LinkedIn's Karin Kimbrough on the Need for Lifelong Learning

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Companies in general are trying to balance that, how do I have that productive environment but an inclusive culture that also resonates with the talent that I want to not only attract but retain?

ELISE HU: You just heard Karin Kimbrough there. She is the chief economist at LinkedIn, which is part of Microsoft, and she’s our guest today. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome her as the first guest of this season of WorkLab . We’ll be using her smart, data-infused perspective on work trends to explore the arc of issues that we’re going to be hearing a lot about this season. LinkedIn, after all, has more than 800 million members in more than 200 countries and territories. So Karin does have the big picture on everything from employee migration to what types of skills are emerging as most in demand, and what are some ways leaders can help set up employees to best learn those new skills. Later in this episode, our correspondent Mary Melton will find out when she talks with Andrew Barnes. He’s the co-founder and CEO of the online learning platform, Go1. But first, my conversation with Karin.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Hello.

ELISE HU: All right, Karin. Thanks for doing this with us.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Thank you.

ELISE HU: So, as you look and try and analyze what’s coming in 2022, what are you seeing?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: There’s no way to overstate how much the labor market was upended by the pandemic, and not just in the U.S., but globally. And it had so many long-lasting cascading effects on how we think about work, where we want to work, how we want to work. One of the things that we’re really looking at is, How are people finding the purpose and the passion in their work? They went through this moment of thinking, What do I really want to do? Why am I in this job? Why don’t I try something different? So I think a lot of it is people looking for the fit that makes them happiest. And that’s obviously from a point of privilege, by the way. There are many people who don’t always have the option of just choosing exactly what they want, and they kind of have to take what’s available.

ELISE HU: So, given that we individuals as employees are sort of reevaluating what we want and what gives us a sense of purpose, what does that mean for the larger labor market? What’s the effect?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: The labor market has clearly gone through a shift where, at the moment, it’s the employee who has a little bit of the upper hand. By that I mean they are getting to be a lot choosier about what jobs they want to take, and that’s forcing employers to change their behavior, too. Compared to 2019, for example, we saw a two times increase in the number of job posts per application, so we see them reshuffling into new roles really aggressively. Even in our data, the share of members who have decided to quit and take something else up, that’s increased by a third, year on year.

ELISE HU: I imagine it must be so fascinating to see that kind of backend data on how LinkedIn is being used because it is so often used as, you know, a job searching site. And so, yeah, I would love to get a glimpse at that.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: You know, if you probably thought about LinkedIn five years ago, everyone would say, Well, you know, I’m on LinkedIn because I’m looking for a job.

ELISE HU: Or it’s where I keep my resume or something, right?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Yeah, yeah. It was almost available for you for transaction purposes. And now, I think what happens is, people are looking at LinkedIn differently, and it’s because they’re looking at their careers differently.

ELISE HU: Yeah. My friends are hanging out on LinkedIn now.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: I’m delighted to hear that. This is why the world of work is changing. People are hanging out there because skills are evolving and the jobs that are out there are evolving in terms of what skills they’re looking for, in terms of what tasks are required. And so people are aware that they need to keep their skills up to date, that over time there’s been an evolution in the workforce and there’s moves towards more use of digital technology and managing large data. And so people are looking to stay current, not just on, What skills do I need for the role that I want, but also just like what’s the conversation happening in the field that I’m interested in? It’s a sign of how people look at their job differently, and they’re expecting it to evolve. They’re expecting change to be a normal part of the workforce now.

