Why Mentorship and Training are Critical to Ensure a Future Workforce

Alexandra Gardner at UXDX EMEA. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVDYHBA2zzE

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

How we got here: the great resignation

[00:00:00] Welcome to today's presentation on the future of work: why mentorship and training are critical to ensure a future workforce.

[00:00:16] Let me try this again. Ah, beautiful. As formally introduced before, my name is Alexandra Gardner. I am the lead user experience researcher for US Bank's point of sale software talech, and I'm very honored and grateful to be here with you today.

[00:00:32] In order to talk about the future, it's very important that we understand the present. So, how we got here. Over the last two years, I'm sure many of you here in this room have heard the big words: the great resignation. What originally started in the United States by underpaid and overworked laborers soon took root globally. We saw the pandemic provoke young Europeans to not only re-evaluate their current job roles, but their entire relationship to work.

[00:01:03] In 2021, millennials across Western Europe voluntarily quit their jobs at a rate of 20%. In the United States, where we had more data specifically around the great resignation, we saw roughly a quarter of Americans quit their jobs by the end of 2021. And 2022 did not look any better.

[00:01:23] McKinsey & Company did a 12,000 person survey analysis of six core global economies. Of the over 12,000 individuals that responded to that survey, 40% said that they were planning to quit their jobs in the next three to six months. So that means at the time the survey was conducted, 40% of individuals either already had another job offer on the table, were actively in the interview process, or were considering or wanting to quit their current job role in the next three to six months.

[00:01:58] Over the past two years, of those that did quit their job, 40% are likely not returning to the industries that they left. Which means the language and the conversation is changing. It's no longer the great resignation. It is the great reshuffling, it is the great reinventing, and it is the great reassessing of our relationship to work.

[00:02:23] If the past decades have proven anything, it is that the growth potential of building new technology companies continues to far exceed the capacity of our labor markets to supply it. Now, originally we thought the markets would course correct in what's referred to as a contraction. When you see an economic downturn like the pandemic caused, and you pump economies full of stimulus checks and stipends and loans, we know that inflation will be on the rise and a recession soon to be on the horizon. So it was expected that what we saw of the great resignation was a phenomenon.

[00:03:01] And that is not what's happening. Employers are still scrambling to fill job roles, and the voluntary quit rate is 25% higher than pre-pandemic levels. That means that with the current and projected rates of layoffs, job creation and voluntary quitting, we will not see the job market balance for quite some time.

Poaching and the global talent market

[00:03:27] So what does this look like at a global scale? I'm sure on your LinkedIn feed you have seen layoffs and recession taking root. But in past economic downturns, it was taking individuals six months to a year to find a replacement role. That is not what we are seeing this time. Recessions generally last on average 10 to 17 months, and we are still experiencing a skill deficit. And so what we are seeing happen, and what will continue to happen at an even more alarming rate, is what is referred to as poaching.

[00:04:02] And the United States is already doing this. The United States cannot fill its labor market roles, and so what they are doing is going to high-skilled, lower-cost labor markets like Lithuania, India and Latin America. In my current job role, we have an entire dev team out of Lithuania. In my job role before that, we had an entire UX design team out of Ukraine. In my job before that, we had an entire QA team out of India.

[00:04:29] So what this means is that US companies are not replacing their American workforce with lower-cost labor. It means they have tapped out their localized markets, and they're having to search elsewhere for the surplus of roles they cannot fill locally.

[00:04:45] Why is this happening? Well, if you look at this chart right here, this is the average software engineering salary for 2022 that was conducted by a company called Code Summit[?]. At the very top, we've got the United States average software engineering salary at $110,000 a year. And since I'm speaking in Dublin, I find it only fitting that we go down the chart and we look at Ireland: $48,000 a year.

[00:05:12] Which means if I am a US tech company and I want to keep my foothold in the market, I know that I can go across the water, find a country of high-tech talent where they speak English. Yes, culturally there are some differences, but from a tech and market and product perspective, not really. And the time zone is manageable. So now I can go poach your workers for half the cost, at $48,000 a year in comparison to the $110,000 it costs for the average software engineering salary in the United States. Because if the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that a high-skilled worker can work for anyone from anywhere, as long as they have a stable internet connection and a laptop.

