Eight ways to think about digital employability

Outputs from a We Are Open Co-op self-thinkathon…

Earlier this week, we ran our own mini-thinkathon around the concept of ‘digital employability’. The concept (which I introduced in this post) hits the sweet spot for our co-op: the overlap between digital literacies and employability, credentialed through Open Badges.

Thanks to the visual talents of Bryan Mathers, and the thoughts and reflections of Laura Hilliger, we bounced ideas around for a couple of hours, going down rabbit holes, and then zooming out to see the big picture:

• What exactly is ‘digital employability’? How would we describe it?
• If we wanted to get started promoting the concept, what’s the best way to do that?
• What age group are we aiming at? Who’s the audience for this?
• In an imagined optimal future scenario, how would people go about levelling-up in their digital employability skills?
• What are the blockers in the wider landscape that stop people with digital employability skills gaining, and retaining, jobs?

Not (just) about big business

Too often, the proposed solution to ‘closing the employability skills gap’ is to invite representatives from large employers around a table. What they come up with may be of value, but describes only part of the employment landscape.

The practices, norms, and assumptions by those in large corporates are not necessarily shared by those who work for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). That’s because the context is likely to be entirely different for those with more precarious occupations: freelancers, those on zero-hours contracts, and those choosing to be, or trapped in, the ‘gig economy’.

What we need is something that works for those in secure, full-time, employment — but also for those who aren’t in that position.

Eight titles, or lenses

In thinking through these different scenarios, Bryan took the humorous approach of coming up with The unwritten books of Dr. Belshaw — an in-joke to do with all the works I’ve threatened to write over the years.

The eight potential titles, or lenses, that emerged from our conversation were:

1. The Web of Reputation — increasingly, we live in a world where you online reputation and ‘authority’ play a part in hiring decisions. This is particularly important for those not in permanent employment, either by choice or necessity. How do we ensure a fair currency? What are the knowledge, skills, and behaviours that matter?
2. HR is Broken — although things are changing, the standard way people are hired is: place advert somewhere; get applications; use blunt filter to get number of applications down to manageable size; invite ‘best’ applicants to interview; ask questions; hire someone. How could we change that so it works more like the web? Could we turn that on its head by focusing on what people will actually be doing in the advertised role?
3. Pay Attention — if you’re new to the jobs market, how do you know what you actually need to prove that you know and can do? Would a digital employability map/standard/framework/grid help with that? We think it might.
4. How To Make Your Own Mistakes (and not someone else’s) — while we might assume that the world would be a better place if we all learned from each other’s mistakes, that’s not actually how things work. We need to be able to tell our own stories, of both success and failure — and what we’ve learned from both.
5. Desired New World — we need to shift the Overton Window of what’s possible and, to do so, we need to show things that are quite radically different from the status quo. One way to do this might be to focus on the knowledge, skills, and behaviours to survive if you find yourself in the Precariat.
6. Invent & Reinvent — not only do we need to ‘invent’ ourselves when it comes to the jobs market (what are my marketable skills, knowledge, and behaviours?), but we need to continually re-invent ourselves.
7. Digital Skills Sandwich — this is our codename for a kind of ‘fluid curriculum’ that is nevertheless sandwiched in some way so that it can be credentialed. We need to do some more thinking around this, and potentially come up with a different metaphor — perhaps constellations?
8. Hack Your Life — there’s a whole sub-section of self-help books that help you ‘hack’ your lifestyle, your job, your appearance, and so on. The idea is that it’s a way to escape conformity, and find a shortcut to where you want to be. Open Badges based on common digital employability knowledge, skills, and behaviours might be a good route to that.

Next steps…

As you can see from some of Bryan’s notes below, we went pretty wide, and have several ideas on how to take this forward. One is a book proposal that’s nearly finished, another is a grant proposal that we’re currently putting together.

Laura suggested we could do a campaign, perhaps something in the style of This girl can, but focused on digital employability. We’ll be looking for people who can help us develop this work, both in terms of ideas, but also in terms of funding.

Get in touch if you’ve got ideas! We’re all ears. 😄

Image CC BY-ND Bryan Mathers

We Are Open Co-op works to spread the culture, processes, and benefits of openness wherever we can.