Many academics and writers of popular opinion have long advocated that we can and should choose any fulfilling career we desire, but the reality is that it’s not so simple.
In this age of doomsayers predicting the rise of AI putting half the workforce on the bread line and into soup kitchens, and optimists promoting the chance for all people to fill their days with meaningful endeavour, we have forgotten the one person that all this pertains to: me. Or you for that matter.
I belong to the group of society that is often preached to and rarely consulted. I am a perfectly unremarkable person. One with no discernible talent for the arts and hardly endowed with the intellect to be the next inventor of great technologies. I struggle to see where the great multitude of middle ground folk come into all this.
I am aware of a number of people in my immediate circle, myself included, who, approaching the middle years of life have decided that a career change is on the cards. I have over 10 years’ experience in mining and transport and would like to pursue a career outside of operations. But I have been rebuffed by every hiring manager that I have approached.
The responses range from the polite (“no sorry, you’re not really the person we are looking for”) to the downright condescending (“I’m certain there may be a role driving a forklift that would be more suited to your experience”). Rarely have I ever been advised on where I have failed in my applications for positions and never once has any hiring manager informed me of what the secret to unlocking the “transferable soft skills you have gained through life” actually is.
So where does that leave us? The proletariat with middle levels of education, a young family to feed and no realistic expectations of further study while chained to a 50- to 60-hour working week just to keep food on our tables?
Anecdotally, there are many tales of people rising from humble backgrounds to accomplish great things… but I am yet to meet too many of them. Far too often it is deigned to be above our capacity to aspire to such roles despite being eminently qualified after many years of practical industry experience.
There needs to be meaningful research into how people will transfer out of labour intensive roles and how those workers are to gain the respect of people who have traditionally been stationed above the base-level work force. The idea that a stuffy old white guy who failed at management or a fresh out of university young woman working in HR can determine the direction our future workforce takes must be consigned to the dust bin of history. In order to remain relevant in a fast-paced and ever-changing global market, businesses need to tap the massive resource of percolating brain power located on every factory floor, coal face and office cubicle across the nation.
If we are to change the culture of work in this country then we need to change the culture of how we define intelligence and capability — in ourselves and others.
Christopher Shackley is a truck driver and machinery operator, living and working in Queensland.
Have you had similar experiences? Send your comments to boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name.
“Anecdotally, there are many tales of people rising from humble backgrounds to accomplish great things… but I am yet to meet too many of them.” and you’re not likely to meet many in the future either.
The ‘self-made success story’ is an urban myth of the capitalist culture,designed to give false hope to the great unwashed. It encourages the plebs to continue consuming, to accept their lot for now in the hope that better outcomes are just around the corner and to continue to reproduce in the hope that little Jessica or Jordan will be able to lift themselves up to greater levels of ‘success’ than their ancestors.
People who are lucky enough to get a winning ticket in the birth lottery rarely if ever see themselves as fortunate and often heard complaining about how hard they have it (like that poor dear self-made woman known as Gina Rinehart )!
Great piece, Christopher – and very relevant for our times.
Flexibility of work culture also requires flexibility of mind – at all levels.
As a person who has 30 year involvement in the recruitment industry I can attest to the reality of the author’s predicament. Hiring managers are, with few exceptions, very closed-minded about the types of candidates they will consider for roles. ‘Transferable skills’ may be a concept theses hiring managers understand in theory however they show very little appetite for truly understanding what these skills are and how the ‘transfer’ could occur with respect to their vacancy.
The hiring managers that are able to make the leap are the ones who will win in the long run.
“X years of experience” in doing anything does not guarantee any level of capability yet most hiring managers act as if it does.
Christopher, thank you for a thoughtful and well-written article.
By way of response, I want to ask you a challenge question: what is value?
When someone needs a can of baked beans and your forklift moves a pallet of baked beans (say) a meter closer to that person, then for them at least, you’ve added value to the cans you’re moving. But equally, your forklift could move the pallet a meter further away from anyone who wanted the beans and thus reduced their value to anyone.
So I’d suggest to you that the value of forklift operation isn’t in the forklift or the operator: it’s in the outcome of getting the beans (or whatever) closer to whoever needs them, and especially knowing who needs the beans, why they need beans now, where a good source of baked beans is and how best to get them there.
Or we could say it this way: we produce value whenever we realise opportunity to enhance the agency and dignity of our fellow man. (Agency: getting what we need; Dignity: recognition that our capacity for and commitment to common good are respected.) Otherwise, when we’re embedded in some big operation, we know whether we’re being productive; we’re just never sure when what we’re producing is valuable.
My suggestion is: if you want to do something other than compete against younger people for another job in transport and operations, the work you need to seek should be closer to what actually delivers value.
Why? Because:
a) you’re more likely to recognise what value really is; and
b) you have the life experience to solve problems connecting value up in new and important ways.
As for doing what we love, I think that’s mostly a nonsense. An economy can only work on doing what we love if the right number of people love all the necessary jobs — and what will ever ensure that?
However we can gain dignity by doing what is valuable and ensuring it nourishes and grows us adequately.
So what is value? If we look hard I think we’ll see it’s more than simply whatever people will pay for.
I hope that may help.
“Move up or move on” once sounded to me like disloyalty to my employers. Now at the end of my career, I only wish I had followed that advice repeatedly. So I urge every loyal employee: at the same time as you apply for a promotion, send your freshly rewritten CV (yes get it professionally rewritten each time) to several job possibilities elsewhere. Then, when your employers decide that they can have two workers of your competence instead of one, you can move on to more promising employment, while leaving them worse off than before they cheated you of your advancement.