Keeping Up With Change
Posted July 23rd, 2012
If you are considering a career change or even a new job in your field down the road, you need to start preparing now for the new kinds of skills you will need. That’s the advice from three business analysts, Leonard Schlesinger, Charles Kiefer and Paul Brown.
They believe it takes about 1,000 hours of retraining to get ready for another career. And they are not talking about the time it takes to do the actual job hunt. This is in addition to the job search.
The reason for this is the pace of change. Some estimate that the amount of new information accumulating doubles every 18 months, and that the time period for this doubling is continually shrinking. The point is, they say, we have to work harder just to keep pace with this information change. In absolute terms, can you keep up in this race? That would be hard to do. But, they add, that is not the relevant point – the question is can you keep pace or even outrun your competitors: The people you will be going up against in looking for that new job.
They make the assumption that, generally, three-fourths of what you learn in college doesn’t change that much. These are the basics. But the other quarter is the stuff that is subject to change, and that the knowledge loss takes place over a time period of about five years. So, they say you would have to recover one-fourth of your college education every five years. They estimate this to be about 300 hours a year, or six hours a week. So, doing these back of the envelope calculations, you get some idea of how much training you should be getting at your job now just to keep pace with knowledge change.
So, if you get these six hours a week, you should be OK. Every four years, about 1,200 hours of knowledge will become obsolete, but you will be replacing it with 1,200 hours of new knowledge. But, remember, the treadmill doesn’t stop – you will have to refresh your knowledge continually with life-long learning.
Now, you might say, I’m not an engineer or an IT professional, does this really apply to what I am doing? Maybe not, and maybe you won’t need such an intensive program. But, the advisers say, don’t count on the fact that you will be able to serenely move up the company ladder and gradually acquire the expertise you need along the way. Those days are gone. With the pace of change and the global economy, disruption is now the norm.
If you’re looking for a new job, send your resume to a recruiter at Bayside Solutions. We’d love to talk to you about the many terrific temporary and direct-hire assignments open at some of San Francisco’s best companies. Contact us today.