The 2030 talent shortage

[00:05:55] Now I want to ask, how are you feeling about this? Have I made you nervous yet? Good, it's about to get worse.

[00:06:05] By 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people. Left unchecked, in 2030 that talent shortage could result in about 8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues. Now, I promised myself and my mom that I would not swear during this presentation, so I want you to fill in the blank of 8.5 your favorite swear word trillion dollars in unrealized annual revenues, because there is not the labor to fill it.

[00:06:41] Now, when we talk about the talent shortage, it's not just simply that we don't have enough people. We don't have enough skill set. Right now when we look at this globally, we have enough people, we don't have the right skill set. However, a lot of the skill set shortage that we're going to see by 2030 is based off of simple demography. When you look at the United States and you look at Japan, we are having alarmingly low birth rates, and it's happening year after year after year. And we're seeing the same trends in the United Kingdom and the EU.

[00:07:13] Which means by 2030, when the boomer generation, which is those who were born between 1946 and 1964, age out and retire, the younger generations will simply not have had enough time to gain the skill set and the training and the experience to replace those roles. Which means for every senior level role that that retiree is leaving, there is not another senior level individual to take their place.

Train: the CareerWise apprenticeship program

[00:07:45] So what do we do? Now, this is the positive part of the presentation where I say how I'm going to fix everything for you. We train. That's what you start with. You train.

[00:07:57] Now, I was very fortunate to be a part of a program called CareerWise. CareerWise is the United States leader in launching youth apprenticeship programs to support the talent acquisition and development needs of enterprise employers. What I'm going to teach you today is something that can be replicated at your current job role, at your current company, in your home country. Right now CareerWise only exists in four states in the US. I happen to be in one of those states, and that is the state of Colorado. And as mentioned before, I helped introduce the first user experience track record in the United States for the CareerWise program.

[00:08:33] So what does CareerWise do, and how does it work? Well, exactly what it sounds like. They create an apprenticeship program. Now, in the United States, this starts in high school, so this is year 10. What CareerWise does is help go to schools and advocate for this apprenticeship program, but the rest is on the company. They reach out to high school students in underprivileged and under-networked environments, where they're less likely to have access to further education like college or university.

[00:09:02] In year 10, CareerWise helps them create a resume, they build a LinkedIn profile, and they practice interview skills, because they are interviewing for the jobs that they're going to be placed in, and they are treated at the age of 15 and 16 like they are full-time employees. Once they are accepted into their track record, they now work for you, and they are paid. These are not free unpaid internships. These are paid apprenticeships. They go to high school part-time, and they come into your office part-time.

[00:09:31] Now, when I did this program it was pre-pandemic, which means that these 15- and 16-year-old students were driving to the office every single day when they weren't in high school. They showed up business professional. They were at the team meetings, they were taking notes, they were a part of projects, and they were delivering work.

[00:09:47] Over the course of the four years, the goal is to train and upskill them for a specific track within your organization. So you can specialize what you want that track record to be, so that when that individual completes the four years, you now have a full-time staff member. Transitioning them from apprenticeship to full-time roles into your company, that is the goal. Now, today CareerWise exists in four states. They've worked with over 225 employers, and they have filled over 1,000 positions with apprentices moving to full-time roles in over six plus industries.

Nare and Gabby

[00:10:22] Now, I am very proud to say that two of the individuals that went through my track record, at the end of it, were offered full-time roles. The first is Nare. She didn't know what she wanted to do. She started within the UX design track. She had a knack for research. At the time, research was not a track record that you could do, and I said, let's shift. I spent about seven to 10 hours a week with these individuals while still doing my full-time job, and I created curriculums and programs for them. Did it take time out of my day? Yes. But what did I learn in exchange? How to be a great manager. How to lead, how to support, how to train and how to onboard. Nare was offered a job this year as a full-time entry-level UX researcher.

