Tag / career coaching

by Nicolle

LinkedIn can write your profile summary now

I spend a lot of time writing and speaking about how new technology reshapes job functions and industries. Specifically, I focus on automation tools, how they alter traditional roles, and how employees can adapt. So I’m always on the look out for new features and tools that automate something a human normally does.

This week, I noticed that LinkedIn offers a new feature: LinkedIn will write your summary for you.

My wife was on LinkedIn the other day, a place she rarely visits. She works in healthcare, isn’t job searching, and has zero reason to update her profile. As such, her profile is a barren place. But she checked in and saw this in place of her empty summary:

When she clicked to expand, she saw this:

Her first reaction was surprise followed by laughter. Though she doesn’t like writing a summary, she told me she’d never write something like that. It’s not her style.

The summary is slightly inaccurate and reads like an outdated objective statement from a resume in the 90’s. It sounds like a corporate website devoid of personality.

But that’s probably the point. A lot of professionally written LinkedIn profiles read like corporate websites. I used to work for an outplacement company that has an entire team dedicated to writing resumes (those resumes which always included an outdated objective statement, much to my disappointment (side note: objective statements are a polarizing topic in resume writing circles. I land firmly on the side of hating them with a passion)). No matter how the resume was written before the review process, they all sounded like the statement above after the resume team worked on it. Standardization is easier than personalization.

Corporate speak written by humans is very popular on LinkedIn and within the resume/LinkedIn writing community. Since this feature was likely trained on data from LinkedIn profiles, it’s not surprising to see this type of summary.

That’s not a bad thing either. Style aside, this feature is actually really helpful. If you can’t afford a professional LinkedIn writer to redo your profile, you’re in a rush, or you’re just not one for words, LinkedIn’s automated summary will most definitely do the trick for you. At the very least, it’ll get you started on writing a summary.

Writing LinkedIn summaries is hard. Writing them with flair and personality is harder. It takes practice and skill for a human to do it well. It’s impressive to see this coming from a machine yet still a good reminder machines still generally suck at creative flair and personality.

I’ve got a sweet spot for automation tools that are creeping into my former industry: career coaching. In my talks, I tell a story about how a machine came for my job when I was a global career coach at Yale School of Management. I use it to show audiences how automation tools aren’t limited to warehouses and accountants, and that we all need to adapt, even career coaches.

Career coaches do many things. They give direction. They review resumes, write cover letters and LinkedIn profiles. They listen to your stories and give you feedback. Career coaching at its heart is a people profession. It’s about relationships and communication.

But that doesn’t mean it’s immune to new technology. I wrote before about how machine learning and artificial intelligence are changing career coaching. From resumes built by AI, to resumes reviewed by machine learning, to chatbots that coach you, to an automated summary for LinkedIn, automation tools that do the work that career coaches do are growing.

They might not be that great right now. But these machines will learn how to get better. They’ve got plenty of humans to teach them.

by Nicolle

Looking for a career change? There’s a podcast for that.

Figuring out how to make a career change is a big barrier for many. After all, we were all sold on the idea that we simply needed a college degree and the right major and we’d be set for life. Nobody teaches us how to change careers. But the career ladder is dead, and the world of work has changed. This isn’t your dad’s workplace anymore.

We all need a bit of help when it comes to finding a new career. From how to pick a career path, to learning new skills, to starting a new job, switching careers is a daunting task for many.

How to Change Careers by Podcast

I launched the podcast 50 Conversations to help people change careers. Can you actually learn how to change careers by podcast? Maybe. But you can certainly get a lot of good advice on how to find a new career. The podcast offers 50 stories from people who have changed careers. They cover everything from how they knew it was time to change, how they found a new career path, to how they learned skills to make the jump. And at the end of each episode they give advice to future career changers like you.

Career paths, bootcamps, and career changes in your 30s, oh my

Career changes comes in many shapes and sizes. In my podcast for career changers, you’ll hear stories about people who took many different paths. You’ll hear about people who went back to school in their 30s and 40s. Listen to others explain how they choose a digital bootcamp or why they opted to go to community college. Hear stories from people who were burnt out and started their own business. You’ll also get to hear from people who have changed over and over again, always curious about the next opportunity. With 50 conversations, you’ll hear a variety of career paths, so expected and some less so.

“I need a career change but don’t know what to do”

If that phrase has escaped your mouth recently, the 50 Conversations podcast is definitely for you. The beginning of a career change doesn’t start with having a plan; it starts with exploring your options, commitment free. Listening to a podcast about how to change careers is an excellent start to the career change exploration process.

Free career advice in your pocket

Look, career coaches are fabulously helpful for helping you make a career change but they’re expensive. So consider this podcast for career changers a career coach in your pocket. You’ll learn how to make a career change in many different ways. Plus, I interview other career coaches to get their take on how they’re reshaping their careers.

Curious? Good!

Find 50 Conversations on iTunes, Stitcher, and direct at www.50conversations.com.

by Nicolle

Could machine learning replace career coaches?

Buried at the bottom of an an HBR post titled 8 Ways Machine Learning is Improving Company Processes, is a little nugget about the ways machine learning might soon affect career planning. Machine learning could help employees in navigate their career development by providing:

Recommendations (that) could help employees choose career paths that lead to high performance, satisfaction, and retention. If a person with an engineering degree wishes to run the division someday, what additional education and work experience should they obtain, and in what order?

Could this be a career coach in the future of work? It’s a fascinating idea and I’d love to see it in practice. We’ve already seen machine learning technology take over some parts of a career advisors job. There’s even a chatbot in development that’s trying to be a career coach (let’s hope they’re better than LinkedIn’s mediocre job recommendation algorithm.) IBM uses AI to guide job seekers through their search.

A good career coach will listen to you, help you work out ideas, guide you through an ambiguous process, support you emotionally, and reflect your own words back to you. Machine learning technology can’t do this yet, in answer to my clickbait title.

But there aren’t enough good career coaches to go around. And few people can even afford a good career coach. Moreover, not every organization offers career coaching that helps employees navigate their next steps. Tools that help people navigate a world full of increasingly ambiguous career paths are mighty helpful.

Like many jobs, career coaches won’t be fully replaced by robots or artificial intelligence anytime soon. There will always be people who prefer working with people over machines. But the role of career coaches will change as new tools and technology emerge. Career coaches need to be aware of these changes. The workplace and available roles are shifting rapidly. Career coaches need to be able to coach their clients through these changes. They need to rethink outdated career advice, especially given that our job search is becoming less human. University career departments in particular need to upskill.

Today’s post is brought to you by my half way mark to 50K words for #NaNoWritMo. I’m deep into a chapter on the future of work for my book and still finding a ton of good content to write about. The challenge of course is to write about it and not just read about it. Reading is not writing, I have to remind myself a bajillion times a day.

If you’re into this type of stuff, subscribe and I’ll send you things about careers, future of work, and probably a bunch of gifs.