There is a handy rule of thumb on job descriptions that says if you cannot describe your job in six seconds to a six-year-old then it is a nonsense job.
I wonder how Prince Harry would fare with such a task perhaps to his niece Princess Charlotte on his return trip home for his grandfather’s funeral, the sadly late great H.R.H Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021) with his description of the role of chief impact officer at a US life-coaching and mental well-being company.
My own niece asked her father, a cost manager, once known as a quantity surveyor, what he did for a job. She has been able to describe him since as someone who counts bricks. Quite apt and succinctly put- how one wishes that QS’s still mainly produced a bill of quantities to provide a price for a building contract rather than parcel out the costs of such onto the building contractors- but that is another story.
With some jobs it is simple- firefighter, mental health nurse, or indeed bricklayer just say what they do. However, for many it seems in IT, finance, the public sector even construction where the heads of sustainability, inclusivity or diversity roam their job descriptions are becoming more obscure sounding with every technological development. This, of course, is the main driver of job re-alignment that threatens every trade and profession in the coming decades. Jobs of the future will be complemented or supplanted by disruptive technologies such as AI, robotics/deep learning, block-chain technology, 3D printing techniques and fintech applications which will create fewer but highly skilled super-professionals supported by a lot of subordinate part-time, piece-meal contract/gig-workers.
Another factor pushing people from being employees to being the customer, if not resource the company wants, is the data harvesting from mass online inputs which are utilised by those disruptive technology algorithms and used to create targeted adverts for the products and services for everyone else.
The clever people create or own the platforms or the legal framework and IP while the rest turn-up (often now on a bicycle) or in a post-covid world sit down at home for a few hours and try to earn a living.
Good luck with all-of-that if you are currently in your 20s or 30s.
So, the certainty of your career path maybe deduced by the six second rule- it is child play after all.
LDC