Work isn’t life, and life isn’t work. Society has a better understanding of that now. In fact, just a few decades ago, that wasn’t the philosophy. There’s a new perspective, and it’s work life, which is the time you dedicate to work. It’s different from work-life goals. Rather, it’s how you use work to accomplish your life goals. Achieving them requires a thoughtful approach to all of the components in the ecosystem: education, jobs, money, government, technology, career service advice and personal success advocates.

What caused the big shift and evolution?

The Information Age: Access changed influence and options.

Pre-digital age, the path to work had many fewer forks in the road. The primary influencers in control of work life were those in your environment, including family, friends, educators and employers. They had the market on dispensing belief systems and decision-making as well as access to jobs. All those influences were often much louder than the ambitions or interests of an individual.

The picture looks much different now; much of that came with the dawn of the internet when access to information was instantaneous. The light turned on for workers, and they began to see evidence of the effect of work-life choices on mental, physical and financial well-being.

Everyone can be a learner.

Learning changed as well, with people discovering more opportunities to meet their career and income goals. In many ways, education became democratized and accessible to more people. Today’s learner doesn’t even need to leave their house to reach work-life goals.

Today, you have so many options to build your qualifications for a role. You can get a degree, earn a certification or develop specialized skills. This new freedom to learn also helps you if you’re currently in a role that you aren’t satisfied with.

Employers are no longer the gatekeepers to success.

Generations ago, people were company men and women. They stayed with the same employer for their entire career, knowing a pension was waiting for them. With little awareness of other opportunities and little desire to uproot their lives, they stayed put.

Now, job changes are typical, with a person changing jobs 12 times in their lifetime on average. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, older workers, ages 55-64, stayed at a job for more than three times longer (a median of 9.8 years) than younger workers, ages 25-34 (2.8 years).

It’s easier to switch jobs now that information is readily available at your fingertips. 

Employers are no longer gatekeepers to health care, retirement planning or financial health. You no longer have to stay in a job that isn’t moving your work-life goals forward.

The good news is that access to information and the digital age changed where you stand today. You can now chart your own course with guidance from a partner such as pepelwerk, who puts you in the driver’s seat.

It all starts with finding the North Star for your work life. Reading your “directional compass” may require some reconfigurations, and that’s why pepelwerk exists.

To find the North Star of your work life, you’ll need to do a few things. By going through these steps, the direction to take becomes much more apparent. It starts with a few basics.

What is a career?

Career [kəˈrir]

a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling : a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement, especially in public, professional or business life 

In the 21st century and beyond, careers won’t be hierarchically linear. Rather, they expand laterally, meaning opportunities to earn more for being a manager or executive will become less likely. Even today, skilled professionals often make more than a manager. As a result, today's and tomorrow’s careers will be about the continuous development of expertise in an area of interest and proficiency in a set of skills.

With this perspective, you can:

• Remove misconceptions and myths about the working world.
• Define what works mean to you.
• Prepare for a constantly changing working world.

Ideas about what it means to be in the working life are often false. They are a collection of media portrayals, some possibly skewed experiences of others and traditional approaches in job-seeking. It’s time to bust them. Let’s look at the biggest ones needing some updating and enlightening.

It’s not you; it’s them.

What avenues can you take to find a job? There are more options than ever, but they all aren’t as equal in terms of transparency and outcomes. Let’s look at a few of these options:

Staffing Agencies

Staffing companies make money on people’s time. They have a singular focus: Fill a job and get paid. They vary in quality and business ethics. Their go-to tactic is to spam job boards and prevent direct hires from getting visibility. Once you’re in their database, get ready for a stream of opportunities that often have little to do with your skills, experience or goals.

Many employers use them because they perceive the risk around costs to be lower. They won’t have to fire you and start all over; the burden is on the staffing company. One point of note is that staffing agencies and outsourcing companies are different. Outsourcing organizations are direct-hire job opportunities and can be a great place to work and develop more skills.

