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For the past few years, WorkingNation and many, many other voices have been raised in unison, shining a light on the urgent need to retrain and upskill workers for in-demand jobs now and in the future.

As the global pandemic sweeps through the country, we’re watching millions lose their jobs. To be sure, the layoffs are widespread across multiple industries, but it is clear that lower-skilled jobs are among the first to be eliminated and, more than likely, they will be the last to return. We’re watching the need to retrain accelerate.

Matt Sigelman, CEO, Burning Glass Technologies
Matt Sigelman, CEO Burning Glass Technologies (Photo: Burning Glass Technologies)

“The term ‘acceleration’ is right on the money here. I think we can recognize a lot of what we’ve been worried about is playing out today in this crisis, but a lot faster and on an even more massive scale than any of us could have imagined.” says Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, an analytics software company that provides real-time data on job growth, skills in demand, and labor market trends.

Sigelman is the guest on this episode of Work in Progress. We discussed the kind of jobs that we’re losing today. He says they are often “place-based” and had previously been considered good, blue-collar jobs. “All of a sudden these jobs are going away. Those are the same jobs that when you looked at indices of automation risk also popped to the top.”

We’ve learned from past recessions that employers don’t necessarily hire back the same people that they let go, according to Sigelman. Employers will be cautious as the economy starts to come back. Instead, he says, they will be hiring people with the skills that they think their businesses are going to need in the future.

“What we need to be doing, right now, is focusing on how we win the recovery. This is the time when we need to make sure that we have a tremendous investment being made in how we reskill people,” he tells me.

Sigelman has some ideas on how we can “win the recovery”. You can hear them here in this Work in Progress podcast.

You can also download it wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe!

Episode 127: Matt Sigelman, CEO, Burning Glass Technologies
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.