I was moved today by a simple thank you from a friend…
thanks Renee for showing me I’ve something to offer
Perhaps I’m still a bit emotional from watching Avatar yesterday but her simple note made me cry because it reassured me that this concept – that People are Assets - can and does make a difference in lives and communities.
This talented lady is currently my go to person for anything regarding the preservation of food. She is talented, fun and generous with her time and knowledge. She continues to teach and inspire me.
We volunteered together to provide a preserves workshop last year, in which she shared her time and knowledge about preserving. The connections made from that initial volunteer effort have lead to further connections and opportunities, in an ongoing movement toward community resilience.
It is people like this that make our communities stronger, happier and healthier places to live and enjoy life and I am immensely thankful today for these people who sustain my capacity to live [work] & hope.
Business Week recently lead with a story entitled The Lost Generation discussing the effects of the existing job crisis on young people in the USA.
the continuing job crisis is hitting young people especially hard – damaging both their future and the economy…studies show that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income
As today’s figures show, youth unemployment is also a problem here in New Zealand. Yet, suggestions around creating a sub minimum wage to encourage employers to take on young people does little to empower or improve their future earnings potential. It simply undervalues their time, skills and talent and feeds into the downward spiral of lower lifetime income.
We see ways to empower young people, support Gen Y’s potential, harness their talents and help them discover their place in the workforce
“…We seem to have focused wrongly on building CV’s rather than building businesses…” Sam Morgan
We currently have a wealth of talented young people preparing themselves to be employed rather than cultivating talents which could drive economic growth through the creation of new business and new jobs.
Things are changing on the education front but we believe there is opportunity to provide additional tools to help young people transition from study to work.
The solution we are offering incorporates work experience, education and elements of the traditional CV
1. We want to encourage Volunteer Work Experience as a means to build confidence and valuable work skills so we are facilitating a system of Time Trade (a.k.a Time Banking) to encourage, recognise and reward volunteer activity.
2. A Peer Mentoring Community connecting Graduates with recent Alumni who can share with students of the same / similar discipline their experience of the study / work transition and highlight the real life opportunities available in the marketplace.
Where to look, who to talk to, which skills are important etc. Existing examples include the future in tech initiative to which we hope Time Trade could be applied as a tool for rewarding their career ambassadors.
3. We are using social networking tools and talent profiles to allow young people to build a living work history, a CV with a wealth of testimonials to their talent, skill and work ethic. A talent profile against which they can also be matched with volunteer and paid work opportunities.
Youth unemployment is a major issue but it’s reassuring to know that there are many community based organisations stepping up to help keep young people engaged in productive activity despite the fact of high unemployment.
Without a doubt I believe the time I spent volunteering, after bailing on law school, helped me secure my first real job.
Working for the YMCA as a Gymnastic Instructor and Recreation Assistant was volunteer work experience in the traditional sense. Being new to the workforce it provided me with opportunities in leadership and team work and allowed me to communicate and work with people of all ages.
Personally, the experience is significant in terms of my lifelong aspirations, it highlighted the value of recreational education and the powerful, positive influence of role models on young people. It made me feel like a contributing member of society and in terms of my CV it reflected my willingness to work.
Volunteering for any of the many charitable organisations that support our communities is a great way to build basic work experience and skills.
But if you’re interested in developing more specialist skills, in line with you passions, interests or education then the potential to volunteer your time applies also to company’s that interests you.
It’s a great way to learn about the realities of the workforce to gain an inside look at an organisation and help you to acquire work experience. For a select few it can even lead to jobs.
Indeed several people that I have spoken to in local community organisations say that when taking on new team members they look first to those that have volunteered time with them. Which makes sense right.
Ideally, we’d all like to land the paid internships but in such a competitive market why let those fortunate enough to score places gain extra advantage when you can as easily build work experience alongside them in the same industry with the increased flexibility of a volunteer position.
By creating your Talent Profile here at Worknow, we can help you find and match you talent, skills and interests with both volunteer and paid work opportunities. Register today
Building relationships with talented, passionate people is one of the most inspiring parts of my startup journey
Meeting talking and learning from others, whether supported and applauded or challenged and questioned is integral to achieving our vision to become a world class business that helps people and affects change.
Each and every person I find, connect and work with adds value to our idea, creating avenues from which to discover and explore new opportunities and challenge our thinking.
I am especially thankful for my two co founders, Jamie & Josh, without whom I would not be in a position to be pursuing a vision I am truly passionate about. And stoked on pursuing the path of entrepreneur alongside other talented people from both The Distiller and AIESEC communities.
The entrepreneurial mindset is surround yourself with great people
Worknow is a community and marketplace to help people find, connect and work together. Register with our talent community today to connect and collaborate with other inspiring, talented people .
This simple fact is the basis for forming Worknow. Whether as a freelance contractor, outsourced supplier, trades person or community volunteer we simply wanted to make it easier for people to find, connect and work together.
