Valuable Tips and Insights for Young Professionals

I recently had the opportunity to organize a panel on Learning and Development. The session was led by Joanna Chang from Google and Kate Scrimale from Deloitte Consulting who shared powerful insights with our young professionals.

Here is a snapshot of our main takeaways:

Companies that define themselves as the innovative leaders who are at the forefront of change, like Google, are changing the way they approach professional development and learning.

• One of the top priorities of Google’s sales team is to cultivate a culture of “trust”: focusing on emotional intelligence and developing a team of individuals who are trusted advisors to the clients. Whether the client says “I have a meeting with Tim” or “I have a meeting with Google” has become an important differentiator.
• Being open and sometimes vulnerable is an important quality to embrace. Businesses are no longer looking for perfect individuals but rather people they can relate to, empathize and trust.

From a cross-industry perspective, human capital consultants are seeing a wave of “reimagined learning” that is:

• Self-directed, on-demand, defined more broadly, and accessible via mobile technologies
• Social; with open/crowd-sourced content and colleagues learning from each other
• No longer “forced,” nor limited to meeting compliance needs, nor delivered via outdated media

Companies are now aware that millennials are seeking:

• Opportunities that challenge them.
• Environments that are collaborative, fast-paced and vibrant.
• Companies where they can make a change and have an impact.

Young professionals should, thus, learn how to:

• Show empathy and respect to business leaders who are facing these disruptive changes and looking for ways to keep up-to-speed.
• Demonstrate a level of confidence and earning the right to have the floor when their input is much needed.

In this era of rapid growth and change, young professionals also should:

• Source mentors outside of their company, industry or even geography. Building a team of their own board of directors is crucial.
• Spend time on figuring out what their value proposition is; differentiate themselves. Think about not only what someone can do for them but what they can bring to the table– short term and long term.
• Embrace their past experiences and learn to talk about them from a development focused point-of-view. What have those experiences taught them?
• Embrace a schema-based thinking.

*Crowdsourcing 2.0