For an article in the Phoenix Focus’s “Career Trends” issue, Ashley Milne-Tyte spoke with Allison Hemming about shrinking companies and how they’ll change hiring and self-employment in the future:
… companies are on a never-ending quest to do things better, faster and cheaper. “Mother ships are going to get smaller and outsource whatever is not core to their offering,” Hemming says. “But along with that, new, smaller companies will be created that need to be close to the customer.” Startups, essentially. “The skill set you need,” says Hemming, “is how to be a business by yourself.” That means being able to make enough money to sustain yourself, sometimes by turning several skills into income streams. . . .
If all this job activity sounds exhausting, Hemming says we just need to adapt. “It absolutely is [exhausting], unless you’re trained to think this way. It’s like training for a marathon,” she says. “First you want to quit, then you get addicted to the goodness that comes out of it. You’re getting additional skills out of all this, or more money.” Hopefully both.
Besides, Hemming says, we have no choice. “It will be a requirement in the future to be able to run your career like it’s a business.”