ELISE HU: As employees gain more of this upper hand, as you talk about, being one of the big trends of 2022, it strikes me that employers are going to have to really roll with that and strike a balance to honor workers who are bringing more of their authentic selves to work and wanting to fulfill their individual passions. But then, as companies, they’re also managers, and employers are having to maintain cohesive working teams. How do you recommend businesses strike that balance?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: You’re asking, I think, a pretty complicated question, because there’s a lot there, and there are a couple of trends happening that are causing employers, if not to wake up, to actually step up. There are generational changes we’ve seen a lot of in the Gen Z population, which is some 70 million or so in the U.S., starting to join very, really early on, but starting to join the workforce. We’re seeing the Baby Boomers starting to step away, and that’s causing some intergenerational mix and reshuffling. That’s forcing companies to realize that the way they were set up to meet the interests and demands of Boomers is going to be different if they’re trying to meet the interests and demands of Gen Z, who are looking for that purpose, who are looking to engage with a company [that’s] forward-looking, green-focused, inclusive. And I’m going to go work at a place where I feel good about saying, I work at Company X because we’re doing great things, we’re doing things for good. And so companies realize that and they’re starting to step up and take a stance. They also realize that they need to hire, in particular, workers that look like the rest of wherever they’re operating. And so they’re looking for talent that is gender-balanced, looking for talent that is racially, culturally, ethnically balanced. And what we’re seeing is that that resonates with Gen Z in particular. But when you ask workers what they want, what’s going to keep them, I mean, at least 40 percent of new job seekers or people who’ve just taken on a new job say that colleagues and culture are top priorities when they pick a new job. And I think that’s going to be a challenge for companies. How do we maintain that cohesive culture and sense of camaraderie when we’re not together?

ELISE HU: What do business leaders need to understand about how this employer-employee relationship is changing?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Employees are starting to really forge their own path. They want to ensure that every time they’re working in a certain place, they want to feel the investment in their own career. And so they’re looking for employers to provide that sense of a career path, to provide that sense of, I’m going to invest in you, and a year from now, you’re going to have different experiences, different skills than you did when you started. And that’s actually key to retaining talent as well as to feel invested in.

ELISE HU: Which harkens back to my question, a little bit, right? Just this balance that employers are having to strike.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: It’s not easy for them because they need to be creating a culture that’s more inclusive, but also creating a culture that’s still going to be as productive. I mean, it turns out that workers actually have been incredibly productive working from home, maybe almost too productive because they’ve become burnt out. It’s true. There was an estimate of productivity during the early part of the economic shutdown, and what they found was actually workers were up to three times more productive. Of course, they burnt themselves out because there was no boundaries and people were working until midnight. But companies in general are trying to balance that. How do I have that productive environment, but an inclusive culture that also resonates with the talent that I want to not only attract but retain?

ELISE HU: What are some examples that you have seen, maybe, where technology has played a role in connecting colleagues and culture?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: There’s so much of our economy that’s moved online. And I think the fact that we’re all now using our laptops and home computers to work has really been essential. So, the technology is there. What maybe is lacking, however, is how do we figure out the boundaries that people need to set? If you are working from home or if you are working on a flexible schedule, how do you benchmark whether you’re working too much or too little if you’re not actually in the same room with your colleagues? People want flexibility, but at the same time, then they feel like they need to demonstrate they’re still working and so they work even harder. And I think that’s been a challenge.

ELISE HU: Yeah, I feel that.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Yeah.

ELISE HU: So, I want to get back to the big, broad trends because you have so much data in front of you. And I’m really curious, when you see migration, are there parts of the country where people are migrating away from? What are you seeing in terms of geographic locations?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: It’s been super interesting to watch people pretty consistently start moving to other cities outside of the big, let’s call it coastal hubs that we’re traditionally thinking about—San Francisco or Seattle, New York, Boston, these cities. Particularly the height of the pandemic really saw a slowdown in migration into those cities, and where most people redirected themselves to were, of course, sunbelt cities, a lot in the southwest, in Texas and Florida. Now, underneath that running concurrently has been a trend of millennials who are, at their oldest in the low 40s and at their youngest are in their low 30s, and they are looking to set up households with a partner, have children, find a good school. And so they’ve also been moving out of cities, and that was happening regardless of the pandemic. But the pandemic kind of accelerated that. And so the question is, Are any of these people moving back so far? No. What’s happening, though, is that the next generation of young graduates is moving to these big cities.