Time Trade especially, is based on recognising that we all have talents that could be used to help others and recognises that networking technology has made it easier than ever to match need with talent.
From teaching someone a new laungage, to walking a dog, weeding a garden or lending a listening ear – someone somewhere, often closer than you think, needs exactly what you have.
Time is our common, finite resource, which is what makes it such an effective measure of value. What you choose to do with your time, defines who you are and what we are suggesting is that by giving it away helping others, you not only become a contributing citizen but by law of karma, you may find it comes back to you when you most need it.
We are Social Creatures, we need Community
We believe todays networking technology can help harness the collective potential of communities, groups and dispersed teams. Indeed our Worknow team is evidence that todays social networking tools can bring people together to collaborate and create new projects, business and we hope work.
A social network [online community] enables participants to make themselves known to one another and to communicate more effectively. It allows one to establish their identity online, to post their credentials, and to provide other information for others to see. It also can track correspondence and behavior within the network, establishing one’s reputation and enabling an impersonal medium to serve as a tool for building a matrix of trusting relationships that can lead to collaboration and coordinated action on many levels Tom Greco
We are gathering a community of talented people willing to collaborate and build shared intelligence in more entrepreneurial and flexible ways. I invite you to join our journey today by adding your talents to the collective potential.
I will always value my independence and my ability to make things happen but in the past my strong willed independence was one of my greatest weaknesses. As a gifted young person, my attitude to achieving goals was always self determined, borderline egotistical and admittedly I believed that “…if you want something done right, do it yourself…”
However, in retrospect this philosophy perpetuated a self-delusion. It did not help me expand my talent and although I was nearly always (99.98%) able to achieve my desired outcome I now recognise that in being so “independent” I was isolating myself and limiting what could have otherwise been achieved through collaboration with others.
There were unique characteristics holding New Zealand’s [entrepreneurial] development back, such as reluctantance to look for help and build a team. Source
In Collaboration with Talented Other’s
Recognising that every single person has talents which can add value for myself and others is fundamental to the development of Worknow. Time Trade especially is designed to recognise and highlight the fact that we all have talents that are of value to each other and our communities.
Today’s networking tools have created an environment where communication, collaboration and coordination are becoming second nature. They need simply be applied in our real life communities to make it quicker and easier to get work done.
No longer limited by time or place or disadvantaged by the costs of travel, the concept of using networking tools to facilitate collaboration begins a paradigm shift in the way we think about and accomplish work.
Recognise Weakness; Work to your Strengths
Yet despite knowing and believing that I need the help of other’s I still sometimes lack the patience and skill to just listen and hear people out. Instead, I sometimes find myself, forming replies in my mind rather than actively listening.
So when a friend replied to a similar statement I made about myself with “…it’s good that you see that because I see it as one of your weaknesses…” and launched into a conversation about why and how I should change, I opted to just let him speak, I bit my tongue and I let him tell me things I already knew about myself (oh you noticed that did you, well done) and voila! I gained this insight:-
It will always be more important to recognise people on the basis of their talents rather than their weaknesses
On the topic of you, trust yourself.
Constructive criticism has its place but we could easily spend too much time attempting to overcome weakness that are simply the shadow of our strengths. We all have faults and in the main we probably recognise them. Doing something about them is not meant to be easy but a good place to begin is simply being conscious of them and making changes where we can.
If you focus too much on mitigating faults you lose time wherein you could be building upon your strengths. I may never stop that childish know-it-all voice that thinks “…I know what you’re saying….” but I can ignore it, hold my tongue and in hearing people out perhaps gain insight to help me expand my talents.
There’s an old school mantra that advises “do not underestimate the competition” because knowing your competition is necessary in order to build strategic advantage. Yet from a Gen Y perspective, many of those same competitors are potential collaborators.
If we were to offer a mantra of advice in regards to competition it would be to “seek opportunity to collaborate rather than compete” which makes it ever more frustrating that the older generation, people we would also like to collaborate with, continue to deny the talents and capabilities of my generation.
Even an over educated, under experienced MBA student knows that success comes from being able to climb the greasy management pole. You don’t do that by trumpeting that you know it all or that Facebook is the interface proxy for enterprise applications.
Try that in this economy and you’ll be at the head of the queue when the next round of pink slips are distributed (sic). You can only know that from having worked in enterprises, experienced the nuances of management practice and negotiated the politics of power. Source
This comment completely fails to recognise that management hierarchy’s are not the future. While they might have worked for the industrial revolution, entrepreneurship, collaborative, mobile, networked teams are the future of our knowledge economy.
Political Hierarchies vs Collaborative Teams
Sorry, old guard but we don’t actually need to climb your “greasy management pole” because with today’s technology we can connect and circumvent your traditional hierarchy’s to collaborate and build businesses of our own.
