Ep 132 Career: How to navigate the 2024 job market

In this thought-provoking episode of The Crazy One, host Stephen Gates dives deep into the state of the creative industry in 2024. As the industry grapples with unprecedented layoffs and shifting dynamics, Stephen shares invaluable insights into the underlying factors driving these changes. He explores how economic pressures, evolving technologies, and changing consumer behaviors are reshaping the landscape for creative professionals. Listeners will gain practical strategies for navigating these challenges, including how to adapt your skills, stay relevant, and seize new opportunities in an uncertain market. Join Stephen for an eye-opening discussion that empowers creatives to thrive amidst adversity.

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Transcript

What's going on, everybody? And welcome into the 132nd episode of the Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is a show we talk about creativity, leadership, all sorts of stuff that matter to creative people. Now, today, what I want to jump into is the second most popular question I've gotten through the mentoring sessions and everything else that I do on ATP list and other platforms, which is Steve, what the hell is going on with the market?

Do you have any insights? Can you tell me what's going on? How do I find a job? Is there some trick that I'm missing? And the real short answer to that is no. There's been a great show. Thanks so much. We'll talk to everybody later. Kidding. Obviously. But, look, I think I, I, I don't know what the hell is going on.

I think I've got a few insights that I'm happy to share, but but as a whole, it's a mess, right? I think it's a mess because we've seen, you know, really over the last two years. I think we saw for a while companies sort of use the economy as an excuse to offload a lot of people. We're seeing soft layoffs.

We're seeing, you know, sectors like Faang, companies like the apples, Googles meds, things like that that are immune for this or suddenly laying off tons of people that I think a lot of people just manage companies badly through Covid, that they didn't know how to handle it or didn't know how to retain people, or didn't know how to fire people or didn't know what to do.

So I think it's just we have a moment where I think there's a huge amount of talent in the market, which has created an insane amount of competition and insane amount of noise. I think that, you know, in a lot of cases, one of the big questions I get asked, I think especially for people in leadership positions, the word ageism comes up a lot, right?

Like, is it that I'm too old? Is that I'm too expensive? Like, what's going on? I think for leaders, I think we've got a two part problem. Let's talk about specifics. I think the one thing is, like the pendulum always swings from kind of the design and creative side of things back to the business side of things, and then back the other way.

Right? This has been a repeating cycle. If you've done this for any amount of time and look at the pendulum is swinging away from design lead right now that I think for too many companies, they made a really bad attempt at design thinking. Or they hired an expensive design leader, or they bought into a lot of that sort of stuff.

And the reality is they didn't see the results. Again, I've spent the better part of the last 5 or 8 years. We did a huge study in envision that showed, right, that the vast majority of companies were in a low mode, low design maturity position, that this was going to be a huge warning sign that if we couldn't demonstrate value to the business, the pendulum was going to go the other way.

You're going to lose your head count, you're going to lose your funding. And there's a lot of nodding heads, but nobody really changed much. Right. And I think we're back to the state where the companies everybody tends to idolize have continued to engage in a lesser extent, but still engage in design. But a lot of other ones, you know, that's the first thing they get rid of.

They cut design, they cut marketing. Then all of a sudden they realize they have a crappy product and no product demand. And then they have to hire everybody back. Right? We've seen this movie. I've seen this 3 or 4 times, but so part of it is just a swing away from that, that for a lot of us, we indulged in incredibly high salaries and a lot of other things that everybody knew was not going to be sustainable.

And guess what? It wasn't. But I think for leaders in particular, right. The thing that I'm seeing is not ageism, right. What I would term it as, and I think the thing that I've experienced, a lot of the conversations that I've had, I would call it experience ism, meaning I think what companies are not interested in, they're not interested in somebody who's going to come in and say or have the experience to say this is going to work.

That's not going to work. That's stupid. That is not going to ship this sort of product. We're going to need to change this. You're going to need to get uncomfortable about that. We're going to need to do those sort of things right. Like they don't want to have any of those conversations. They just want to put their head down and protect their bottom line and do a lot of that sort of stuff.

And so they would rather hire somebody usually younger and cheaper, who doesn't have that sort of experience, who's just going to kind of come in and do the work. I guess I think that's one of the prominent things you're kind of seeing is that generally the return to a creative service mentality, that we're the people that just make it pretty.

