按: 春节一过，新的一届毕业生就要开始找工作，完成从学校到社会的转变。大学生就业，是一个世界性的议题。读完此文，你会了解到国外职业咨询公司或组织如LearnUp、Generation以及知名的LinkedIn如何运用科技帮助求职者找到匹配的工作，以及更重要的是，如何培训他们以适应不断变化的职业要求。反观中国，类似的公司或机构还是不多，未来在此方面或许大有可为。毕竟在文凭贬值、产业升级、科技迅猛发展的今天，每一个人都需要不断自我迭代，来适应世界的变化。终身学习已然成为刚需。
跟我一起默念三遍:我爱学习，学习使我快乐，学习比抢红包更快乐。
祝你找到好工作。

终于不用学习了？

Pathway dependency

Turning qualifications into jobs

将文凭变成工作

How technology can help in myriad ways
技术如何在很多方面有所帮助
Jan 14th 2017

1. UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IS designed to act as a slipway, launching students into the wider world in the expectation that the currents will guide them into a job. In practice, many people get stuck in the doldrums because employers demand evidence of specific experience even from entry-level candidates. Whether this counts as a skills gap is a matter of debate. “If I cannot find a powerful, fuel-efficient, easy-to-park car for $15,000, that doesn’t mean there is a car shortage,” says Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. But whether the fault lies with the educators or the employers, there is a need for pathways that lead individuals into jobs.
   1）大学教育的目的是作为一个滑道，将学生像船一样推入更广阔的世界，期望潮流引导他们找到一份工作。实际上，许多人却陷入困境，因为雇主要求大学生提供他们具有专业经验的证据，甚至是对于入门级的应聘者来也是如此。这是否是技能缺口是一个争论的问题。宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院（Wharton School）的彼得·卡佩利（Peter Cappelli）说：“如果我找不到一辆价格15000美元的动力强劲、节能、易于停车的汽车，这并不意味着汽车短缺。”但是，无论错误在于教育者还是雇主，社会都需要一种能使个人进入就业的途径。

2. Sometimes those pathways are clearly defined, as in medicine and the law. Vocational education combines classroom and work-based learning to prepare young people for specific trades. In many European countries, one-third to half of later-stage secondary schoolgoers are on a vocational path (see chart). Britain is due to introduce an apprenticeship levy in April.
   2）有时，这些途径是明确定义的，比如在医学和法律领域。职业教育将课堂和基于工作的学习相结合，为年轻人进入特定行业做好准备。在许多欧洲国家，三分之一到半数的高中以上学历者走上职业道路。英国将于4月开始征收学徒税。

3. But pathways are needed to smooth transitions in other countries (America, for example, lacks a tradition of vocational education); in less structured occupations; and when formal education has come to an end. The nanodegree is an example of such a pathway, as is General Assembly’s bootcamp model. Both rely heavily on input from employers to create content; both use jobs rather than credentials as a measure of success.
   3）但是，在其他国家（例如美国缺乏职业教育的传统），在非高度组织化的职业中，和正规教育结束时都需要有一些途径使得从学业到职业的过渡平稳。纳米学位是这种途径的一个例子，正如GA的训练营模式。两者都非常依赖雇主提供的信息来创建内容，都使用能否找到工作而不是获得证书作为衡量成功的标准。

4. That is particularly important in the early stages of people’s careers, which is not just when they lack experience but also when earnings grow fastest. An analysis of American wage growth by economists at the New York Federal Reserve showed that the bulk of earnings growth took place between the ages of 25 and 35; on average, after the age of 45 only the top 2% of lifetime earners see any earnings growth. So it is vital for people to move quickly into work once qualified, and to hold on to jobs once they get them.
   4）这在人们职业生涯的早期阶段尤其重要，这个阶段不仅仅是他们缺乏经验的时候，而且是收入增长最快的阶段。纽约美联储经济学家对美国工资增长的分析表明，大部分收入增长发生在25岁至35岁之间；平均而言，在45岁之后，终身工作者中只有前2％能够有收入增长。因此，对于人们来说，一旦获得资格，就必须迅速进入工作岗位，并在他们获得工作后紧紧抓住这些工作机会。

5. That is the insight behind LearnUp, a startup that works with applicants without college degrees for entry-level positions. Users applying for a job online can click on a link and take a one-hour online training session on how to be a cashier, sales clerk or whatever they are after. Employers pay LearnUp a fixed fee to improve the pool of candidates. Recruitment and retention rates have risen.
   5）这正是LearnUp背后的洞见，这家初创公司帮助没有大学学位的应聘者获得入门级职位。在线申请工作的用户可以点击一个链接，参加一个小时的在线培训课程，了解如何成为收银员、销售员或任何他们想从事的工作。雇主向LearnUp支付固定费用以提高应聘者的人数。招聘和留任率都有所上升。

6. Generation, a philanthropically funded programme run by the McKinsey Social Initiative, a not-for-profit arm of the consultancy, uses a bootcamp approach and some typically McKinsey-esque thinking to train people from difficult backgrounds for middle-skilled positions in industries like retailing and health care. The programme starts by going into workplaces and identifying key events (how an IT helpdesk handles a call from an irate customer, for example) that distinguish high performers from the rest.
   6）Generation是由麦肯锡社会倡议组织(一家非营利性的咨询机构)运营的慈善基金扶持的项目，它采用了一种训练营的方式和一些典型的麦肯锡思维方式来培训不同背景的人，使其胜任在诸如零售和医疗保健领域里的中等技能职位。该项目从进入工作场所并识别关键事件（例如IT客服如何处理来自一个愤怒客户的电话）开始，这些事件将工作表现优异者从其余人中区分出来。

