BRIEFINGS PODCAST: The New Unemployables

The New Unemployables

NOTE: While this transcript has been reviewed, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript.

Jill Wiltfong:

White-collar job market crisis. Companies are quietly eliminating certain key roles.

Arianne Cohen:

I would say devastating and lonely. I can't imagine I am less qualified and less skilled than I was seven years ago.

Jill Wiltfong:

How does he or she thread the needle here?

Ron Porter:

To keep engaged, to keep active, to keep fresh.

Jill Wiltfong:

"The New Unemployables."

[Speaker 1]:

Back to the job hunt today?

[Speaker 2]:

Yeah, I guess. I mean, I've sent out a thousand resumes and can't even get an interview. It's never been this bad before. I seriously want a refund on my MBA.

[Speaker 1]:

Hang in there. Something will turn up.

[Speaker 2]:

Yeah, sure.

Hello?

[Caller]:

Hi, is this David?

[Speaker 2]:

Yes.

[Caller]:

Hi David. I work at Cerulean Tech. I'm calling back in regards to your resume.

[Speaker 2]:

Let me save you the time. You like my resume, but I'm overqualified, right? Well, I appreciate you at least calling to let me know.

[Caller]:

Actually, we'd really love for you to come in for an interview.

[Speaker 2]:

Really? Well, how's Wednesday?

[Caller]:

Well, our need for your skillset is a bit urgent. Can you make it in tomorrow, say 9:00 AM?

[Speaker 2]:

Yeah, sure.

[Caller]:

One more thing, the job is fully remote.

Jill Wiltfong:

Hi, I am Jill Wiltfong, Chief Marketing Officer for Korn Ferry. And this is "Briefings" our deep dive into topics that corporate leaders need to care about.

Smart, well-qualified, easy to work with, and unemployed? That about sums up an entire cohort of competent, trained job candidates who would've been snapped up by companies in the past, but now in a mystifying shift, seemed to be in the midst of a white-collar job market crisis. Yes, it's true that the US unemployment rate hovers around 4%, which is close to an all-time low. And hiring has recently ticked up a bit. But HR experts say that companies are quietly eliminating certain key roles. People in marketing, content creation and data analysis as examples. Jobs that have been core to firms for decades. The result is that a whole layer of people now find themselves applying and applying and applying and getting nowhere. Why is this happening? Today, let's take an up-close look at what experts have dubbed the new unemployables.

Before we start, if you're watching us on YouTube, please be sure to like, subscribe and leave a comment to let us know your thoughts on this topic. At last count, we've now tripled our subscriptions in the year since we started this, so thank you for your support.

I am joined today by Arianne Cohen, a longtime member of the Korn Ferry writing team. She wrote an eye-opening piece for Korn Ferry's "Briefings" magazine about the large swaths of white-collar workers who are currently struggling to find work. Arianne, it's really good to have you back on here today. Nice to see you.

Arianne Cohen:

Nice to see you too.

Jill Wiltfong:

So you've spoken with a number of these so-called unemployables who are really well-qualified professionals who just can't seem to land a gig. What's been their lived experience overall with this current job market? How is it different for them than perhaps it was in years past?

Arianne Cohen:

If I were to summarize it in two words, I would say "Devastating and lonely." I talked to a university administrator who had applied to 15 jobs—very, you know, carefully chosen jobs that she thought she would hear back from. She didn't hear back from any of them. And in the meantime, she's 31 years old, she's watching her friends buy houses and get married and she doesn't even know where her job is gonna be.

Jill Wiltfong:

Yeah, let's talk about that, ‘cause you've written about just how shocked these people are. Many have gone a long while in their careers and never had a problem like this, right?

Arianne Cohen:

I talked to another really lovely guy who, he's in his late 40s, he's got two kids and he says he used to apply for jobs and people would respond immediately and then, you know, he would be hired three weeks later. And it was actually kind of fun and that this time it's, you know, upsetting and he said, you know, quote, "I can't imagine that I am less qualified and less skilled than I was seven years ago." And yet somehow it's a totally different experience.

Jill Wiltfong:

Yeah. You've also spoke not just to job seekers, but to a number of experts on what's behind this. What did they say is causing this kind of unusual job drought for white-collar professionals?

Arianne Cohen:

There was a lot of pandemic downsizing and then HR teams really planned for a recession that hasn't happened. There's also AI, the kind of areas of expertise around like basic finance, content creation, analysis of pretty much anything, marketing, some kinds of research. Companies are hesitant to hire people in those fields 'cause they're just not quite sure what the AI landscape is gonna look like 18 months from now.