Rather than politics, power and vainglorious titles we aspire to work together as co-founders in recognition of our interdependent need for each others talents, skills and trust.
Our entrepreneurial spirit makes us increasingly willing and able to take risks, our education has armed us with knowledge and insight and today’s technology allows us to connect, share and collaborate in new, more effective ways.
Dismissing the fact that we are tech natives, and assuming that we need to be “employees” fails to recognise that we are creators of our own future.
Love us or hate us 10 years from now we will represent almost 40% of the New Zealand workforce. Perhaps it’s time to accept that aspects of our work ethic, like our collaborative spirit, may be the best form of work organisation for a knowledge based economy.
We are a generation influenced primarily by peers and friends.
It’s a fact. In a world awash with information we’ve become adept at questioning the messages feed to us by the media so in order to make informed decisions we turn to those we trust and know. Traditional advertising, barely even registers with us.
Instead of watching TV you’ll find us engaged online and on the move. While the odd Facebook ad might generate a click through (relevant to our social profile) in general, unless it’s funny, sexy or otherwise “hot” it probably won’t even measure on our radar.
Unfortunately, the non profit sector is one where these “general” rules can’t be applied because it’s probably not funny, selling sex can be a crime and hot involves sub Sahara living conditions.
Where traditional advertising and marketing don’t apply it becomes even more important to engage Gen Y through peers, friend and the communities in which we interact. Here at Worknow we rate online communities and networking tools as the most effective way to reach and communicate with Gen Y and luckily for us, we’re not the only one’s backing online community.
The approach we recommend involves creating and maintaining a community – a permission asset if you like – that attracts, captures and leaves a legacy of goodwill around the interactions that occur for your brand or organization on a daily basis. Source
Champion of a cause
Time Trade is a tool to help empower recipients of charity, by valuing their experiences as a means to help others – to provide recognition for the Champions of a cause. As you can watch below, empowering champions is a common theme in of Youth Marketing for Non Profits
If you’d like to hear more about how Non Profits can engage with Gen Y we are holding a workshop at the biennial New Zealand National Volunteering Conference on the 28 – 29 October 2009 in Wellington Town Hall. For more information on this years conference check out the Volunteering New Zealand Website Our abstract aligns with the one of two conference themes:
Volunteering Tomorrow: New Opportunities – new ways for volunteering
And will incorporate concepts on:-
* Generational diversity
* Volunteering in community development
* New and interesting ways of doing volunteering
I am a fan of the solution orientation of think small as a way to address national issues and this morning, reviewing the ever popular issue of “The Recession” I came across the following solution which necessitated a supportive yet alternative response, except I ran out of room there to comment so decided to share my thoughts here…
Some graduates may have found lately that in their respective field they cannot get a job. As the economy is as it is, companies are more reluctant to hire even experienced staff as they do not feel they can afford it, which unfortunately means it’s very difficult for an inexperienced university graduate to get a job. To this end, it may be wise if you are in this situation to consider going back to university and doing a post graduate degree, not only will it give you something to do to fill your time, but it will also give you that advantage over other candidates when the economy settles down and companies are looking to hire again.
My Comment
“We are already the most highly educated generation in the workforce (+) yet the study work transition dilemma still exists. Further education doesn’t solve the problem for graduates it merely postpones it. Wait to be hired!? Guys, we need to think Entrepreneur vs. Employee. Why wait in line to be employees when we can determine our own future?
While education is undeniably an advantage the issue which compelled me to comment is simply that the problem as stated “it’s very difficult for an inexperienced university graduate to get a job” is not solved by telling them to continue on the same path, further education.
We need education applied in combination with our natural strengths our entrepreneurial spirit and tech know how.
As a combination we then have:
With education – the knowledge to create and transform ideas;
With entrepreneurship – the ability to risk and achieve and;
With technology – the tools to find connect and work together in new collaborative ways
Why be dependent on traditional “employment” when we can determine our own future in the workforce by becoming the next generation of talented entrepreneurs vs. employees? With the right team and a good idea building a company need not be as risky as it has been made to look. Begin by finding and connecting with talented others, somewhere like a talent community
Go to Time Trade and click on “go here to spend time”
You can then credit people for sharing their talents and time with you
And so it begins, Yay!
To connect with other members of our talent community:
Go to PEOPLE then click on members name or photo to view their full profiles
Click on the “Request Connection” link found below the profile picture to send email request.
Once the other person confirms the connection, you can begin trading time with each other.
Please guys, feel free to share feedback, ideas and criticism via the discussion Forum so that we can incorporate this into to the ongoing build process.
I am so excited to see the Time Trade begin to take shape. There’s 21 founding members here and the opportunity is ours to inspire and grow Time Trade as a community building tool and working alternative to $NZ. Thank you so much for being a part of the Time Trade journey.