[00:11:03] The second individual is Gabby. Gabby is the type of person that we want to go after. As many of you probably know in this room, the United States does not offer free college and university. So if you are a student that wants further education, you've got three options. The first is that you're wealthy enough that your parents can pay for it. The second is that you have parents that can sign off on a loan on you, and you are going to take something like 120 to 150,000 dollars in student loan debt, and many of those individuals are never able to pay that off. The third option is that you're too poor, and your family's too poor, that you can't even qualify for the student loan debt, and so college and university is not an option for you.

[00:11:42] Gabby was one of those individuals. She came from a family of immigrants, her dad was incarcerated, she lived at home with her three siblings in a two-bedroom apartment, and college and university were not options for her. But she was brilliant. She was damn good at math. They put her on the front end development track record. At the end of the four years, Gabby not only was offered a full-time entry-level front end development role, she had saved enough money through the program to buy her own car and move out and get her own place. Over the last year, Gabby has now started moving into full stack development and she's being trained in both front end and back end.

[00:12:18] Gabby is the individual that we target with programs like this. The talent is out there. You just have to reach them at a younger age, and you have to give them access to opportunities and career tracks that might not otherwise be presented to them.

Mentorship: make entry-level jobs entry-level

[00:12:34] Next is mentorship. Now, I want to make sure you're all still paying attention, so we're going to do a little yell back, okay? Make entry-level jobs entry-level. If there is one thing that you take away from this presentation, let it be that. Now, on the count of three, I'm going to have you repeat this, because I want you to remember it. Make entry-level jobs entry-level. Are you ready? One, two, three. Make entry-level jobs entry-level. Jazz hands.

[00:13:10] Think about it. When you graduated university or college, think about your current job role. How many entry-level jobs or junior-level jobs do you have on the docket for 2023? How many mid and how many senior? If you do not have at least one truly entry-level job at your place of employment for 2023, you are part of the problem.

[00:13:33] A recent analysis of job postings conducted by Verity Search[?] found that one third of graduate-level jobs and one quarter of junior entry-level jobs in the United Kingdom require applicants to have at least one year of work experience. Now, this is far better than what you see in the United States. Your average entry-level job role requires three to five years of experience.

[00:13:58] Where the hell are you going to get it? Where are you going to get the entry-level experience? There's internships, and they're often unpaid. So if you were somebody like me, graduating from university and college, that had medical bills to pay and needed to put a roof over my head, unpaid internships weren't an option. And so what I did is, I was desperate, and I took job roles and I stayed in job roles where I was harassed, where it was toxic, where it was unhealthy, but I didn't have a choice.

[00:14:25] Removing barriers and creating accessibility to entry-level jobs, for those just entering the workforce or those looking to make a career change, is what is going to allow employers to access untapped markets and otherwise overlooked candidates. And it isn't just about creating work opportunities. There's a second part to this, and that is the mentorship component. Getting your foot in the door at the right company early, in a non-toxic environment, sets you up for success for the rest of your career.

[00:14:57] Several years ago, LinkedIn conducted a survey of over 1,000 female respondents in the United States. Now, the women that responded to this survey had all years of work experience. Some of them had just started their career, but some of them who responded had five to 10 years of work experience. And LinkedIn asked a very simple question: have you had a mentor in your career? Out of those thousand women, 20% had never had a mentor in their career. 20%. And that was only a thousand women that responded to that survey.

[00:15:32] When we talk about mentorship, when we talk about making entry-level jobs entry-level, it's not just about giving people access and removing barriers to entry. It is talking about minority and under-networked groups' access to mentorship.

Support: poach teachers, pair up, and keep learning

[00:15:51] Support. Now, on the earlier slides, I'm sure I panicked some of you when I said the United States tech companies are coming to poach your candidates. And they are. But this works both ways. I am encouraging you to poach American teachers.