ELISE HU: Got it. So the first big work trend that you see, we have been talking about, which is employees really staying in the driver’s seat and that employer-employee dynamic really shifted toward the workers who are trying to see more purpose and fulfillment in their lives and in their selves. And that extends to work. The second big trend that you see for 2022 is sort of related to this, right, because it’s the growth of entrepreneurship and the creator economy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Yeah, absolutely. That has been so interesting to watch. Whenever you watch an economy go through a normal cycle, by the way, which can be a downturn that happens, you do expect some number of people who’ve suddenly maybe been forced out of an existing role to try and start their own company, maybe strike out on an entrepreneurial adventure. But what we saw was really unprecedented. We saw the share of LinkedIn members who were starting new businesses just skyrocket. When we count company formation—people were forming new companies—that number increased nearly 60 percent on the year. And so it was like an outsized response to this pandemic. What do I want to do? Life is short. I’m trapped in my home. I’ve been chewing over this idea I’ve had in my head, and maybe now’s the time to go for it. And that happened through 2020 and 2021. Now what was exciting to see was that we saw women leading the way. So, we saw the number of women-founded companies on LinkedIn grow by nearly a third in the pandemic period, relative to the pre-pandemic period. The rate at which women were founding companies was actually faster than men.

ELISE HU: It’s exciting, and I hope that it accelerates the negotiation and conversations around care and how women shouldn’t bear the brunt of household and child care duties, right?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Yeah, you’re right. Because the underbelly of all that entrepreneurship was coming from a sense of need, probably women needing to find a way to have balance while they were working from home with children. And finally calling time and saying let me figure out something different. So, that whole founding of companies by women is probably, I don’t want to say masking, but it’s reflecting a lot of intense, urgent need by women to find a different path, which, by the way, suggests something that companies need to be thinking about. And the fact that women had to do that, as you said, really showcased how much pressure they were under. When we survey, for example, just our members and ask them about what’s important to them in terms of the professional development, mental health and wellness is one of the top areas that employers actually need to invest in to improve culture. And when we ask people individually, How are you doing? Women, universally during the pandemic, said they were doing much worse, were feeling as if they were doing more than 50 percent more work. And oftentimes these are women who had young children. So not just, you know, teenagers…

ELISE HU: And they were all at home.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: They were at home. No escape. Yeah, being teachers online with their kids, trying to handle meetings. It was huge. And I don’t think I could do it justice to tell you that when we initially saw the crisis hit, it was as if women just stepped back en masse from the labor market. It was as if two or three or four percentage points of women suddenly weren’t there applying for jobs, changing jobs—they were just as if they just discreetly left the room. And that was scary to see. The good news is that they’ve begun to come back, and the rate at which women are engaging in applying is actually, in some cases, higher than men because I think they’re trying to come back from that period that was forced on them. But it’s scary to think that women have to be that resilient. And it’s scary to think that we don’t have the infrastructure to provide the child care and support for parents generally.

