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[00:00:00] Andrew Hibel: Welcome to the HigherEdJobs Podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the Chief Operating Officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

[00:00:06] Kelly Cherwin: And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the Director of Editorial Strategy. Today we're gonna talk about the future of work, recruitment, and hiring, and we're lucky to have Alexandra Levit, who is the founder and CEO of Inspiration at Work, a woman-owned futurist consulting business with the goal of preparing organizations and their employees to be competitive and marketable in the future business world.

[00:00:27] Alexandra Levit: Thanks for joining us, Alexandra. Thanks for having me, Kelly and Andy. It's great to be here. Nice to see you.

[00:00:32] Kelly Cherwin: So I'll jump in with our first question. You've been described as a thought maker, futurist, and strategist. So what do you think of these terms and how would you describe yourself?

[00:00:39] Alexandra Levit: Well, first of all, I think people tend to get a little bit overwhelmed by the term futurist.

It sounds like one of those lofty professions. No one knows exactly what a futurist does. And when I think of the term futurist, I tend to think of just someone who looks at trends that are percolating up through the marketplace, through the world, and [00:01:00] tries to make a determination about what has the greatest potential for disruption.

And that's what I try to do in the workplace specifically. So, I look at little signals that are happening and try to make an educated guess about what will take hold and what won't. And when I was writing my book, Humanity Works back in 2017, it was published actually in late 2018. There were some signs that things like a hybrid work environment, for example, would be taking hold because we knew, for example, that the technology was available for such a thing to occur. And so we were already starting to make what we call forecasts or educated, or not really predictions, but educated guesses that such a thing would occur in the business world in the next five to 10 years and when it comes to the landscape of the futurist world, I tend to look in five to 10 year increments. So with respect to how I would describe myself, I guess I would describe myself as a workforce futurist. I like to try to [00:02:00] advise both individuals and organizations about how they can see around quarters, how can they best prepare for what might be coming next because, well, we would like to think of the Covid-19 pandemic as a massive disruption that might happen once in a lifetime. The truth of the matter is disruptions are happening all the time, and we probably are only on the verge of probably another massive disruption that that will occur, whether it's a climate event.

Another pandemic. I mean, who knows what's going to happen next. And so the best that we can do is be adequately prepared for something else to happen and to be somewhat comfortable with uncertainty. And I actually think it can be somewhat of an exciting place to be provided that we are prepared. And so that's what I look at as my job, at least in the area of career and workforce.

[00:02:49] Andrew Hibel: I think we're at an interesting point in higher education, seeing what Covid-19 has done. It's really hard for a lot of institutions and people who are working at colleges and universities [00:03:00] to see where in the disruption that is Covid-19 are we, are we still in the beginning? Are we somewhere in the middle? Is it towards the end and how to kind of use your phrase, how, if you could look around some corners, what would we see as far as the possible long effects of covid on how we work in higher education?

[00:03:20] Alexandra Levit: I think this is a really good question, and I think the answer depends on who you ask. Where you are geographically, uh, what your political leanings are, what your point of view is.

I, I personally think we are in the middle still, but everywhere I go it seems like people think that we're at the end or, or it's over. And I think that higher education is actually in a really interesting position because there used to be a pretty uniform view of higher education where, it was the place that you went if you wanted to have a professional career, if you wanted to achieve a certain position in the world, and everybody went through that path, [00:04:00] and if you didn't go to that path, then you weren't going to achieve a certain level of success.

And I think that like other things in society where things are not so black and white, the pandemic being another example of that, I think that higher education now has many more shades of gray. Where do you need a degree to do X, Y, or Z? Or can you get a certification? Can you get a microcredential? Can you stop at high school?

Can you go to a trade school? And I think that that is a very unsettling place for higher education to be right now. And so I think that you can draw some parallels to looking in the middle of, of where we are right now and not being able to determine are we in the middle of the pandemic or have we concluded with the pandemic?