[00:16:09] The US is facing a shortage of 300,000 teachers, according to the National Education Association, come 2023. Why? Because they're under-appreciated, they're overworked and they're underpaid. Regularly, and I mean almost on a weekly to monthly basis, I have an individual reaching out to me on LinkedIn who's coming from academia. These individuals have masters, they have PhDs, and they're saying, "How can I jump into UX research? I'm quitting my job in academia, I'm quitting my job in teaching. How do I get into tech?" And if there is one thing that I can say about teachers, it's that they are passionate about mentorship, they care about support and training, and they are very, very good at building out curriculums.

[00:16:53] So if you saw on the prior slides, CareerWise, and thought, wow, that sounds great and dandy, but I don't have the resources or the bandwidth to have my dev team or my design team cut off 10 to 15 hours a week to train a bunch of 15 and 16-year-olds, I get it. Go steal American teachers. They need the paycheck, and they deserve it, and they care about teaching and mentorship, and they want to move into tech.

[00:17:16] The second one, paired programming. And I'd like to thank my husband, who's in the front audience there, for teaching me about this one. His first development job was paired programming. What this means is, it's an agile software development technique where two engineers work together on the same code base. Now, what was really interesting in his experience was that they worked together. The dev team started their day together, they ended their day together, they took lunch breaks together. There was always two individuals pairing on code.

[00:17:46] What this does is many things. First, it makes sure that the more senior level engineer has peer review. Sometimes when we get senior level we get a little bit sloppy, we think that we know everything, and having that second individual peer review our work catches bugs, it catches issues, it catches flaws, and it ensures that I have another brain that I can throw ideas around with. What this does in return is that the more junior level individual gets up to speed quicker, because they are now learning from the senior level programmer and they are partnering together.

[00:18:16] The idea of pairing does not just have to apply to development. You can do paired designing, paired researching, paired customer support, it doesn't matter. But we're trying to implement this at my current organization, because what we've seen is that even with more senior level roles, onboarding takes a very long time. You've got to train people in your processes, your frameworks, your infrastructure, and your products, and your tech, and that takes time. So if you want to figure out how you can make ways to bring on more entry and junior level roles, consider an onboarding process of three to six months that includes the concept of paired programming. It helps teams learn, and it allows your more senior level staff to build the skill sets that they're going to need to eventually move into managerial roles one day.

[00:19:04] And finally, further learning. One of the big discussions that's happening when we're looking at the future of work is, how do we keep the staff we currently have? If poaching is a thing and they're going to be stolen by higher money, how do I keep the staff that I have if I can't compete with that? Further learning is your best option.

[00:19:25] I said this in an earlier talk yesterday and I'm going to say it again. When you treat your employees like they're lucky to be there, and not that you're lucky to have them, you are going to lose top talent. How you can show people that they are valued and that they should stay at your company is by investing in them, their training and their further education. Certifications, conferences, and training to increase digital and technological skills in both the private and public sector.

[00:19:51] When we talk about competition, it's not just going to stop in our world. It's not going to stop in tech. Healthcare, manufacturing, education, they are all becoming digital first, which means they're also going to need the skill sets that all of you are providing in this room. So when we invest in current and further education, what we are saying is, we want to keep you where you're at, but we want you to continue to grow within our company. We're investing in you, we're investing in your further learning, and we hope that we can ensure a future workforce at our company by doing so.

[00:20:25] On the last slide here, I have all of the information from where I pulled my data and statistics, and also at the bottom you've got CareerWise. CareerWiseUSA.org is, yes, an organization that currently exists in the United States, but they have a plethora of information for free. So if this is something that you're interested in, and you want to learn more and you want to figure out how you can replicate something like this in your current place of business or in your home country, go to CareerWise, reach out to them, tell them that I talked about it at this presentation, I hope they remember who I am, and take their resources. They want to expand. I'm sure they're interested in expanding globally. This is not something that you have to figure out how to do on your own. Go to the website, look at the resources, and think about how you can adapt some of this.

