Staying market relevant in uncertain times
By Mimi Lee, Founder, Meiava
“Build a toolkit of capabilities through a mosaic of diverse experiences.”
Photo: Ono Kosuki | Pexels
I often share this advice with others and emphasize that that while consolidating their skills, they need to be attuned to the changes around them.
Staying market relevant is an underlying career advice that I would share with my younger self and still focus on today. (Read article: What would I tell my younger self?). It encourages a growth mindset where your capabilities are in step or ahead of trends and market shifts. Spotting these early can help to reveal new career possibilities and anticipate potential career disruptors.
Why is staying market relevant important?
The first and obvious reason is to ensure that you have the right capabilities and experience to be job ready in your current role and for new opportunities both within and outside your organization.
Secondly, it helps you to manage the risk and be ready in the unfortunate event of cutbacks by your employer.
The third important reason is that with the speed of innovation, employers are demanding future ready skills.
Technological change is creating new roles but also threatens to make some roles redundant over time - and it is happening now.
A staggering 85 million jobs will be displaced, while up to 97 million jobs in the digital world will emerge, according to the World Economic Forum.
The Forum’s most recent study shows that between now and 2027, businesses predict that 44% of workers’ core skills will face disruption as technology is moving faster than companies can design and scale up their training programs.[i]
Photo: rawpixels
Further, advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) for example will boost demand for AI and machine learning specialists by 39% in the next 5 years. New roles are emerging and expected to rise in demand for AI engineers, AI content creators, interface designers, and ethics and governance specialists. However, the negative consequence is that jobs that are increasingly automated will become less market relevant. Roles in areas such as banking customer service, accounting and bookkeeping, and administrative functions are likely to be displaced.[ii]
Redundancies rise
Layoffs have made repeated headlines in 2023. The millions of headcount reductions globally extend beyond the technology sector to include financial services, professional services, trade, transportation and utilities industries, and the construction industry. Continued economic headwinds and increasing geopolitical turbulence will signal a tighter job market.
In the technology sector alone, 1100 companies worldwide have made around 250,000 employees redundant this year from January to October 2023 – up by 51% on 2022.[iii]
An estimated 45% of those who lost their jobs in the sector are women and while the cuts are almost evenly split from a gender perspective, what is notable is that women account for less than a third of tech industry workers and occupy less than a quarter of technical and leadership roles.[iv] The redundancies are likely to set back any gains in building a strong female talent pipeline for women in technology.
It’s no wonder that a growing number of workers are worried about losing their job (37%) and more than half (52%) are worried about the impact of economic uncertainty on their job security, according to a survey by Randstad.[v]
Ways to stay market relevant
What are you doing to keep up with the latest trends in your field? Staying market relevant in today's fast-paced world requires ongoing effort which may include:
Completing training courses and attaining certifications to validate your skills.
Taking shorter micro-learning modules to efficiently upskill on emerging technologies, develop capabilities in different functional areas, and improve technical and soft skills.
Seeking on-the-job growth opportunities by taking on new projects that stretch core capabilities for the future. (Read article, Do you have this core capability for the future?).
Actively networking within your industry to build connections and stay abreast of developments.
Reading extensively and attending events to learn about market trends and leading practices.
Volunteering your time to work on initiatives within and outside your organization.
Considering career mobility assignments in another geography.
Taking on a side hustle to leverage a strength or further develop a skill of interest while making extra money.
Not everything may go your way
Your career development plan may face some challenges along the way. Career setbacks - including being unsuccessful in a promotion, not getting a new role that you have been working hard for, or being made redundant - can be highly disruptive and may be an attributing factor why women are changing industries and career paths.
An unexpected job loss can up-end your life and affect your career momentum. Being thrown back into a competitive job search journey along with countless other qualified candidates is a moment that will test your market relevance.
Setbacks are hard. The feeling of disappointment can quickly spiral into negative self-talk and analysis as to why. Women are especially symptomatic of this - myself included. Even the most accomplished, highly capable and determined women that I know feel the stress of these career situations and have experienced a degree of imposter syndrome.
A female peer reminded me just the other day that there are reasons why life brings you to this point in time. We talked about how career transitions have a silver-lining where for the first time it gives us more time – time to spend with the people that matter to us and time to reflect, reset or validate our career goals, and renew both physically and mentally.
Setbacks do not have to define your worth or diminish your talents and ambition. Having others to connect with is important to motivate and support your next moves. You just need to take the steps forward.
Sustaining career momentum
After setbacks, what does it take to sustain momentum in your career? I recently read an article which looked at why some women are able to sustain and maintain career momentum, despite systemic, structural barriers in the workplace. Three common characteristics emerged.
The women have a focused drive or ability self-determination to overcome difficulties.
They have a keen desire to learn and find opportunities that provide new experiences, challenges, and knowledge.
Finally, they have an agile mindset to quickly assess a situation and determine a path forward.
It is hard to sustain career momentum on your own. The additional theme that I would add to the characteristics mentioned above is that you need to have people to turn to for advice and support. Having others to connect with to gain their perspectives and lived experiences is incredibly valuable when you are making choices on the actions that will help you to stay market relevant.
I wish that I had a broader network of people to turn to for advice earlier in my career. Not having a strong network back then likely limited the aperture of options available to me. Fortunately, that changed as I expanded my professional network with the intention to grow the diversity of connections.
A lack of access to a broader network of people to turn to for career advice is a common challenge for women.[vi] It is why we created Meiava Elevate our advisor matching platform to make it easier to set up conversations with a diverse network of women (and men as allies) who open up their calendar and are willing to pay it forward to support others. With strong connections, we hope that more women can access the advice they need to thrive and stay market relevant.
Endnotes
[i] World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2023. 1 May 2023.
[ii] World Economic Forum. Jobs of Tomorrow: Large Language Models and Jobs. 18 September 2023.
[iii] Layoffs.fyi. Tech layoffs in 2022-2023. Tech layoffs by industry. Layoffs.fyi - Tech Layoff Tracker and Startup Layoff Lists. Website accessed 9 November 2023.
[iv] Fast Company. How recent tech layoffs can disproportionately affect women and people of color. 25 January 2023.
[v] Randstad. Workmonitor 2023. Workmonitor
[vi] Meiava survey and discussions with women. 2021-2022.