How might we re-employ, redeploy or tap into a new pool of HR -related people and skills?
SOLUTION: Apply Design Thinking to Personal Career Development
The new normal due to the COVID-19 pandemic may continue to affect millions of workers. As of April 19, 2020, 22M people have filed for unemployment in the US alone skyrocketing the unemployment rate to 13.5% which is higher than the rate during the 2008 recession. Imagine the impact this will have on the entry-level talent entering the job market, and direct correlation to volume of Human Resources and Talent Acquisition jobs that are currently being displaced.
We invite you to join us for a new kind of Hackathon weekend. One designed for the job seeker. We call it Apply Design Thinking to Personal Career Development (ADT-PCD). Imagine a new exploratory career adventure where diverse job seekers are connected to a team of mentors collaborating to help the job seeker Discover, Ideate and Prototype a career path that is customized to the current hiring demand in the marketplace. Maybe you are unemployed as an HR/TA professional, here you can volunteer, mentor and use your unique skills to help someone else along their journey. At the end of an event the job seeker will leave with the following:
- Confidence
- A new network of mentors and friends
- An updated resume
- Detailed career plan
- Customized resource list and a re-branded persona to help them find meaningful work in a field that it is currently hiring.
It is people helping people where they need it most - their personalized career journey.
WHAT WE Learned DURING DISCOVERY
We started with observations we had about the current market conditions. Then we delved
into the persona of the user, likely unemployed or at worried about being unemployed.
After collecting observations, we devised some user surveys. We examined the path of
surveying employers as well, but then abandoned that due to the time constraints and
usefulness to prototype a solution. Thus we chose to focus our survey efforts on the HR/TA
community that was unemployed or worried about losing their job soon. We had a captive
audience in Facebook Groups and our individual social networks where we could get quick
responses.
Survey analysis: 40+ respondents in 12 hours
87.5% have already applied for a job
92% feel they have the skills for their next HR/TA role without the need to up-skill
72% feel they have the skills for a job outside of HR/TA
Skills needed to change career path was highly specialized: 63% of a direct occupational skill
they would need to acquire or develop. All other skill areas like Leadership, Communication
and Technology were relatively equal needs. (20% range each)65% of respondents cited that they did not know or could not find training resources
out there.In terms of job hunting resources there were plenty that respondents cited as useful.
(LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, personal networks, etc)Over 70% of respondents stated they would NOT want to leave the HR/TA occupation unless
all of the HR roles dried up.Nearly 50% of respondents would wait 3-12 months (combined result) before looking for work outside of the HR/TA occupation.
So 30% of people would leave if they had a career path out.
What surprised the team most:
1) The confidence about skills already acquired. Perhaps just training or resources to
training was not the ideal solution
2) Larger percentage of the occupation still like the industry of HR/TA and would like to
wait for meaningful work within it.
Here is a link to the screenshot of the survey results.
WHAT WE brainstormed DURING IDEATION
We started with the Great Depression analogy. What worked then? New Deal, creating jobs for
people and taking people with varying skills and putting them to work in some way - even if it
was in a volunteering for community mentoring way. Plus what happened in 2008 with 10%
unemployment.
We found articles of how Recruiters were using their own skills to get themselves back to work.
Then we asked some critical questions:
What’s the point? While the simple answer may be, workers are displaced and they
need income, we were able to dig deeper. Workers of all levels needed:
Re-instill confidence? Skills? Access to resources? Create jobs? Create new income
path? Decrease anxiety, inspire hope, advocate for the unemployed, and access to
networking.Who says? ( survey feedback - 40 HR/TA pros + 35 E/L people)
What’s new? We uncovered a number of resources already available. What would we be
able to develop that was adding value.Who cares? So important to ask, and it was very telling while the answer is everyone
we were able to identify some specific groups that really care about this in individual’s
circles of influence.Ideation continued with initial individual brainstorming and then a team think tank to
expand. We categorized the ideas into physical, digital and experience prototypes.
Top concepts and possible prototype ideas were the following. We used a multi layered
voting approach which included voting criteria from a Mentor. The winner was Prototype 4,
with criteria of impactful, easy to accomplish in the time allotted, and met a need defined by
the user POV statement.
The Solution We Designed
Our solution is a Design Thinking event for Personal Career Development. The user will be any job seeker, experienced or entry-level. Likely the initial audience will be early career professionals and the large volume of HR/TA professionals outsourced by the Covid-19 pandemic. The value is also in the program itself. The program will tap into the out of work HR/TA professionals and give them purpose and volunteer opportunities to serve as coaches, mentors, SME, healers, process specialists and career strategists. The journey for this pod of people will benefit all involved. It will allow the group to explore the current labor market and hiring demand - alongside of providing this job seeker with very tangible tools to get them back to meaningful work.
The team considered that any participant would need to have a sense of readiness, and understand the commitment in advance of entering into this event.
The scalability of this prototype is far and wide. While it may be utilized as a free resource during this initial COVID response time, this could be a movement that could be used inside of companies and for any person who needs support to improve, up-skill, re-skill or move their career into another direction. We believe that the design thinking process is ideal for creating a new way to journey through career planning.
What’s next? We need to partner with a company or organization that can fund the resources to launch a few of these events. From those events, we anticipate we will receive real-live case studies and stories that can translate this into being a self-funded venture.
This google slide deck details some aspects of the Hackathon weekend prototype.
The Design Team
Heather Thomas, Sandee Kastrul, Ed Zaretsky, Christy Moody, Adam Rosenfield, Arely Dorsey, Jane Garza, Jenine Lurie, Leah Lavelle