. Start small and avoid rash decisions. Try embracing Japanese concepts like ikigai (finding purpose) and kaizen (continuous improvement) to guide your pivot. Seek roles aligning with your skills, interests, and acceptable pay to find fulfillment. To move into a new career, create a fresh, compelling narrative. Highlight transferable skills that could make a hiring manager believe you can cross over to this new type of role. Refresh your résumé, LinkedIn profile and social media footprint to show how you have the skills and other attributes that make you a contender for this new adventure. If you like your boss and company, you don't have to leave to make a pivot or reinvention. You can create your own role and reinvent yourself, while remaining at your firm. There is a trend called job crafting. This is the practice of reimagining and changing the nature of your role to fit your needs, wants, desires and ambition. The Third Stage For some, in the late-career stage, typically after 25-30 years of work, the focus shifts to reinvention and winding down. Older workers may face ageism or industries disrupted by technology. There are many who believe that they have meaningful contributions to offer, and rather not retire too early. A 2024 AARP survey found that 57% of workers over 50 plan to work past the traditional retirement age, often in new roles or consulting. Now that you're in the late 40s, 50s, or 60s, you still feel that you have a lot to offer. Rather than slowing down, now may be the time to take your career to the next level. It could lead to your last hurrah. It's now become very common for people to work in their seventies and eighties. After all these years, you may want to finally get that position in the C-suite.
Forbes
08-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Employers Including Blackstone, Walmart, And Microsoft, Increasing Focus On Skills Over College Degrees
'In a time where people might say there's no opportunities for inclusion in the workforce, we actually think that skills-first hiring is a way to say there are opportunities for everybody,' says Donna Morris, chief people officer at Walmart. Getty Images With rising costs, student protests and looming budget cuts, sentiment on the power of a college degree continues to sour. Now, top employers, while not abandoning the need for top college grads, are leaning into specific skills instead of degrees to find the right talent. The Skills-First Workforce Initiative, led by Philadelphia-based nonprofit Burning Glass Institute, is launching a career website outlining the skills needed for some of the most in-demand jobs in the market. The SkillsFirst website details skills needed for nine job titles –retail salesperson; first-line supervisors of retail sales workers; sales managers; customer service representatives; customer service managers; financial analysts; product managers; and software developers. These roles account for over 11 million workers, according to Burning Glass. Joining the non-profit in this new initiative are ten of America's largest employers, including Accenture, Bank of America, Blackstone, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Nordstrom, PepsiCo, Walmart and Verizon in the launch. 'Just being able to understand and define the skills required for a job, it sounds simple but it's actually a really big exercise,' says Matt Siegelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute. Skills-based hiring has grown in popularity in the last year, especially as diversity, equity and inclusion programs have come under attack. In September, the Department of Labor released a starter kit for employers looking to change their degree requirements. Advice included a sample rubric for 'people skills,' a list of on-the-job scenarios and interview questions. But since President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January, the department has overhauled its offerings. A link to the recently published toolkit has been deleted and leads to an error page, though it is still available through the WayBack Machine. Now the private sector is stepping in. Though discussions among Walmart, Burning Glass and the other employers have been ongoing for over a year, the launch of the website marks the first public release of specific language both employers and employees can rely on to describe job skills. 'This is noncompetitive in nature,' says Donna Morris, chief people officer at Walmart. 'Each of these companies have their own hiring objectives, their own behavioral expectations that layer together with skills.' Two candidates with the same skills may be better fits for different companies. The companies in the coalition are also not direct competitors, covering a range of industries from finance to retail and pharmaceuticals. The website lists four different groups of skills––baseline, leadership, role-specific skills and specialization––required for each position, assigning a percentage of importance and proficiency level for each skill. Take the breakdown for a product manager. Baseline skills include knowing the '4 Ps' of marketing (product, price, place and promotion) and experience leading complex sales negotiations. But the most important, and in-demand, skills come in the role-specific competencies like using market research to accurately predict the lifecycle of a product. Each is assigned a level of mastery and how important, on average, the skill is to employers. Burning Glass says this is determined by their proprietary model, which pulls data from a database of tens of millions of job postings, analyzes how each job is described and pulls out common skills, and