[00:21:13] I want to thank you all for your time today and for sticking through this sort of dark, but hopefully happy, presentation. And now I'd like to leave some time for questions.

Q&A

[00:21:31] Host: Thank you. Thank you so much. So this is very relevant work, and humane as well in this time of uncertainty. So well done. This is amazing, I hope you guys will join me. Do we have any questions in the audience? One over there? Yeah.

[00:21:55] Audience: Hi. Paired programming, it was an interesting concept. But when we work remotely, how can we implement that, because it's not possible to hang out with junior members?

[00:22:08] Alexandra: Yes, so it's a great question. So he asked, now that we're working remotely, how do you implement something like CareerWise, or mentorship and training programs? And we did. CareerWise is still existing at the company that I was previously at, even though they've gone fully remote, and they've adapted. So in my final year there it was still pandemic, we were all working remotely, and I had to kind of get clever and adjust.

[00:22:31] Alexandra: Now, what they did is they adapted the time frame. So prior, it was part-time in school, part-time at the office. And so they adjusted the hours, because they realized having students have to do remote learning for half of the day and then do remote work for half of the day was simply going to be too much. And so they adjusted the hours, so that it wasn't going to be a half or part-time role. And so on Monday and Wednesday, what we did is we did coursework curriculum training, so I would have them for an hour to an hour and a half. And then Thursday and Friday, I would give them exercises to brainstorm. We helped them get certifications, we helped them learn on Udemy. And so they would practice in Figma, or they would practice in Sketch, or we'd say, go out and interview four of your family members and ask them what they like about their favorite streaming service, so that we were getting them in the practice of conducting user interviews. So it's no different from having to adapt to remote education and remote learning. It's not the same, it does suck, it's not as interactive, but there is absolutely a way that you can do it, and CareerWise has adapted to account for this.

[00:23:36] Host: Thank you. Any other question? Yes, the one there. One in the back. Who raised their hand in the back?

[00:23:49] Audience: Hi, I'm Robbie. I work at an apprenticeship company, actually, called Multiverse.io, where we offer high-tech apprenticeships in both the UK and the US. So, really interested to hear about your experience with CareerWise, because in particular we focus on students after high school. But I was really interested, we launched in the US about a year ago, we broadly got product market fit in the US market, but one challenge has always been about apprenticeships and the connotations of that word in the US market, where it's not as known as an approach to upskilling, or as an alternative to university, as it is in Europe and the UK. So I was wondering what you found in the US market talking about the concept of apprenticeships.

[00:24:35] Alexandra: So that's a great question. The US markets are going to have to change, and it's because of Generation Z. A new survey that was conducted on Generation Z, which is the generation after me, and I'm not entirely sure on the years, but they're just starting to enter the workforce, so many of these individuals I think at their oldest are 21, 22. And in the survey that they conducted, they found that Gen Z was rejecting all standardized and traditional forms of American culture. They are not going to go to college or university, because they saw what happened to the millennials and they're not willing to take on the student loan debt. They're not going to buy houses, because they've seen two housing market crashes. And they're not getting married. Essentially, anything that could create financial debt for them, they're not doing.

[00:25:20] Alexandra: And so we're going to see a huge impact on traditional and standardized education and institutes, and we're already starting to see that happen. The amount of code-based and UX-based academies or fast-track programs that allow you to sidestep university or college are on the rise. People don't want to take on the debt. This is, I think, one of the pivotal mistakes that the US has made when we look at the education market. And so individuals will always go and find a path of least resistance. And so these apprenticeship programs and mentorship programs are on the rise, because individuals don't want to go to college to learn how to code when they can teach it to themselves off of YouTube in their basement.

[00:26:02] Alexandra: And so the stigma, or this idea around apprenticeships and internships, is changing, and we're especially seeing this in the development market. I was just talking about this with my husband last night, where he worked for a company, it was a startup, and they had five or six developers that were fresh out of a boot camp and barely knew how to write basic HTML and CSS. And they're going to learn it on the job, because companies are desperate. So this kind of elitist mentality, if you will, that you need to have a master's or a PhD or even a bachelor's at this point, is changing, because people are drowning in student loan debt that they're never going to be able to pay off.