Job Boards

Job boards have become the standard way to find employment. The Indeeds of the world mostly make money from employers posting jobs. As a candidate, you still have to do a lot of work uploading a resume to create a profile. Then you search, apply and wait. While it may not cost you money, the time investment is substantial, with no guarantee you’ll find the job you desire. Job boards feature third-party recruiting and direct hires, but sometimes, it can be difficult to decipher what the job is.

Candidate Marketplaces

A newer edition to the job seeker landscape is candidate marketplaces. They generate revenue on outcomes and membership fees. They are more specific in matching people ready to work who are also willing to pay. Examples include Uber, Lyft, Taskrabbit, GitHub, Angi, CareNow, Behance, Upwork and pepelwerk. They all have different features; some focus on the gig economy, while others, such as pepelwerk, lead to direct hires. Within most of these, you can access tools and features to support your goals.  

When looking at these options, a main consideration is direct hires vs. third-party recruiting. Let’s look at the main differences.

Direct Hires vs. Third-Party Recruiting

In a direct-hire situation, the company recruiting you is employing and paying you. With a third party, there’s an intermediary between you and the business paying you. The third party is getting a cut of that wage. It can be even more complicated when there are multiple layers between you and your work. If you’re a contractor, you work for the staffing company — they sign the checks and provide benefits if applicable.

When job-seeking, know who you’re working for to negotiate your salary better.

Want more control over direct-hire job opportunities? Complete your profile.

How do you get the knowledge you need for the job you want?

Another myth that’s important to clear up is that there’s only one way to develop skills and knowledge, and that’s traditional college. Four-year college isn’t right for every person, and that’s OK! There are many other ways to develop specific skills. The starting point is determining the type of job you want to pursue.

As a 21st-century candidate, you don’t have to work backward any longer. Previous generations got an education first and found a job after. That was an unsuccessful method that created a lot of student debt, underemployment and falling job retention rates.

You get to take a path forward. First, you must define your work-life plan and then pursue the education you need, whether that’s a degree, certification or other skill proficiency. Working and learning in tandem will drive greater outcomes.

Is reaching your goals in work life about who you know?

Who you know has been a theme in job-seeking for hundreds of years. The modern world, with access to information and education, has leveled the playing field some. Connections and relationships remain an essential part of your journey.

The misconception lies in believing that an introduction from a mutual party equates to a certain level of trust. Confirm that your attitude, skills and abilities qualify you for the job — not that you know a guy who knows a guy.

Join the pepelwerk community and plan for your goal job.

Will robots replace the jobs of the future?

The final myth that needs some clarification is the concern that robots are the workforce of the future. Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to some job replacements, but they will also create new ones. For example, since 2000, AI has phased out around 1.7 million manufacturing jobs, according to one study. The World Economic Forum released a full-picture look at this significant impact, citing that by 2025, the labor division between humans and robots could displace 85 million jobs but may also create 97 million new jobs.

In all, this is a good thing. Computers will take over highly repetitive tasks that most humans would gladly relinquish. Instead, they’ll spend time on more strategic work. These new jobs are ones no one has done before. That means there aren’t a group of senior candidates for these positions, so entry-level candidates get the chance to be pioneers.

So, yes, robots will take some jobs, but they won’t replace every worker. And we can now predict how automation will impact the jobs of tomorrow, so we can plan now.

Technology, in general, is a good thing for work and a key component in the pepelwerk platform. We’ve spent a lot of time researching and implementing advanced technology and machine learning into the pepelwerk experience. We want our community to use these tools for their benefit to improve their chances of evolving with work that’s in demand.

Now that we’ve cleared up these myths, it’s time to focus back on you.

What does the job application process look like?

To get the job you want — your North Star — you have to understand why you want a job or what you want out of a career. Much of this comes down to what a job means to you, which involves financial security and personal fulfillment.

