By 2020, approximately 40% of the U.S. workforce will be engaged in quick “gigs” and project-based work. The reality for many students when they graduate will be, “My grandfather had one job during his lifetime, my mom had six—and I will have six gigs all at the same time.” Most college seniors in 2020 will enter the workforce managing a series of projects, rather than dedicate years of service to any particular organization. This presentation will focus on how early career discovery during the college planning process can better prepare students for this new career reality, including tools for developing expertise in project settings aligned to the student’s aptitudes and interests.

1. THE GIG ECONOMY
Preparing High School Students
for Careers in 2020

2. Introductions
Bob Carlton LinkedIn, Twitter
Educational Consultant, College MatchPoint
• Hired & trained more than 600 college grads
• Leadership roles in large companies & startups
• Gig economy work started in 2009
• Top LinkedIn skills: start-ups, marketing, strategy
Dan Restuccia LinkedIn, Twitter
Chief Analytics Officer , Burning Glass Technologies
• Research helps to shape the national conversation on careers
and the skills gap
• Worked in education policy at Jobs for the Future and Boston
Plan for Excellence
• Top Linkedin Skills: Program development, teaching

3. Objectives
1. Understand the ways in which careers are
changing for college graduates, including a
greater focus on project-based work
2. Develop a plan for using tools to develop
expertise in project settings aligned to the
student’s aptitudes and interests
3. Share good practices on career discovery with
students during the college planning process

4. 4
A Disclaimer

5. 5
Parent’s Focus
• Parents are are unsure how to help and where they can find trusted info
• 55% of high school students say that their parents are putting pressure on
them to gain professional experience
• 54% of high school parents haven’t helped their children get work
experience during high school
Source: Internships.com, High School Careers Study
Careers after college ranked as #1
concern for parents of high school
juniors & seniors

6. 6
Poll

7. 7
Careers 2020
• Careers turned to jobs, jobs turning to gigs
• 40% of the American workforce
will be independent contractors
• 60% of the jobs college students are preparing for will be
radically altered by technology & automation
• Fastest growing sectors: healthcare (for example, PTA, OTA),
computer science, biomedical, data analysis
• Millennials will replace Baby Boomers in largest portion of
management positions
Source: Bureau Labor Statistics Career Summary

8. 8
Gen Z @ Work
• FOMO: intense fear of missing out (FOMO) on anything -- good
news is that they will stay on top of all trends; the bad news, worry
they’re not moving ahead fast enough
• 75% interested in having multiple roles w/in 1 place of employment
• 40% say working Wi-Fi more important than working bathrooms
Source: Gen Z @ Work: How The Next Generation Is Transforming The Workplace
Gen Z: Born 1998 +, 25% of U.S.
population
55% of Generation Z are non-Hispanic
Caucasians, 24% are Hispanic, 14% are
African-American, 4% are Asian, and 4% are
multiracial or other

9. 9
Gig Economy
• Gig: project or task for which a worker is
hired, often through a digital marketplace,
to work on demand in a project setting
• Duration: some very brief, such as answering a 5-
minute survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk; others
are much longer but still of limited duration, such as
an 18-month database management project
• Episodic: when one gig is over, workers who earn a
steady income find another; works are juggling
multiple jobs at once
Source: Bureau Labor Statistics Career Summary

10. 10
• 40% of workforce will be independent contractors by 2020
• 25% of Americans had careers in the Gig Economy in 2016
• Significant change from many of our assumptions
 driven by a combination of chance to pursue one’s passion
and/or the necessity to make ends meet
 work can increasingly be done from anywhere, so that job
and location are decoupled
 challenges traditional ideas of benefits & training
Gig Economy
Source: Bureau Labor Statistics Career Summary

11. 11
Gig Economy
Source: Upwork

12. 12
• Coworking: shared working environment, with multiple independent
activity spaces
• Design thinking: an interdisciplinary approach that consider complex
issues and resolve problems more broadly
• Flat organization: organizational structure with few or no levels of middle
management between staff and leadership
• Skills increasingly more important than jobs
Gig Economy