input from the 11 employers in the coalition. The site also offers information on job-specific specializations, like computer science or user experience (UX). A software engineer for example needs to be able to write, troubleshoot and debug code while documenting changes in Git. But perhaps the most helpful information for job seekers is a skill's wage premium, which reflects how much employers are willing to pay a premium for. For example, companies are willing to pay a 5% wage premium to product managers with UX experience, a 3.9% wage increase to software engineers who know Python and an 8.3% bump to those working in open-source platforms like Kubernetes. Such specific language can be specially useful for non-traditional hires like veterans, who struggle to translate their experience in the armed forces to corporate America. It's how employers can not only hire the right people, but deepen their talent pool, according to Sheri Bronstein, chief people officer at Bank of America The launch of the website comes at a complex time in the labor market. The U.S. economy added about 228,000 jobs in March, more than forecasted, but unemployment increased slightly in the same month and DOGE-led cuts in the federal government will have ripple effects throughout private sectors. Add in fears of a looming recession and incoming tariffs on nearly all imports, and many businesses have paused their hiring and are reconsidering their 2025 plans. It's left employees increasingly feeling stuck, unmotivated and unproductive. 'There's a lot of reasons why the workforce may be disillusioned right now,' says Walmart's Morris. 'But as employers we can provide some hope and focus on investing in our people to optimize their success.' A standard skills language becomes a way for employers to educate, motivate and be transparent with their workforces about what it takes to continue to grow. The unified skills language makes working on a desired promotion that much easier. The path from customer service representative to manager, for example, includes gaining leadership skills, coaching experience and account management experience. But the power comes in being able to use that language defining skills and transferring it from one employer to the next. A unified language for 'skills become a currency that [employees] can use to apply for that new job internally or externally,' says Morris. Employers joining the initiative have already seen an impact on their own hiring practices and employee satisfaction. Verizon, which says 99% of their roles do not require degrees, streamlined its repository of 70,000 job titles down to 2,100 different roles when first implementing its skills-first approach in 2021. The company boasts an average tenure of 13.1 years, 70% more than the national average of 3.9 years, which it credits to its career growth opportunities. Skills-first gave Verizon employees the transparency needed to see the path towards a promotion across different roles, says its chief human resources officer Samantha Hammock. 'When you start thinking about where your skills match into other roles, it opens a window of visibility into a whole new world of [job opportunities],' she adds. It's a similar case at Walmart, which prides itself over the fact that 75% of its store managers, who have a base pay of $130,000 can occasionally earn more than $500,000 a year, started in hourly positions. Skills training has raised customer and store cleanliness satisfaction scores in the top third of stores participating in training, and front-line workers are now promoted to a new role within an average of seven months. Demarcating declining or in-demand skills is another benefit for early-career folks using the website, especially those deciding what job to take up in a quickly evolving labor market. 'Talent scarcity across the economy is requiring companies to rethink and rewire their hiring practices,' says Courtney della Cava, global head of portfolio talent and organization performance at Blackstone, which will be implementing skills-first approaches across its over 250 portfolio companies. Such practices are not just a way to increase retention, but also anticipate future skills needs. It's already happening. Take 'AI prompt engineering', where coders train AI large language models in answering questions, a skill required for software engineers that has become a top priority in 2024, according to Burning Glass. It was in virtually all descriptions for software engineers, but when Open AI and its competitors updated their chatbots to get better at answering prompts that were sometimes vague, the skill disappeared, reveals Erik Leiden, managing director of workforce strategy at Burning Glass. They had to ultimately remove the skill from the job page. 'There are skills that are growing in popularity now that will decline, and there are skills that will hit the radar that aren't on the radar now,' he adds. The nonprofit says it will continuously update the skills needed for each job, using AI to keep track of requirement changes in job postings across its database. Burning Glass is also already planning to expand the library of jobs and accompanying skillsets in the coming months. In its second phase, the website will host career pathways for 30 job titles, including wholesale sales representatives, security guards, shipping and inventory clerks and even human resources specialists. Ultimately it's all about unifying skills that employees already had, and employers sought out, but may have been describing in different ways. 'Why should their skills not be the currency for growth they have ahead?' asks Morris.