ELISE HU: Is there an opportunity for companies here, then, to step up because of the needs of their employees who do have families or have elder relatives that they are the primary caregivers for?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: I’m so glad you mentioned elder care, because that was the other hidden responsibility. It wasn’t just child care, but it was elder care, too. And I think companies, if they’re serious, and they say they are, about having these diverse workplaces, about having everything from boards that have adequate female representation to having women at all levels of the career ladder represented in places where they can be impactful and influential, then they’re going to need to keep women. And what happens right now is we can see from the career paths that women just kind of drop out of the job market with every year that they age between, like, 20 and 40, there’s fewer and fewer of them. Yeah, it’s almost like there’s a pipeline and it’s just leaking, not entirely by choice; it might feel like it’s a choice, but I think it’s a kind of a forced choice because of the child care and elder care responsibilities they feel they need to pick up. Companies where they can help is twofold. One is, it’s really hard to feel as if you need to either make or break your career in one particular decade. You think, okay, between 27 and 37 I need to really establish myself. That’s also the period where you’re most likely to be thinking about starting a family. So women really have these—it’s sort of a forced choice between all of these really important things. This is really radical, but companies can try to create a career path where you don’t have to define yourself in that particular decade. Why can’t you show up later on when your kids are 10 years old, come back into the workforce and then climb the career ladder? And the other thing I think that would be really, really helpful is this flexibility that we’re all talking about, the flexibility that includes everything from location flexibility—can I work remotely or can I be at home certain days—to almost like hourly flexibility. Do you need me between the hours of 8 and 9:30? Or can I start at 9:30 and go to four o’clock and then say, I’ll be back on at 8 p.m. for a couple of hours? And the more that we can provide flexibility, an expansive approach to how we think about career paths, when you have to sprint, when you can slow down a little bit, I think that will create more opportunity for women to feel they can meet the needs that they want to meet that sometimes are competing. And then, of course, it would be great if we had all that infrastructure for child care and elder care, too. That would help a lot.

ELISE HU: Well, I do like to say that I want to peak when I’m 90 and then die, which is my new mantra, because that way there isn’t this sense that you are supposed to peak at any certain time, that your life can just be one full of growth and learning and stretching.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Oh, Elise, I love that. I love that because it captures this idea that our life isn’t necessarily linear where you’re in one phase and then it stops and then you switch to another phase, but you’re constantly in motion straddling different phases. And what I mean by this is, think about the fact that, 10 or 15 years ago, the mindset was, I go to school; I graduate from school; I’m in my early 20s; I’ve learned, everything I need; and now I’m just going to go work. And as somebody who graduated from grad school and really didn’t know anything until she worked for a couple of years, we know that’s not true. And now it’s especially not true, where you’re expected to kind of keep evolving with the times and you’re going to get new skills and maybe jump career paths from one track to another. And so we’re constantly learning. We’re constantly evolving. And so I love the idea that even at 90, you’re going to be having your, you know, third career.

ELISE HU: Absolutely. And then this also allows for fallow periods, times where just maintenance is progress. You know, it doesn’t have to be this ad astra constantly, you know, striving either, right? There are these opportunities for just living and existing.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: And then you can decide when you want to re-engage.

ELISE HU: Yes. As we talk about non-linear paths, it also ties into your third big trend of 2022, which is that, even if you’re doing the same job, you might have to do that job with a whole different set of skills. Can you talk a little bit about that?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Yeah, we are doing this really fascinating set of work right now, looking at our data, which spans some 774 million members worldwide, and we’re able to take a look at how jobs are changing. Let’s pick a year—2015. What did employers want in terms of skills for a project manager in 2015? And now let’s fast forward to 2021, and what we’re finding is that, for the same job, the skills are evolving. But what it really means, what we’re finding, is that the skills that you start your career with are not the ones you will end your career with.

ELISE HU: What particular skill sets have a strong future?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: The ability just to sort of comprehensively analyze data in large quantities is a great skill. The ability to lead people with empathy and respect is also another skill, so I would encourage everybody to don’t despair. If your heart doesn’t sing when you think about coding, there are many, many skills that actually become increasingly important over time, and communication, for example, when you look across all of the job postings that we have, communications is routinely one of the top skills sought by employers. And by the way, that is a skill that no machine will ever do better than a human. So, there are lots of, you can call them soft skills or human skills, that are incredibly transferable, incredibly important, and actually rise in importance as you get more senior. The sort of judgment, empathy, ethics—all of those are human skills.