Um, do we need to be in higher education or can we skip the whole thing altogether? Do I need to go back to school to get a degree if I wanna change careers, or can I get the expertise and the skills another way. And I [00:05:00] think that it takes some degree of comfort with uncertainty that I think that many people understandably do not have.

And I think we all need to probably work on that. And that's an area of personal development that I think is appropriate for us all to be pursuing. And that doesn't just go for people in higher education, but goes to anyone who's living in society today.

[00:05:21] Andrew Hibel: Thanks for that excellent and thoughtful response Alexandra. I think the part that it almost suggests is, it's almost hard to parse whether or not the disruption going on in higher education is the disruption that we're working through or the disruption created in higher education by covid. Or in some instances, a convergence of those two disruptions happening at once affecting whether it's working, or attending, or being a leader in higher education. Do you have any thoughts to offer on how to direct traffic with all the change?

[00:05:52] Alexandra Levit: Well, I think trying to focus on skill acquisition, if you're a leader in higher education, being flexible in the means [00:06:00] for people to get their skills. And I know that this is going to require a change in business model for a lot of higher education institutions.

And it's the same in the business world, right? Like we are having to change the way we do business, and that is forcing a lot of leaders in the business world to go kicking and screaming into, for example, models of hybrid work. Conducting business with customers in a completely different way. So it's not like higher education is alone in this, in having to change the way we educate people and change the way we deliver skills.

But I think that that is something that is kind of a struggle. You used to really be able to deliver education in one way. You would go and you would give a two-year degree or a four-year degree, and you would have to. Either go there in person or you would deliver it online. We had for-profit and we had nonprofit, and they were two completely separate things.

And now most higher education institutions I think have to be hybrid just like most business institutions have to [00:07:00] be hybrid and have to offer people a lot more customized options for cobbling together in education for whatever meets the needs of their lifestyle and their career at any given time. And I don't think most, I mean you all would know this better than me, but it seems to me that most higher education institutions aren't really set up that way still.

And that we're still focused on that student who's between the ages of 18 and 24 years old who's going and getting an education for the first time, and then they go and they do a discreet number of years of education, and then they're kind of done with it when in fact, people are needing education all throughout their lives.

You've got people who are going to college for the first time when they're 40 years old, when they can finally afford it, or when their career has mandated it, and you've got people at all different times of their life in all different types of circumstances who need education or they need skill acquisition.

And so, as a leader, having to manage all of these different moving parts [00:08:00] does require some adjustments in your business model. And this was always going to happen. I mean, that's the thing in Humanity Works we were talking about these issues in 2017, 2018, higher education was always gonna have to change.

I think the pandemic, just like in the business world, it's only accelerated the trends that were already happening. So if anything, I think that the pandemic proved that higher education can evolve and really can do quite a lot without requiring people to be on a campus doing things from point A to point B or from this time to that time.

And that skills can be acquired in a variety of different creative ways. And that there's really no excuse to have to be in this very, very limited box. And the question really is, and again, the question is the same in the business world is, are we going to go backward? And I think that this is a choice that every individual institution is going to have to make now.

[00:08:56] Andrew Hibel: Thank you. If you have any thoughts or comments or [00:09:00] insights, please email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or feel free to tweet us at @HigherEdJobs. We're real interested in hearing what folks in the HigherEdJobs community think of these issues and how they're affecting higher education

[00:09:14] Kelly Cherwin: So, Alexandra your comments and actually echoed a conversation that we had this morning regarding how the business model of higher education might need to change and leaders might need to be more open to different types of, of work arrangements for their employees.

You know, you mentioned hybrid. I think I kind of touched on what leaders need to do, but what advice do you have for job seekers and how they are approaching their, their job search and what they could expect in the next five to 10?

[00:09:38] Alexandra Levit: Well, this is a really good question, and I think that job seekers do need to be mindful of the needs of organizations to have broadly skilled individuals who can move seamlessly throughout an organization as the organization needs to evolve.