And so I think that that's the thing for a lot of companies is that it? They don't really. It's not ageism as much as it is experience ism. They don't want to pay somebody a lot of money to be a pain in the ass. They don't want to pay somebody a lot of money to come in and change things.

And in some ways I think they're justified for that because for too many cases they did that and didn't see any results. Why the hell am I going to do it again and again? I think these are been the things that I've tried to talk about and preach about and do a lot of those sort of things. And so some of it is a monster of our making that I think we need to own.

Some of it is business being business that at the end of the day, whenever money and power are involved and things like that, people will do whatever allows them to get more money and power. Right. And that in a lot of cases, that means more status quo or just, you know, kind of weathering the storm and then seeing where things go.

So I think that there's a lot of that. I think even today I'm continuing to see more layoffs. I'm continuing to see a lot of those sort of changes. And I think, you know, it's led to just a really interesting state of the market because this has gone on long enough, and I've talked to the people who are desperate.

It's not an easier way for me to say that their severance has run out, savings gone. And I know people that are getting jobs at Hobby Lobby and Home Depot and other places like that because they can't find work. And it's hard to be able to say, okay, look, you know, I've got some advice to be able to sort of change that because it's, you know, there's a big disruption like all of this timed up with AI and other things like that, where some companies are able to lean into that or be able to downsize that, or it's changing the industry or like there's just there's this huge area of upheaval and it's a mess.

And I think, you know, the one the couple things that I've seen that still work is that I think for the most part, you know, a lot of social platforms, whenever it comes to work, have become fairly useless, honestly, just because there's so many people that are on LinkedIn and other platforms that are just making noise to make noise, right?

Just they don't know what to do. They're trying to elevate their brand again, understandably so. They just aren't saying a lot that's really impactful or that insightful. So there's a lot of noise out there. I think there's a lot of people that are, you know, leaning into case studies and cold calling and trying to go to trade shows and doing a lot of other things, which again, I think whenever you're desperate, make sense?

The best advice that I can give, and I think the best things that I've seen that try to be successful are the hardest, right? Because usually what stands between you and where you want to be is the stuff you don't want to do, which I just keep discovering new ways of making that statement. True. But like I think to be honest and authentic, to talk about the process, to talk about what you're going through, to not try to sugarcoat it and make it into something that it's not.

Because at least in my experience, whenever you make content or whenever you have conversations that are real, that are honest about what you're out or what you're looking for, because I think right now we are in an area where or in a time where I think authenticity is at a premium, you know, nobody really reads cover letters any more because they're all written by AI portfolios and resumes, I think don't mean what they used to because so much of it again, is written by AI.

It's, it's it's harder than ever to get a real sense of just who somebody actually is, you know? Because right now, for so many people, it's just, I want a relationship for what you can do for me, you know, can you introduce me to this person? Can you do whatever? Like what's the. It's a very what have you done for me lately kind of thing.

But I think for me, like human, authentic real still cuts through. I think we're going to continue to see that with the rise of AI on other things like that, that human and authentic is going to be more of what people seek out. I think finding ways to communicate that about your work and other things like that, to be authentic, to share what the struggles are, not just polish it up into these nice, happy little packages.

I think to lean into your network, because I think one of the things that I've discovered time and time again, and I have to remind myself of time and time again, is, I think for just too many of us, we don't know how much support we have until we actually ask for it. And when you ask for that support, be specific.

Again, I talk to people every single week. I'm looking for a job. Great. What are you looking for? Anything I can get. It's an incredibly hard spot to try to help somebody out, because I think if you say, look, I'm just, you know, anything I can get, it's like, okay, well, if something comes along, I'll try to send it your way.

But I think if somebody is specific in saying, look, I want to do digital product design for a North American car manufacturer, great. I've got 4 or 5 specific people I can introduce you to. Right. So I think trying to be specific around what do you want to do, where do you want to go? What are the things that you're interested in.

Don't just do that. Like who do you want me to be? Because it's an incredibly tempting moment to just say, look, I can't miss on any opportunity. I can't do whatever that is. I need to be generic. I need to appeal to everybody. But as we all know, when you appeal to everybody, usually don't appeal to anybody. But try to leverage your network, have specific conversations, right?

Go out, be honest around what that is. Try to find out what's going on. I think have a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C because it is heartbreaking to me. The number of people that I talk to who are all in on plan A, right, it is like I'm getting a new full time job and I'm doing this and it's all or nothing.