ELISE HU: Yeah, emotional intelligence is so important, especially as workforces become more and more distributed.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Absolutely. And we have this report we call “Jobs on the Rise,” and every year we take a look and say, What are the top jobs that are surfacing in all of our data? And this year, a lot of it had to do with diversity and inclusion—managers of teams who could bring diversity, inclusion mindsets to their team, and chief human resource officers and recruiters. All of that was incredibly important. And it also reflects the hunt for talent that’s going on across so many companies.

ELISE HU: Did any jobs of the future surprise you?

KARIN KIMBROUGH: I’m not going to say it surprised me, but I think something I always like to remind people of is how much of our society is tilting now towards healthcare. And just the incredible sustained expansion in roles within the healthcare industry. So not just, you know, a doctor or nurse, obviously, but there’s vaccine specialists and home health aides.

ELISE HU: Yeah, we are living longer so that we can peak when we’re 90, so we’ll need a lot of healthcare workers.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Absolutely. You and I may need a little extra healthcare as we complete our third career.

ELISE HU: All right, Karin Kimbrough, thank you so much.

KARIN KIMBROUGH: Thank you.

ELISE HU: So something that stood out to me from Karin’s interview was this idea of how important upskilling is going to be going forward. Great, you might be thinking, but my team also has too much on its plate as it is. How could I encourage them to learn something new? Well, our correspondent Mary Melton talked to someone who has lots of great advice in this particular department. His name is Andrew Barnes. He’s the co-founder and CEO of the online learning platform Go1, which can be accessed right inside Microsoft Viva Learning. His company helps train employees like those at Delta Airlines and TikTok. Here’s Andrew.

ANDREW BARNES: There’s been this explosion of creativity in the types of courses and the subjects that now get attention.

MARY MELTON: Andrew Barnes has a bird’s eye view of the skills that people are seeking out in every field, from healthcare to tech. I asked him, What topics are getting the most engagement on average across industries?

ANDREW BARNES: It’s content around mental health awareness. It’s content around leadership skills, communication skills—a whole bunch of topics which I think are incredibly important that sometimes are not perhaps the first thing that we think of when we think of upskilling, but we see it across all different roles. And it might be a reflection of some of the challenges that people in society have had over the last couple of years—a greater focus on some of those skills around resiliency and mental health awareness.

MARY MELTON: When you’re leading a team, there are times that you want to suggest that employees improve a skill or learn a new one. And when you’re on a team, there are times when you have to admit that you need to learn a new skill. And on both sides, that can be a really hard conversation to have. It might feel like you’re dwelling on someone’s weak points as a manager or that you’re showing your own vulnerabilities as an employee. Andrew suggests framing it differently.

ANDREW BARNES: If learning is seen as the response to failure, then that makes it really difficult to have that conversation. Whereas, if learning is seen as a way of, How do we do better tomorrow, then what we’re doing today, then that’s a very natural conversation to have with one’s manager. The idea that we try something and maybe we’re not perfect day one, hopefully creates a culture where individuals want to understand and get feedback around, okay, well, what’s the best set of areas that I can improve, and thinking about it as the next stepping stone rather than something that’s missing is probably a helpful way of reorienting around it.

ELISE HU: That was Andrew Barnes, CEO and co-founder of Go1.

That’s it for this episode of the WorkLab podcast for Microsoft. Check out the WorkLab digital publication, too, where you can find, among many other things, a transcript of this very episode. That’s all at Microsoft.com/WorkLab. And for this podcast, please rate us, review, and follow us wherever you listen. The WorkLab podcast is a place for experts to share their insights and opinions. As students of the future of work, Microsoft values inputs from a diverse set of voices. That said, the opinions and findings of our guests are their own, and they may not necessarily reflect Microsoft’s own research or positions. WorkLab is produced by Microsoft with Godfrey Dadich Partners and Reasonable Volume. Our correspondents are Mary Melton and Desmond Dickerson. Sharon Kallander and Matthew Duncan produced this podcast. Jessica Voelker is the WorkLab editor. Thanks for listening.

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