Most organizations are still looking for people with highly in demand skills. So to some [00:10:00] degree you do have to come forth with, with a resume, with specific skills that organizations are looking for and we tend to, I mean, I specifically look at skills in five pillars of what I call career durability.

And so those five pillars are hard skills, soft skills, applied technology skills, and applied technology skills refer to you don't necessarily have to go out and be able to build a website yourself or program an application, but you do have to know that there is software available to do your job more efficiently.

So that's an applied technology skill and then having a growth mindset. And then institutional knowledge. So understanding enough about an industry to know how work gets done within that industry. So there are a variety of skills within each of those five pillars. And then together, those are known as career durability.

If you have skills within those five pillars, you have career durability. So generally speaking, you have to come to the table with a resume that has career durability, [00:11:00] written all over it. But then you have to also be able to be flexible and to be able to ideally show a breadth of skills in a variety of areas.

And that means you can move from one thing to another if the organization needs you to. And I think showing that adaptability and showing that flexibility is something that is really important in today's job market. And a lot of people are talking about flexibility in terms of your, your work environment in terms of having good work life integration.

And while that is really, really, important, and I definitely think that individual job seekers should make sure that they are going to an organization that can offer them that. I wouldn't lead with that. I'm hearing a lot of anecdotal stories lately about job seekers who just walk into an interview and the very first thing they talk about is, what kind of flexibility are you going to offer me?

What kind of balance are you going to offer me? And that is fine to find out down the line, but you are there to earn [00:12:00] a paycheck. You are there to contribute to an organization. The organization is not there to take care of you per se. So that is something, again, to find out about, but it's not the thing to lead with.

The thing to lead with is what are you going to bring to the organization? What type of expertise and skills will make the organization better off because you are working there. So you lead with that, and then later down the line you find out, okay, well how is the way the work is structured, the way the environment is being managed, how is that going to play into the current lifestyle that you would like to enjoy?

So I think that that is the way that job seekers can approach. The job search, again, being as broadly skilled as possible, showing that you have a variety of experiences that can positively contribute, that you have this career durability that we speak of, and that an organization is a good match for you in terms of the balance and life integration that you seek.

[00:12:57] Kelly Cherwin: That's great advice and I love that term, career durability. And [00:13:00] I also love the categories of the five pillars. That's such a, a good way to look at it. I know you said it has to show in the resume, but then also I think it's good for the job seeker, the candidate, to show what they bring in terms of those five pillars and for the candidate to show that in the interview as well. So thank you so much for, for highlighting that.

[00:13:15] Alexandra Levit: You're welcome.

[00:13:18] Kelly Cherwin: Looking for more conversations in higher ed, we invite you to join the HigherEdMilitary community as we discuss issues, best practices from campuses, policies, news and general trends affecting our institutions and the HigherEdMilitary affiliated community. Inspired by the deep commitment to service that veterans and military connected faculty, staff, and leaders have towards the academic community, we at HigherEdJobs, established HigherEdMilitary as a resource for both original and curated news and information, as well as job opportunities from colleges and universities actively recruiting military connected professionals.

Find resources, thought pieces, tools, and other information you need to improve your institution's ability to support this amazing community. Visit us at higheredmilitary.com on Facebook and LinkedIn.

[00:13:59] Andrew Hibel: I think one of [00:14:00] the parts we've noticed over the past year or so, as much as everything has changed as far as recruitment in higher education and the number of positions and number of folks searching, and whatever labels you want to attach to what's going on, one of the things that's actually remained constant, is the pace by which colleges and universities recruit and hire.

This thought kind of crossed our minds in your book, Humanity Works, you talk about an accelerated recruiting process. Can you tell us more about that and how you envisioned this changing the hiring process and then we want to do a GoFundMe page for this for higher education, I think you would do extremely well, cause I think a lot of folks are really anxious about how their search is going, because I think there's an expectation because folks are needed it should be going faster than what it is right now.