[00:26:41] Audience: Hi. So you mentioned that the mentorship program is mainly for students that don't have the means, that don't have the finances for degrees, and that the mentorship program is helping them in the way to get a step up. So how did you, through the research, find a way to also target students that were international students, that didn't have a US citizenship, but they did have the means, or they did have the college degrees, they did have the background, and they were quite talented? How would you target, I guess, the mentorship programs to students that are also equally talented, but, I guess, they don't have the visa or that sort of process?

[00:27:40] Alexandra: So I don't actually have an answer for that one, because that was not our focus. Now, there are a lot of really incredible study abroad, youth apprenticeship, training and education programs that you can do that exist separate from CareerWise. CareerWise's specific focus is United States students that can gain access to these apprenticeship roles because college and university is not something that is a privilege afforded to them. So that's not something I would put focus in, because if you're coming from a country where your college and university is paid for, it seems quite unfair that I would put my focus and energy into training and mentorship opportunities to grant you a visa, when there are United States students who are drowning in crippling loan debt and need those opportunities as well. Now, that being said, that doesn't mean they don't exist. There's a plethora of exchange programs that focus on exactly that, whether it be in college or university, or whether it be specific exchange programs where that is their focus. But that was not my focus. I focus on the US and those students who don't have that access to opportunities.

[00:28:50] Host: There was a question over there in the second row. Can I ask you just please to state your name and the company you're coming from?

[00:28:59] Audience: Yeah. Hi, I'm Stephen from Unum Ireland. Do you have any frameworks for mentoring, or advice around that, that people can follow?

[00:29:10] Alexandra: It's a great question. I'll be honest, I winged it. I had no idea what I was doing. Kids are interesting, because you've got to remember they're 15 and 16 years old, so they're still young and they're youthful, and you're putting them at this expectation that they're going to function and act like working adults. And so there is a drop-off rate. All students do not make it through the program. Many drop off after year one.

[00:29:37] Alexandra: I found that in my mentorship framework, and I've adopted this into my current management style, when you come to work for me, or I'm interviewing you to work for me, one of the core frameworks that I want to understand is, how do you learn? And then I create curriculums, or onboardings, or work plans, or projects that accommodate that. So when I say how do you learn, my first question that I ask is, are you a hands-on learner, where you kind of don't want to read the IKEA book instructions about how to put the bed together and you're just going to figure it out, and through failure that's how you're going to learn? Or are you an individual that needs a much more guided approach? And I found that that works really at any age. And so understanding the level of involvement that an individual is going to need to ensure their success is one of the first things that you can do.

[00:30:26] Alexandra: I think the second part is you do actually have to build presentations and training material, and I found that this also applies to when you're onboarding an individual at your company. You cannot expect people to just know where to start and know where to pick up from and self-teach everything that they need to know about your code base and your design system. And so, do I have one set curriculum that I adopted? No, because I was absolutely BS-ing my way through it and learning with them as well. But students are honest. They're very honest, and they will tell you what they like and what they don't like, and their attention span is short, so you quickly learn what is working and what's not. And I would say the number one framework to follow is, be adaptable. Be adaptable, because kids don't care. They don't like rigidness, and there's slang that I haven't even learned yet. I'm like, I'm pretty sure you're insulting me, but I'm going to nod my head and smile.

[00:31:28] Host: One over here. I got you.

[00:31:36] Audience: Thanks. Yeah, I'm Laura from Interface Book[?], a UX agency in Germany, and I have a question. It's not about the students, but maybe you still have some tips, tricks or anything else. So I did a mentorship with a former teacher and she wants to move to UX. It was okay to do a one-week free UX hospitation, so she was shadowing me during my work time, and now it's about an internship and, obviously, budget. So I don't know, do you have any tips and tricks on how to get the budget and talk to my boss?