7. Curriculum designers then use that analysis to create a full-time training programme lasting between four and 12 weeks that covers both technical knowledge and behavioural skills. The programme has gone live in America, Spain, India, Kenya and Mexico. By the end of 2016 it had 10,000 graduates, for whom it claims an employment rate of 90% and much higher retention rates than usual. The trainees pay nothing; the hope is that employers will fund the programme, or embed it in their own training programmes, when they see how useful it is.
   7）课程设计师然后使用该分析创建一个涵盖技术知识和行为技能的、持续4至12周的全日制培训计划。该计划已在美国，西班牙，印度，肯尼亚和墨西哥运作。到2016年年底，它有10,000名毕业生，他们声称就业率为90％，而且保留率比平常高得多。学员不用付钱。当雇主看到这个项目是多么有用时，就有希望让他们提供资金，或者将它嵌入到自己的培训计划中。

A little help from your friends

8. Such experiments use training to take people into specific jobs. In the past, an initial shove might have been all the help they needed. But as middle-skilled roles disappear, some rungs on the job ladder have gone missing. And in a world of continuous reskilling and greater self-employment, people may need help with repeatedly moving from one type of job to another. Vocational education is good at getting school-leavers into work, but does nothing to help people adapt to changes in the world of work. Indeed, a cross-country study in 2015 by researchers at the Hoover Institution suggests that people with a vocational education are more likely than those with a general education to withdraw from the labour force as they age. The pattern is particularly marked in countries that rely heavily on apprenticeships, such as Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
   8）这样的实验用培训使人们从事特定的工作。过去，在职业开始时推一把可能对他们的帮助就足够了。但随着中等技术岗位的消失，工作阶梯上的某些梯级不见了。在一个需要不断重新学习技能和有更多自由职业者的世界中，随着人们不断从一种类型的工作转移到另一种类型，他们会需要帮助。职业教育擅长的是让毕业生找到工作，但不能帮助人们适应工作世界的变化。实际上，胡佛研究所的研究人员在2015年进行的一项跨国研究表明，接受职业教育的人比有普通教育的人更有可能随着年龄的增长退出劳动力市场。在严重依赖学徒制度的国家，如丹麦，德国和瑞士，这种模式尤其明显。

9. Large companies may have the scale to offer their employees internal pathways to improve their skills, as companies like AT&T do. But many workers will need outside help in deciding which routes to take. That suggests a big opportunity for firms that can act, in effect, as careers advisers. Some are better placed than others to see where the jobs market is going. Manpower, which supplies temporary workers to many industries, last year launched a programme called MyPath that is based on the idea of an iterative process of learning and working. It allows Manpower’s army of temporary workers in America to earn a degree from Western International University at no financial cost to them. The degree is structured as a series of three or four episodes of education followed by periods in work, in the expectation that Manpower has a good overview of the skills leading to well-paid jobs.
   9）大公司可能有规模为其员工提供内部途径来提高他们的技能，像AT＆T公司那样。但许多工人需要外部帮助来决定采取什么路线。这表明实际上，作为职业顾问的的公司有很大的市场机会。一些公司比其他公司更好地看到就业市场在哪里。Manpower为许多行业提供临时工，去年推出了一个名为MyPath的计划，该计划基于学习和工作不断重复过程的想法。它使得曼力士的美国临时工人大军从西方国际大学获得学位，对于他们没有经济成本。该学位是由一系列三到四个教育阶段，以及随后的工作阶段构成的，期望Manpower很好地总结出通往高薪工作的技能。

10. LinkedIn is another organisation with** a decent understanding** of wider trends. The professional-networking site likes to call the data it sits on “the economic graph”, a digital map of the global economy. Its candidate data, and its recruitment platform, give it information on where demand from employers is greatest and what skills jobseekers need. And with LinkedIn Learning it can now also deliver training itself.
    10）LinkedIn是另一个对更广泛的趋势有足够理解的组织。这家职业网站喜欢称它坐拥的数据为“经济图”，即全球经济的数字地图。其求职者数据及其招聘平台为其提供了关于雇主的需求在哪里最大以及求职者需要什么技能的信息。通过LinkedIn Learning这个平台，它现在本身也可以提供培训。

11. The firm can already tell candidates how well their qualifications for any advertised job stack up against those of other applicants. In time, its data might be used to give “investment advice”, counselling its members on the financial return to specific skills and on how long they are likely to be useful; or to show members how other people have got into desirable positions.
    11）这家公司已经可以告诉应聘者和其他求职者相比，他们的资格在多大程度上匹配任何公开招聘的职位。最终，其数据可用于提供“投资咨询”，向其成员提供的建议包括:专业技能的财务回报以其可持续的时间；或向成员展示其他人如何获得理想的职位。

12. The difficulty with offering mass-market careers advice is finding a business model that will pay for it. LinkedIn solves this problem by aiming itself primarily at professionals who either pay for services themselves or who are of interest to recruiters. But that raises a much bigger question. “There is no shortage of options for folks of means,” says Adam Newman of Tyton Partners, an education consultancy. “But what about LinkedIn for the linked-out?”
    12）提供大众市场职业建议的困难是找到一种商业模式来支付它。 LinkedIn解决这个问题的方法是主要针对自己支付服务或招聘人员会对其感兴趣的专业人士。但这提出了一个更大的问题。“对于有办法的人们来说，他们不会缺少选择，”教育咨询公司Tyton Partners的Adam Newman说： “但是，那些没有资源的人怎么‘领英’呢？”
    This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline “Pathway dependency”

原文出处：经济学人杂志

译者：七呵夫

本译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文所涉法律后果均由本人承担。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。