[00:14:50] Alexandra Levit: Yeah, I mean, we still see in higher education and government that the hiring process is not as rapid as it probably needs to be. I mean, there's still positions sitting open a [00:15:00] much longer time than I think anyone would like.

We still see labor shortages in a lot of fields, and in higher education, it really depends on what area faculty positions can be very competitive in certain areas, whereas it might be very difficult to hire in food service, for example. So it definitely depends what area of higher education we're talking about in terms of how easy or difficult it is to fill an open position.

But I think that in terms of an accelerated hiring process in general, I mean, there's a couple of things that can be done. I'm all about what I call rapid talent assembly, which refers to having a specific business problem that can be solved or specific task, and you assemble a team to get together and solve that task or solve that business problem, and then you disassemble it once the problem has been solved.

And so this relies on not having necessarily all full-time people, but making use of contract employees or part-time employees, adjunct people [00:16:00] who come aboard for a short period of time. And it really does require that you have an arsenal of people with different work arrangements, which I know in higher education and government, this is a relatively new concept, but I think having a more flexible labor pool can be something that is highly, highly useful in a variety of circumstances.

And I also think that it's something where you could even potentially use your students as part of this where you hire students to be flexible and participate in this type of labor pool as well, because this could give them great work experience and could really kill two birds with one stone. So I really think that this is something that could absolutely work for higher education if used the right way.

So I'm really a big fan of this rapid talent assembly model. I also recommend to higher education, something that's being used extremely effectively in the business world, and that's talent marketplaces, using technology to build an internal talent portal where [00:17:00] you post your open jobs and everyone within that institution can look at the open jobs and see what might be available in another department and throw their hat in the ring for something that they might have relevant skills to apply for and if they maybe are missing one or two skills, maybe they can take an online course or course within the university and quickly skill up to become qualified enough to take that open position and make those positions available internally before they're opened up to the larger external marketplace, and therefore, hopefully fill those positions a little bit quicker than if you had to go outside on the institution.

So, this is working really, really well in the business world and if higher education would be a little bit more flexible in terms of allowing people to transition from one thing to another. I think that keeping loyal talent that loves working in the university or working within that institution, I think it's a great [00:18:00] thing to do. And also by the way, I can particularly cite my alma mater, Northwestern University. We have alumni being hired all the time, both within and outside the university. Everyone loves to work for their alma mater, so having a talent marketplace for your alumni is a really smart move as well.

[00:18:17] Kelly Cherwin: I actually love that. And that brings me in a question about retention. We talked a lot about hiring and recruiting. And I know we've talked about your most recent book, Humanity Works, but I was looking through your site and you have several very interesting books and the title, Success for Hire jumped out at me and I know it was written back in 2008 and obviously 15 years have passed. (Hard to believe.) We've gone through, uh, pandemic. Like we discussed earlier, we're in the middle, we're at the end. But I'm curious, and you just talked about a system to keep good employees, but has your advice changed to employers and how they can retain outstanding employees in in 2023?

[00:18:52] Alexandra Levit: I, I think it mostly remains the same, which is to just treat people well and to care for [00:19:00] employees holistically. I mean, I do think that one thing that has changed a lot in 15 years is employer willingness to look at employees as more than just what they can do professionally. I mean, we've always cited this as something that we want to aspire to, but I think the pandemic brought this into the consciousness in a way that it never really had to be before.

I mean, suddenly this was such a traumatic event collectively, that we all shared that I think, and I don't know if this is gonna last, I mean, maybe that's a cynical thing to say, but we're only a very short time out of it. I don't know if the professional world is going to continue to show the same dedication and the same compassion and care to employees as it has the last two and a half years. But I would like to think that this is a permanent shift, and if it is, then I think that that is a change that has occurred from 15 years ago [00:20:00] where we really are looking at our people as complete individuals that we need to care for across the board, not just are they able to come and do their jobs and we don't really care about what they do otherwise. And that is something that, in terms of retention, I think is critically important. But it didn't really matter if they weren't able to do their jobs for some personal reason and they had to quit as a result.