You can start with an outline of your goals for seeking a career. Is it to be a high earner? Break into a field you’ve always admired? Become an expert in a very specialized role? When you document these goals, your path becomes more direct. You don’t have to do this alone. Tools that leverage AI, such as pepelwerk, are there to help, whether you’re just starting, relaunching or upskilling.

Unsure of how to discover this? Schedule a career coaching session in the app.

There are millions of philosophies, tools, companies and perspectives on hiring. Unfortunately, you, the job candidate, get lost in the mix. It’s not just you; companies get lost too with their often-misguided post-and-pray approach.

pepelwerk offers you an anchor. If you understand and clearly define your work brand and work-life goals, you choose the methods and companies to support your journey. It’s our mission to revolutionize hiring with people and work.

People [ˈpēpəl ] the human beings, men, women and children of a particular nation, community or ethnic group

Work [wərk] activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result

We help people evolve with work and want to be your career advocate for achieving work-life success, whether you’re starting your work life, relaunching your career or upskilling/reskilling for in-demand jobs. You need truthful insights into changes in the working world, so you use your time efficiently, improve your value, define your work identity and prepare for the future.

Here’s how we do it:

• We use job profiles, not resumes.
• We deal with the present.
• We plan for the future.
• We’re preparing for a constantly changing working world.

Resumes are so 20th century. They're supposed to provide a snapshot of skills, education, experience and accomplishments. But it’s really hard to explain all that on a piece of paper. You’re much more than that, and resume-based application processes simply don’t work for candidates or employers. They are full of bias and discrimination. 

Many companies have figured this out and walked away from this practice. Candidate profiles have become their much-improved replacement. You get to build a dynamic candidate profile on pepelwerk that focuses on your skills, attributes, goals and experience. This collection of data points is what matches you to job profiles for a better fit.

How do you find those jobs? Let pepelwerk match you by downloading the app and building your profile.

Playing the resume game may never yield the work life you want. If you’re creating a unique one for every job you apply for, that’s a lot of work. Ultimately, it may not even matter because you have no idea of the company’s actual intent to hire.

The application process is about the employers, not you. It doesn’t have to be this one-sided. Instead, you can spend your time matching your education, experience and skills to in-demand jobs to achieve work-life goals. This will also reset expectations on using job boards and social media platforms.

You need to understand what happens to your personal data when you apply. You’ll need to read the fine print to see if they can sell your information to third parties for marketing purposes, which could mean more spam in the future. Data privacy is a concern for any digital interactions, so be sure you know what you agree to when you hit “apply.”

You’re in control of your work-life future, so planning each step requires doing specific things to improve your chances of being an attractive candidate.

First, choose your career advocate wisely. An advocate can be a person, such as a mentor, or it can be a thing, such as an education resource, technology or tool. You should seek a solution that provides all these things. pepelwerk empowers you to set and track goals, receive career counseling, learn new skills, get internships, experience a day in the life of a job and get matched with a real company that wants to hire you.

Second, understand and research what kind of candidate marketplace is right for you. To do this, consider the costs, resources available, how you find jobs (browsing, applying or matching) and what type of job you want.

Third, research the ownership of companies that interest you. You’ll be able to find out what motivates their business, some clues on culture and if their values align with yours.

Change is constant — and you need to proactively prepare for it. pepelwerk is the best fit for people with aspirations, not those who need inspiration. If you’re motivated to find out what work life is right for you and your goals, you’ll find pepelwerk to be the legend on your map.

Here’s what that map can uncover. Say your goal is to earn $250,000 a year, but you haven’t earned a degree or certification or received training in a trade. You’ve added your abilities, attitudes and skills. Your matching process could include:

• Working with a career coach to set goal milestones.
• Reviewing educational courses to fill skill gaps.
• Recommending an internship, on-the-job training or an entry-level position in a high-paying field.

As life changes, your needs will too. We help align your goals with the North Star that will guide you through your journey and reach your destination.