[Matt Damon as Max – ‘Elysium’ movie]:

Hello. Before we start, I'd just like to explain...

[AI bot – ‘Elysium’ movie]:

Max Da Costa, violation of Penal Code 2219 today at bus stop 34B.

[Matt Damon as Max – ‘Elysium’ movie]:

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, I believe there's been a misunderstanding, you know..

[AI bot – ‘Elysium’ movie]:

Stop talking. Elevation and heart rate detected. Would you like a pill?

[Matt Damon as Max – ‘Elysium’ movie]:

No, thank you. What I'd like to do is explain...

[Ai bot – ‘Elysium’ movie]:

Stop talking. Would you like to talk to a human?

Jill Wiltfong:

That's a scene from the movie "Elysium" where Matt Damon has a frustrating time trying to communicate with an AI bot doing a job that would've formerly been done by a human. Arianne, you write that firms believe that AI can fill a lot of the roles that many white-collar workers once had. Their best step, you say, is to rebrand themselves, these workers, and really show how they can actually bring this necessary human touch to certain jobs. Can you talk a little bit more about what does that human touch mean? What does that look like?

Arianne Cohen:

AI can't really replace people. Somebody still needs to be managing it and running it. My field is a great example, right? So content creation or journalism, these are all skills that AI heavily, heavily overlaps with, but at the end of the day, somebody needs to be managing them and to be choosing what's used from them. And that's where people need to be positioning themselves.

Jill Wiltfong:

You've also came up with an intriguing chart that identifies kind of four categories of so-called unemployables and the challenges that are keeping kind of each one of these four from getting a job. Can you briefly kind of run through those for us?

Arianne Cohen:

The first group is people with big salaries. Usually they're over 45, in white-collar jobs and companies just have been really gun-shy about committing to big salaries for the long term. The second group is groups that are skilled in fields in which AI overlaps. The third group is entrepreneurs. There's always been corporate hesitance to hire people who have been boss somewhere else. And the last group is generalists. 10, 15 years ago, you could kind of get away by being a, you know, generalist administrator or a kind of generalist marketing content creator. And that's not true anymore. People really need to get specialized.

[Robert Leahy]:

People who are unemployed for longer period of time do have a rougher time. They feel more hopeless, they feel more helpless, and realistically they may have a harder time getting back into the workforce where they were before.

Jill Wiltfong:

That's Robert Leahy, Director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, speaking about the psychological effects of long-term unemployment.

Arianne, your article mentions that long-term unemployment correlates with rates of clinical depression that are two to three times higher than those in the general population. What do psychologists say job seekers should be doing if they find themselves kind of spiraling downward emotionally?

Arianne Cohen:

There's also some really interesting data showing that you can predict somebody's health over age 50 by how long they were unemployed in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. And the reason for that is that when people are unemployed, they not only put off their own healthcare 'cause they don't wanna have any extra expenses, but they often tend to isolate. So the most important thing that people can do when they're unemployed is really try to stay active, continue getting healthcare, continue having the social interactions that you used to have outside of work because the data shows that that really has a huge impact long-term on your health.

Jill Wiltfong:

Wow, that's really troubling to hear, but also some really welcome and tangible advice of something they can actually do. Thank you, Arianne, always really wonderful to have you on today.

Arianne Cohen:

Thank you so much for having me.

Jill Wiltfong:

We've looked at the new unemployables and this unusual dilemma and at the macro trends affecting so many job-seeking professionals right now. After the break, we'll hear from the HR side of things and look more specifically at what candidates can do to help their odds of landing a role. Stay with us.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

Hi, and welcome to "This Week in Leadership." I'm Rupak Bhattacharya and here's a quick look at what else is happening in business.

[Speaker]:

So let's talk about depression.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

An AI-based speech pattern study analyzed more than 14,500 S&P 500 earnings calls from over an 11-year period and concluded that 65.5% of the CEOs were depressed. The data has been met with some skepticism from experts, but at the very least it's an indication of how AI might impact the field of sentiment analysis.

[Speaker]:

Stop jumping between jobs so much.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

In a remarkable finding, the average British Gen-Zer wants to stay with one company for seven years. That's more than double the average of 3.5 years reported by workers overall. The tight job market is one reason, as well as many Gen-Zers now entering a phase of wanting to start families or care for elders.

[Speaker]:

All those open job postings might not even be real.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

A study found that one out of every five jobs advertised online is for a role that companies will never fill. These so-called ghost jobs are sometimes the result of companies posting with the intention of identifying candidates for other roles within the firm. Or sometimes hiring managers may have promoted someone from within.

