There’s some great thinking in a recent article from McKinsey & Co: The Covid-19 recovery will be digital. Now you might be thinking this is all about business and has nothing to do with careers advice, but wait. If the business world is transforming as it recovers from Covid, then the world of work must be transforming as well. And careers advice must undergo the same transition if it is to deliver true and relevant information to our teenagers. After all, these are the very people who will enter the workplace and be a significant part of the world’s digital transformation in the not-too-distant future. There’s a quote from a business Chief Executive in the article:
“We are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic deployment of remote work and digital access to services across every domain.”
The article comments “Indeed, recent data show that we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks.”
Surely change that takes place that quickly raises challenges for us all.
My thought is that there must be a digital transformation in careers advice as well as in business because careers advice is a must-have service for our teenagers. Traditional guidance in careers and the world of work needs the massive advantages that AI and Machine Learning can bring to the party. With five years of digital transformation taking place in just two months, then conventional literature, reference material, case studies and current understanding of career prerequisites are likely to be overturned and become less true than hitherto.
So how does AI and Machine Learning help in this context?
To answer this question I’ll refer back to 2015 when a computer program written by AlphaGo beat a human professional player at the board game Go. The Machine Learning AlphaGo broke the conventional wisdom and made an early move that champions regarded as fatal. Make this move now and you will lose the game. But AlphaGo didn’t know this. The system had been taught the basic rules of Go and had learned for itself the best way to play the game. Successfully!
This is what Machine Learning can bring to digital transformation in careers advice. It can assimilate the key data that defines a job and relate this to the desires, aspirations and capabilities of any individual searching for career guidance. It can enable real discovery driven by an ever-increasing bank of knowledge. Careers advice curated by Machine Learning in this way never needs a massive overhaul as changes arise in jobs and the world of work. The system merely needs to understand new or amended job descriptions or working practices and this new data is immediately available to anyone searching careers and job options. No delay. No requirement to republish web pages or reprint material. Instant discovery of the way it is today, not how it was yesterday.
Digital transformation in careers advice
It’s my view that a digital transformation in careers advice, based on these principles, will have a positive impact on all aspects of society. Teenagers will be empowered to make better decisions about their future. Parents will be better informed to help their children in these decisions. Schools will be enriched with an unprecedented source of up to date information. Industry will be presented with candidates who have developed the right skills for their chosen career path. And the UK careers crisis that is fuelled by talent shortages will be addressed in a positive way.
I, for one, can’t wait for this disruptive digital transformation in careers advice.
Alan Joenn is CMO at Working Eye Ltd.
You can contact Working Eye here, or contact Alan directly through LinkedIn.
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