[00:32:11] Alexandra: If you want to show them this recording, and if you want, I can be like a little more of a bully, with doom and gloom and dark music playing in the background to really sell it to them. But I wasn't joking when I said 8.5 trillion dollars. That's a ton of money. And if you want to try and convince them, the biggest thing that you can say is, do you want your business to be here come 2030? And then if they say yes, of course, say cool, because you're going to be competing with every other major player, Amazon, Google, Meta, and they're going to steal the top talent.

[00:32:50] Alexandra: I think companies are going to go under because they could not find the labor to support them. And we actually already saw this during the pandemic, especially in the United States. You would go into a restaurant and they'd say, "Sorry, we're short staffed, there's a labor shortage." It's like, no, there wasn't, you were just paying people terrible slave labor wages and they don't want to do it anymore. That's going to keep happening. If there is another company that says, "Hey, we're going to offer you $30,000 more, and we're going to give you an education stipend, and oh, by the way, we're going to help cover child care, and we've got this really awesome culture and we care about you," why are you going to stay in the role that you're at? And so I don't mean to go to your employer and scare them, but I do think businesses that are thriving today will not exist come 2030 if they do not plan for the skill set and labor shortage.

[00:33:43] Host: Any other questions? Okay, one for me then, while they are thinking. We did a Gen Z research at some point, and actually we found the data that if you are underemployed and you get into the company below your skill level, you're staying there for 10 years. So that's very relevant. So I'm interested in knowing, how are you assessing somebody's potential, and where you know their skills and what's the best direction for their career, let's say, to start?

[00:34:25] Alexandra: Yes, that's actually a really great question. I look at soft skills. I am patient. I think I'm a good educator. I joke that if I didn't work in UX research, I would either be in hospice care or I'd be a teacher, because I really love old people and I love children. It's patience. And that was a big thing that we learned being in CareerWise, and it was the whole reason why I got to create the first ever UX track record. It's not because they said, oh, you're so great, here's this opportunity. They had students that were failing. They tried the development track and they didn't like it, and then they tried the data science track and they didn't like it. And these were kids that took their own initiative. I think that's a big one, looking for initiative. That took initiative at 15 or 16 years old, to go through the process of being interviewed by a room full of adults and creating a resume and having to build a LinkedIn profile. That initiative is already step one, and we want to see them succeed. And if you're struggling or failing in every other track record, we will find something for you.

[00:35:25] Alexandra: And that was when they approached me. They said, "We have a couple of students, we just can't find where they fit, but they're smart and they care and they're passionate and they're willing and they want to do something. Can you figure it out for them?" And that's how we built the UX track record. And then within that, we found that there were some individuals who were stronger in research than they were in design. There were some that took a more traditional UI visual design route. And so we just catered to what their skill set was. And I do the same thing in my management style. I have two researchers that report to me. They're different in the way that they behave and they operate, and their strengths and their weaknesses are different, and I encourage it.

[00:36:03] Alexandra: And that's kind of what you have to do, because one of the things about Gen Z that we're seeing is they've seen a world of debt. Money is not their stimulator, it's not their fuel. They know that the climate crisis is real and that it's going to impact them for years to come. And so they want to work for companies like Patagonia. They want to work for companies where they feel valued and they feel like they're making an impact in the world, and they are willing to forgo salary for that exchange. And so that's why they're willing to stay at a company for 10 years, because it's like, if you value me and I like it here, more money is not worth it.

[00:36:41] Alexandra: And I think that's one of the first times we're seeing this huge generational paradigm shift, where my career is not my personality, but the good work that I complete is. And so if I feel that I'm working for a company that aligns with my values, that is a reflection of me, as opposed to the day-to-day work that I do. So I look for soft skills, because I can teach you how to do anything, but it's the soft skills that are a little bit harder to come by. And I think that that's what's going to ensure our future workforce, is where you see the separation between autonomy and AI and data science and machine learning taking over work that can't be replaced by soft skills. That's that human component, and so that's ultimately what I look for.

[00:37:30] Host: And then, okay, we are out of time. Thank you so much, Alex.