13. 13
Toggl: Time Tracking Google Apps Trello: Project Management
Slack: Messaging
Gig Economy

14. 14
Key Trends

15. 15
Example

16. 16
Project Skills
• Provide clear instructions and expectations
• Flexibility in managing time and prioritizing
tasks
• Comfort with varying degrees of autonomy
• Proactive in finding new, potential problems
rather than waiting to see if anything goes
wrong
• Reflect on problem-solving attempt to
determine its strengths and weaknesses

17. 17
Core Skills
 Personal brand: market yourself--while avoiding that nasty
feeling that you are engaged in self-promotion
 Agile learning: skill development is iterative, not linear
 “I’m with the band”: creating & nurturing your own team
 Self-guided: learn to work without the guidance of a boss
telling you what to do

18. 18
Core Skills
 ♥ your solutions: focus on problems and challenges you
are good at solving, rather job tasks and responsibilities
 ♥ their problems: helping people to be sure they're working
on the right problem before offering solutions
 Working "out loud”: document your progress so you can
learn from what is and isn't working

19. 19
Creative Skills

20. 20
Specific Skills
Business
Operations
Project
Management
Business
Administration
Scheduling
Customer
Service
Economics
Marketing Social Media Marketing
Adobe
Photoshop
Facebook Market Research
Engineering
Electrical
Engineering
Computer
Engineering
AutoCAD
Mechanical
Engineering
Project
Management
Sales and
Business
Development
Sales
Business
Development
Marketing
Customer
Service
Project
Management
Media,
Communications,
and Public
Relations
Social Media Journalism
Adobe
Photoshop
Marketing
Technical Writing
/ Editing
Data Analytics Data Analysis Data Collection Market Research Mathematics
Project
Management
Finance Budgeting Accounting
Financial
Analysis
Project
Management
Economics

21. 21
Specific Skills
IT Development`
Software
Development
JAVA
Software
Engineering
C++
Computer
Engineering
Arts and Design Adobe Photoshop Adobe Indesign Adobe Illustrator Graphic Design Adobe Acrobat
Project and
Program
Management
Project
Management
Scheduling AutoCAD Budgeting Spreadsheets
Human
Resources
Onboarding
Project
Management
Scheduling
Leadership
Development
Customer Service
Science and the
Environment
Chemistry Biology Physics Mathematics Experiments
Healthcare Patient Care Physical Demand Customer Service
Public Health and
Safety
Cardiopulmonary
Resuscitation
(CPR)
Education and
Human Services
Fundraising Social Media Teaching Event Planning Physical Demand
Legal Legal Compliance Legal Research Litigation Customer Service Budgeting
Architecture and
Structural
Design
Revit AutoCAD Adobe Photoshop Adobe Indesign Google SketchUp

22. 22
Liberal Arts
• 50% of the jobs that pay in the top income quartile commonly require
applicants to have coding skills.

23. 23
Coding Skills
• 50% of the jobs that pay in the top income quartile commonly require
applicants to have coding skills.

24. 24
Internships
• 50% of employers are currently accepting applications from high school
students or plan to start an internship program this year
• Top qualities companies are looking for high school interns: interview
performance (50%), academic performance (41%) and references (36%)
• Top 3 three things that high school students are looking to get out of
internships: new skills (92%), work experience (81%) and
mentorship/networking (72%)
Source: Internships.com, High School Careers Study

25. 25
Tools: YouScience
90-minute online assessment
helps students understand they
have abilities, talents, and gifts that
are meaningful

26. 26
Tools: Canvas
© College MatchPoint

27. 27
Tools: LinkedIn
• Skills: skills most commonly searched component of profiles
• Projects: wide range of sites to link to projects, including DropBox,
SlideShare, Prezi, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Vimeo

28. 28
Tools: Portfolio

29. 29
What Works for You ?