Well, that was just kind of the way it is. Whereas now we really do actually care if they can't do their jobs for a personal reason. And that is something that actually does matter to leaders. And I think that that is a really, really positive shift and I think that particularly here in the US, I mean I think this is was true in in Europe for a long time, but here in the US the fact that people could have lives and hobbies and families outside of work really didn't um, the uptake on that was, was not really there. Um, particularly in certain industries and the [00:21:00] industries that I have seen transformed, this was not as much of a, of a big deal. So maybe people in higher education were like, yeah, I don't know about that. But in industries like law and finance, the culture shift has been incredible to watch pre pandemic to post pandemic.

I mean, 15 years ago for me to talk about work-life integration, that was actually not something that you would laugh about, is just astounding. And so the retention of employees to be able to say, we are going to be able to leave at 3:00 PM so that we can catch our kid’s baseball game after school. And to have that not be ridiculed men and women in some of these professions is a massive shift that has occurred from 15 years ago.

So I, I don't know. I would say things like work life integration, caring for the holistic employee. These are things that have changed since I wrote that book in 2008. And one more thing, I would add all of these issues that we're talking about, [00:22:00] particularly around the areas of recruitment and rapid talent assembly.

There's actually a new book coming out called Deep Talent that's about leveraging technology to match employees with available jobs will be coming out in the winter of 2023. So stay tuned.

[00:22:17] Kelly Cherwin: Well, thank you for all that. I, I completely agree that it is such an important shift. Mm-hmm. And I do as well hope that it, it stays.

[00:22:23] Andrew Hibel: I have one last question that I think is amazingly interesting to the higher education community because there are thousands, give or take a thousand or 2,000, around 5,000 colleges and universities out there. Nobody agrees on the numbers, but choose what you want. But they're located everywhere in the United States.

Literally everywhere. And what's interesting is you can have the same institution covering both rural and metropolitan areas. So, in a general population, both the metropolitan and the rural populations, are these general populations ready for futuristic [00:23:00] workplace and a workforce like you described in your book Humanity Works.

[00:23:03] Alexandra Levit: I think they are. If anything, it's actually a really good thing that. You can work anywhere now because I think that what's happened is that people have been forced into working in particular locations because they've had to be in person. And now I think that you have the choice of being able to work wherever you want, teach wherever you want, and you can spread out and enjoy the lifestyle that that you want, whether it is in a rural location, a suburban location, or an urban location, or you can move between the three. Now where we do find where I am seeing problems, to be honest with you. Is with taxes. Now, I, I, I'm not sure you expected me to bring that up, but I think a lot of organizations didn't anticipate about, um, allowing people to work from different locations are [00:24:00] the tax implications and the fact that it can be very complicated when, um, people are, are moving to and fro from different states, different localities.

So I just advised employers higher education institutions, to just be aware of those issues and if you're an individual, to just make sure that you are reporting to your institution if you are moving back and forth. But otherwise, I think that the last couple of years have been a great opportunity to find a location that is something that's more palatable to your lifestyle, and to use that opportunity to relocate to either a suburban, urban, or rural location that is something that is best for you and something that best supports your lifestyle.

[00:24:42] Andrew Hibel: Thank you. We'd love to hear from you what your thoughts are about any of these subjects, or if there's any questions you have for us, please email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or tweet us at HigherEdJobs. And please remember tax questions we can't answer. We suggest you speak [00:25:00] with your own professional advisor to figure those out. Apologize on that one, but we may pretend to be tax lawyers, but we're not.

[00:25:07] Kelly Cherwin: Wait, I thought you are a tax lawyer.

Andrew Hibel: not as far as you know.

Kelly Cherwin: Thank you, Alexandra. It's been so nice having you here today.

Andrew Hibel: Wonderful to see you.

[00:25:14] Alexandra Levit: Thanks for having me, guys.

[00:25:16] Andrew Hibel: To all of our friends and listeners out there, thank you again for listening, stay classy academia.