[This was originally a comment on Riding on the Wire. I expanded on it a bit more here]
I read a great post about how in this economy, we’re all entrepreneurs. Our educational system is built to print out mass quantities of specific “student templates,” like Accounting major, Finance major… and restock the large institutions. While this works in a growing economy, when the Big 4 just hire all the Accounting majors, it doesn’t prepare them for a competitive job market. For the most part, graduating students have been commoditized. How do they compete with all the other Accounting majors when they are exactly the same in all relevant respects?
What our educational process needs is a dose of entrepreneurship. It needs to teach students to sell themselves, find a unique niche in the organization to serve (NOT a mass-produced, interchangeable cog), and establish a personal brand (or unique identity if you think the phrase “personal brand” belongs to those with scents). But most of all, students need to pursue something in which they’re interested. Too many have gone the Accounting/Finance track because it’s well defined and makes good money (see Brittany’s post).
Those who followed the easy path straight into a career they didn’t really enjoy will most likely be the first to get cut. They aren’t passionate about their work, and don’t provide more value than they cost to the firm in the downturn.
Those who follow what they love make a job for themselves, either by working for themselves (startup, freelancing or consulting) or by convincing others to create a job at a company for them. When a company creates a job for you, you get to do exactly what you’re passionate about (by design), and there’s no competition for that position – who is more qualified at being you than you?
While the financial organizations might be “too big to fail,” the individuals at those organizations aren’t. When you work for someone else, there’s not much you can do to prevent yourself from getting fired – it’s mostly out of your hands.
Howard Lindzon came up with the term “too small to fail.” When you’re self-employed, you can’t fire yourself. If you need more money, you work harder or find different things to work on.
This is the entrepreneurial spirit, and a lot more people are going to need to find it if they want to succeed in this environment.
Bill Erickson is a WordPress Consultant who builds custom websites using WordPress as a CMS and Thesis as a framework. He’s a cofounder and resident of The Creative Space, and a cofounder of the BIL Conference (the open analog to the TED Conference).