For more insights on business and leadership, head to kornferry.com/insights. Now back to Jill and our episode, "The New Unemployables."

[Dan Finnerty as Cliff – ‘The Terminal’ movie]:

It's Cliff, the manager of the Discovery Store.

[Tom Hanks as Viktor – ‘The Terminal’ movie]:

Cliff, hello.

[Dan Finnerty as Cliff – ‘The Terminal’ movie]:

Yeah. How's it going?

[Tom Hanks as Viktor – ‘The Terminal’ movie]:

Good, good, good. Yeah.

[Dan Finnerty as Cliff – ‘The Terminal’ movie]:

Well, unfortunately, I gotta tell you that the position's been filled.

[Tom Hanks as Viktor – ‘The Terminal’ movie]:

Oh.

Jill Wiltfong:

With us now is Ron Porter, a Korn Ferry Senior Client Partner in its HR practice. Ron, thanks for joining me.

Ron Porter:
Thank you for having me.

Jill Wiltfong:

That last clip featured Tom Hanks in the movie "The Terminal" getting rejected from a job. Ron, we've been talking about how that scene is recently being played out in real life with so many professionals in what's amounting to really a white-collar recession. What do we tell these people whom we're calling the unemployables— they're well-qualified, but for whatever reason they can't seem to land a role? Is there something that they should be doing maybe differently?

Ron Porter:

They should really, I think, look at their experiences and line them up for the role they're seeking and learn as much as they can about the role. You know, I once said that if you could write a resume and highlight all of those things that are most relevant for job A, job B, job C, you probably would have three different resumes.

Jill Wiltfong:

So let's dive a little deeper into that. Earlier we broke this cohort of job seekers into several categories, one of which is the senior executive who tends to be over 45 with a relatively large salary expectation. How does he or she thread the needle here? Is it about being more open to interim assignments or stating reduced salary expectations right up front, or maybe to the point you were just at? Is it customizing the way you talk about yourself? Is it something else?

Ron Porter:

I mean, interim assignments can be great. Oftentimes I've seen a lot of executives leverage those into full-time assignments. And what I would recommend is I would put compensation on the back burner and be upfront with that if you figure your comp is higher, 'cause maybe there's other ways in the end if it's the right fit and maybe they will pay more. Or maybe you could say, well, this role in the short run may be a step back comp-wise, but if it really lights my fire, so to speak, I'll probably do pretty well and one I'll enjoy it, and not everything is money.

[Steve Jobs]:

I've built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players. And I found something, I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find, you know, five of these A players, they really like working with each other.

Jill Wiltfong:

That's the late Steve Jobs talking about how finding truly talented people to work with made all the difference for him and his company in the early days at Apple. Ron, in this hiring slowdown where things seem to be effectively frozen in place, is there any concern from companies and HR departments that they might be missing out on some potentially game-changing talent? Or are they perhaps playing things too safe and as a result missing out on innovation?

Ron Porter:

That could be, and I would say I think as I think about senior leaders, HR leaders, those that are the, frankly, the most effective are those that despite the notion we may be in a cost-conscious mode here around labor and talent, still look for those opportunities to bring in those special people, so to speak, and keep an active calendar to say, "I'm gonna stay proactive, because you never know."

Jill Wiltfong:

Ron, we've all seen it and we've certainly talked to a lot of people who've been on this race for a while, kind of looking for work, have heard the advice, and still remain really frustrated. What's would be your advice to those folks?

Ron Porter:

To the extent you can get involved, even if it's on a volunteer basis, to keep engaged, to keep active, to keep fresh, and then taking a step back maybe versus continuing the grind? I do endurance sports and I know if you, depending on the level that you're at, running marathon, walking 20 seconds every mile, taking a mental break and a bit of a physical break, you'll be faster, unless you're world-class, then if you just ran straight through. Clearly just grinding it out, you'll end up not presenting nearly as well in the interviews you do get.

Jill Wiltfong:

Ron, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your thoughts.

Ron Porter:

Jill, thanks for having me.

Jill Wiltfong:

The Executive Producer of "Briefings" is Jonathan Dahl. Today's episode was produced by Rupak Bhattacharya, Nadira Putri, and Teresa Allan. And it was edited by Jaron Henrie-McCrea. It contains reporting by Russell Pearlman, Arianne Cohen, and Peter Lauria.

Our video segment contains original artwork by Frazer Milton, Hayley Kennell, Jonathan Pink, and Sasha Kostyuk.

Don't forget to read our magazine, available at newsstands and at kornferry.com/briefings. That's it for Korn Ferry “Briefings”. I'm Jill Wiltfong. See you next time.

Ron Porter:

Do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, yeah.