What is a person for (anymore)?

… Maybe that’s an over-statement, but it holds some truth. In the words of one CEO, The Times article continues: “You don’t have to train machines.”
In many ways, the seismic shift we’re seeing in the jobs economy towards more highly skilled workers calls for people—especially, the  unemployed and underemployed—to clarify, and promote, how they can make a contribution that will be distinctive and relevant to an employer.

This is a challenge of personal differentiation.

Personal differentiation may include more training in one’s current trade or profession, or even training in new fields. But it also depends heavily on something closer to home: Getting a clear handle on one’s identity as the source of their value-creating potential—and then determining where these powerful capacities can be best applied, to everyone’s benefit.

Promoting who you are, not just what you can do isn’t a conventional resume item. Yet, blending identity information into one’s work history and goals can transform the impact of a resume, in ways that help you stand out from the proverbial crowd.This may be cold comfort for people who have been blinded by chronic unemployment, and who are slowly melting into the background, but it is nonetheless true.

So… Is our new jobs economy killing people in the name of productivity? Such inexcusable irony.

You don’t have to take a life to kill a soul.

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Flickr photo courtesy of H. Kopp Delaney