And most of the time I'm having conversations with people whenever they've got to the nothing part of that statement, they're down to a couple of weeks in their savings. You know, they are desperate and it's a heartbreaking and hard place to be for how do you give them advice in that moment? Right. So I think if plan A is like, look, I want a full time job and plan B is that I'm going to do some freelancing or some consulting or plan C is I'm going to do some upskilling, and plan D is I'm going to start creating content to get my name out there and plan E, is I going to do more public speaking? Right. Like try to have a few different things that could try to pay off because I think, like for me right now, a lot of it is how do you cobble these different pieces together to get to something that it looks like some weird version of success, but I think that's going to be the thing is that I don't think, at least for the next six months, like things are starting to get better.

I'm starting to hear more people are getting more job interviews, right. I'm starting to see more postings around more job openings. I think things are starting because honestly, like for here in the United States, most everybody's just waiting to see which way is the election going to go. Just bottom line, right? They're like, look, until I understand what the hell is going to go on, are we going to have a civil war?

What the hell is going to where are you going to do? Right, like I'm just going to hunker down. But I think trying to lean in to those sort of things, because I think that, you know, whenever things do get better, we're going to have a whole different problem, which is I think for so many people right now, they're just hunkered down in the jobs that they're in because it's a paycheck.

And that as soon as things get better, I think we're going to see a second great resignation. I think where there's so many people that just they're in their job, they don't they could give a damn about their job, right? They go in, they do just enough to not get fired. They get their paycheck and they go home because again, you know, their employers put unreasonable demands on them.

They know how lucky they are to have a job and, you know, at some point when that changes and the power dynamic moves away from the employers, I think we're going to see another big shift, which is then going to cause a whole nother problem, because then again, there's going to be a ton of competition for the jobs that are out there.

But that sort of thinking around, asking for help, leaning to your network, right, doing what is authentic to you, not just don't just go create content because everybody else is doing it. If that's not who you are, don't do it right because that's a brand impression. That's kind of like, wow, this person put out a bunch of stuff that they clearly don't feel.

But again, I think think about these sort of things. And, you know, again, we're all going to have to continue to be sort of scrappy around what's going on as things start to settle and we try to figure things out of what is the new normal going to look like whenever it comes out of this? And that's what I wish I had more concrete answers.

I wish I could just say, here's the magic bullet, because I think for so many people, that's the heartbreaking part of these conversations, is they come to me and they say, Steve, what's the secret? And I have to look them in the eye and say, your problems in your question because you think there's a shortcut. There's some magical thing you need to do that isn't go out and do the work and treat people well and understand that your reputation matters, and how you show up matters.

And who you are matters. And this industry is too damn small. Just act like however the hell you want to act and think. There's not going to be a consequence, that you know that people owe you anything. Nobody owes you anything because I don't care what your experience is, I don't care. I think that's what you know for me.

That's why I keep talking about that. Like you look, I got laid off coming off of a run of eight Apple keynotes with my work running globally in an Apple commercial, sitting, having lunch at Infinite Loop. And I got laid off because a bunch of old white guys on the board who were rich wanted to get richer. None of it mattered.

Right? And again, this is why we're in the era of defensive self-employment or defensive employment, right? Where we have to look out for ourselves. You know, everybody who wants to talk to me about how their company is family? No, it's not, it's not. I'm sorry. It may feel that way and we may want to rationalize it. Maybe you have friends there.

Maybe you have individuals that you will hold on to that feel like family or friends to you, but your company is not your family. Again, like, I don't know, I don't actually I don't know, maybe it is. Maybe your family would screw you over at a moment's notice. That's definitely some families, right? But but it's not. And I think, you know, we have to take more responsibility, more accountability for what this is and just be willing to jump and try some things because it's a mess.

And I think there's not a way to sugarcoat right now that it's a mess. And I think, again, I would love to hear from you or leave it in the comments or reach out or we'll do a follow up show or something like that. Like if there are things that you disagree with, are there things that you found are working?

If there is a secret, right, like let me know. I want to let people know because there's a lot of people who are panicked. There's a lot of people in pain, there's a lot of people trying to figure stuff out and what their future is. There's a lot of people who are sort of in suspended animation, figuring out what are they going to do next, and if we have a way to be able to help them, then I think that we should.

So hopefully this helps. Like I said, let me know. I'd love to hear, as always, like feel free to share the show and things like that as we get fired back up again. But hopefully it helps and let me know. Let me know what your thoughts are around this. And hey, as always, stay crazy.