Competing in the Global Workforce

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The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

This book gives a great description of what happened and why sitting there complaining is not going to help you. The first two chapters are really good. The second chapter explains the 10 things that flattened the world and screwed up your life. The rest of the book is up to you; he is kinda redundant (look it up) for me, but he had me at Chapter Two.

You need to know this if you work for pay

Unless you are living in a cave eating bugs, independently wealthy, or under 10, you probably are one of the millions and millions of Americans going to work on a daily basis to pay the mortgage, put food on the table, and pay those bills.

If globalization hasn't hit you yet, you're not trying, and you're probably not in the U.S. The one thing that is absolutely obvious about the new brave one world, it that you've got to keep your skill sets up to date...or at LEAST know what's most in-demand in your field of work.

It use to be that you just had to worry about competing with the guys from your school or in your region, but lucky you, you get to compete with the whole wide freaking world!

Now before you start crying about fairness, OK, you already started, I'll wait.......

Feel better. You can't stop it. You can write your Congressman/woman to tax imports, protect American jobs, blah, blah, but it won't help because that ship sailed while you were shopping at Wal-Mart.

Here's what you need to know. Come closer. For now on, you've got to view yourself as your own little cute corporation. Your product is your skills and you better have a pretty good idea of what their worth in the market place. You also better get use to the fact that you will need to continually update them throughout your working life. You're thinking, "Crap, I hated school." Hey, they hated you too, but there are multiple ways to keep yourself on the cutting edge of your talent pool. Be creative. Oh, you're not creative, well see my next post.

Back to globalization. The good news is globalization also opens doors to you personally that weren't possible ten years ago. So, get off the couch, turn off the TV, push your little shoulders back and start thinking about where you want to be in five years. You look good in an up-right position.

I've got news for you, your government is WORRIED about our (you, me, the American workforce) ability to compete in the global market. You see you're a little cog in a spocket and we don't have enough sharp cogs, or put another way: cogs with higher order thinking skills. Maybe the government should have given that more thought before they instituted some of the worst education reform in the history of mankind, but that's another subject. Back to the subject at hand. Uncle Sam wants YOU!!! Well, actually he wants you if you're a science or math major, an engineer, etc. But he's just being short-sighted. In the future he's gonna need you're creative mind so whether you 18, 25, 55 or 75, our workforce is in danger and you do have a future. See, somebody wants you.

FIRST STEP. Go find out your local labor market information. Your what? Your state should have a labor market web-page that can tell you stuff like the current and future prospects of employment in your field, salaries, etc. FIND OUT IF ANYONE'S GONNA HAVE A JOB IN YOUR FIELD IN FIVE YEARS! Explore. Start Googling (I always love typing that) careers you're interested in pursuing. That's it; dare to dream.

Good Luck. If you've got questions, I'll try to answer them or point you in the right direction. You don't have a lot of time, the world snuck up, sucker punched you and took your job while you were watching TV. It's time to do what you have to do to fight back- surf the web (what did you think I'd say?). Better hurry, Congress is after the freedom of the web too.