“We have a labor market in which there are both more people looking for jobs and, at the same time, there are more employers looking for people to fill those jobs than there are people who can fill those jobs,” says Jake Hirsch-Allen, head of workforce development for LinkedIn across North America. “For a long time, we’ve been talking about a skills gap, a skills mismatch, an inability to communicate skills appropriately, or effectively, so that one can literally match people to jobs better.”
WorkingNation sat down with Hirsch-Allen at Presented by JFF Horizons – See Beyond 2022 in New Orleans.
He works with governments, workforce development organizations, and more to leverage LinkedIn Talent Solutions to close skills gaps and increase sustainable employment.
Hirsch-Allen says he believes this skills gap is creating a deeper level of despair in the country right now. “[It’s] a lack of hope in the possibility that any of those jobs that are available to a given individual will be able to provide them with the sort of living wage, the life of opportunity that in the past motivated people to go to work.”
He says that making people more aware of pathways to better skills and jobs is crucial. “[Solving]the challenges with today’s labor market in part come from career development, a concept that is obviously fundamental to workforce development. There’s more awareness now of coaching and mentorship and the value of human beings in a system, which I appreciate.”
Hirsch-Allen says he sees LinkedIn’s role in this solution as providing technology so that career developers can spend more time with their clients, helping them navigate the workforce system.
“To give hope to an individual that there is a career that’s right for them – a meaningful job that will allow them to support their family – often requires another human being to walk them through that process to literally inspire them as a human.”
Learn more about LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
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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.
