Alert for Career and Profession Changes – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #888

Alert for Career and Profession Changes – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #888

Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #888 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans  aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.

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Workers of all grades! You guys should consider doing these things, now. 

One, learn and keep learning new skills while you are safely tucked in your present job. Learn skills related to your current profession, and also the professions which shall be in demand in the future.

Two, do take pride in what you are doing and have been doing, but be mentally ready that you may have to do some other work. It may be an emotionally stressful event, and if it is, seek help to overcome it.

Three, build network and connections within and outside your profession. In today’s social media world, building connections has become easier. The caution here is that the networking should be based on good intent and along professional ground. In short, be a networker, not a social media addict. 

Global Situation

I would like to highlight that the situation is changing fast, rather changed already. McKinsey report shows that by 2030, a significant portion of the global workforce – ranging from 3 to 14 percent, translating into 75 to 375 million workers – will need to switch occupations and learn new skills. In advanced economies like the United States and Japan, this figure rises significantly to 32 percent and 46 percent respectively.

Pakistan Situation

How many people in Pakistan make career changes during their work life, considering that the average work life is 35 years or more? The answer is few people. And there are reasons for this phenomenon.

Firstly, our background (baggage?) of many centuries shapes our psychology to do the same throughout our lives what we started. The professions were few and fixed and ran through the generations. A farmer’s son would be a farmer, a carpenter’s son would be a carpenter, though he may focus on some niche within carpentry, and so on. It is still happening in the same way. There are families where most children go or try to go into army, or become doctors, or engineers, or else.

The fixation with the same profession becomes stronger if the elder had been successful. If a person got commission into army and got promoted to senior ranks without interruption, he would insist that all his sons should enroll in army. A successful doctor or engineer would do the same.

Another reason for promoting the continuity of profession through the generations is that the seniors could pass on valuable lessons learnt during their lifetime to the younger ones. They could also tap some connections to facilitate induction or growth of younger ones, or they could leave an established practice, clientele, connections as an inheritance. If a father has four sons, he may allow one or two to pursue other professions, but he would insist that at least two would join the same profession as their father’s. Daughters may be spared if brothers could be coaxed or even they may not be spared.

Secondly, we have limited options. While the floodgates of new professions opened in the developed world, we have kept our minds and eyes closed. Our universities are churning out students with degrees in the same stale subject which they used to do 40 years ago. The educational institutions have never kept pace with what is required; they would offer what they have. Private universities have mushroomed during the last twenty years and the trend continues. They are offering an array of courses with nice looking names, but no one knows what kind of jobs students would get after completing studies. Government and its organizations like Ministry of Education, and Higher Education Commission are not doing anything worthwhile anyway.

Thirdly, security is rooted deep in our minds, and we cannot entirely blame people for it. With scarce opportunities, and the ever-present danger of getting fired any time in a private job, people overtly seek government jobs that may pay less but have a lifetime warranty on them. Our laws and rules make it nearly impossible to fire delinquent government servants. Even when they are fired somehow, they would go to courts and get relief with salaries and benefits of the years passed in litigation.

Fourthly, thanks to the bad policies of all successive governments, the education system is constantly dividing and polarizing the society. Millions of children studying in Madrassahs would either go for making their own madrassah for living or seek a secure government job. A student studying at government schools shall have a different trajectory than children studying at well-known private schools, and so on.

Fifthly, the employers and their staff are also fixated in their minds. They would not accept people working in another industry into their own, saying that they do not know about ‘our specialty’. The exceptions to the rule have lately been finance and HR where people have moved from one industry to the other. 

Sixthly, our own perception is a big roadblock to change of profession. Winnie Jiang of INSEAD says that a stable job offers more than a pay cheque; it provides a sense of belonging, self-worth, and purpose. People are scared of changing job, or even portfolio, because they feel lost in the new space. 

The above information signifies a huge disruption coming our way. True, that we are not advancing at the same pace, rather being left behind further with every passing year, we may be able to cling to our ways for some more time. However, the disruption is huge and intense and shall affect the entire globe. Our policy makers, educators, service providers, and all other stakeholders need to understand and adjust to cope with it.

Change is order of the day, like it has never been before. It is imperative that we all get prepared, embrace change, and get the benefits it offers.

Concluded.

Reference:

https://knowledge.insead.edu/career/secret-ingredient-successful-career-change?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=b9b63b19d8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_11_30_02_48&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b9b63b19d8-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D