March 5, 2024 • 36 mins
Ep. 155 Andrew McCaskill is a communications executive with 20 years of experience delivering award-winning communications and PR campaigns at Fortune 500 companies and highly successful technology start-ups. He was SVP of Global Communications and Multicultural Marketing at Neilsen, Head of D&I, Global Sales & marketing at Facebook, is an investor and advisor at Culture Genesis, and is a Career Expert & Global Communications at LinkedIn. He’s also PR Week's Top 40 Under 40.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Check me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival,
happening Saturday, April twenty seven in Atlanta. Live podcasts are
on deck from some of your favorite shows, including this one,
Black Tech, Green Money, and also some of the best
podcasts in the game, like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown
and Carefully Reckless. Atlanta is one of my favorite cities
in the world. I've lived there for two years actually,
and my worldview seeing a successful in every industry and
(00:23):
not having any limits on our potential largely was shaved
by Atlanta. So to be there with you doing this
podcast talking about how we build or leverage technology to
bill wealth. Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want
to see you there. Get your tickets today at Black
Effect dot comback Slash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And when I have these conversations with my with my
white counterparts about AI, they're like, oh, man, it's gonna
change the world. We're gonna be doing all these crazy
cool things.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Hey.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You know, sometimes I talk to my friends in the
group chat, They're like, man, the devil is busy with
that AI, right, Like, you know, you get different impressions about.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm Will Lucas and this is black Tech Green Money.
Andrew McCaskill is a communications executive with twenty years of
experience delivering award winning communications and be our campaigns at
Fortune five hundred companies and highly successful technology startups.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
He was SVP of Global.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Communications and Multicultural Marketing at Nielsen, head of D and
I Global Sales and Marketing at Facebook.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Is an investor and advisor at.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Culture Genesis and its career expert in Global communications at LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
He's also pr Week's Top forty under forty.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Not everyone who listens to this podcast is going to
start a company, many, if not most, will be career
professionals in climb the ladder regardless. You want to make
sure you build wealth. And it's often said, however, that
you can't build wealth by selling your time. I asked
Andrew to speak on that.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, man, I think it's so important because you're right,
everybody's not going to be an entrepreneur. Many of us
are points, have most of our working lives and some
version of a nine to five. And I think that
the biggest thing that I feel like that people can
do to build wealth is to start having wealth conversations, right,
And what I mean by that is, you know, I
(02:17):
grew up middle upper middle class, right, and my parents
did not talk to me a lot about money. Money
in my household was grown folks business, and you know,
they basically gave me a couple of things is save
some money and don't spend more than you make, right,
good luck, and you know, call us if you need us.
(02:37):
And what I think that that sometimes we do with
that is that we don't information share enough. And so
I feel like that one of the things that is
the beginning of financial mobility, financial mobility starts with financial stability.
And I think that amongst amongst particularly younger black folks,
(02:58):
younger black professionals, we have to collaborate and not compete.
And that means that many of us are not gonna
get somebody from some ivory tower to come down and
tell us all these things about money. So we have
to peer to peer mentor each other in a lot
of ways. Right, My group chat has saved me so
many times from making mistakes about money at work. And
(03:21):
so the first time I had a job in tech
where I had to actually negotiate for equity, I had
to go and look up on the internet what restricted
stock units were. I had no idea what I was
potentially leaving on the table because I didn't have that information.
Luckily for me, I had not even necessarily a mentor,
(03:44):
but a dude that I knew in tech that I
had met at a conference, and I was like, yo,
I noticed, dude is senior. I still have this number.
I'm just gonna roll the dice and call him, and
he broke it down for me in a way that man,
I could have left so much money on the table
as a nine to five or if I hadn't really
thought about it in the right way. So the number
(04:07):
one to get from that mobility stability is having the
most information, and sometimes that information is gonna come from
people who look like us. Right. The other thing I
think is is really just the behavioral shift and a
mindset shift that you know, I think that we all
have to have around that is that many of us
who are in that nine to five world, a lot
(04:29):
of us are grappling with something that our non Hispanic
white counterparts don't have to grapple with. And that's the
untold story is the fragility of the black middle class.
Middle class status is very fragile for us in our
communities because oftentimes, Man, you know, you might be the
one in the family that's got that good job, but
(04:50):
when big Mama's water heater breaks down, you getting that call, right.
And so I feel like that one of those things
that we have to do is that we're constantly sort
of accounting for that. So if it comes down to
Gucci versus Grandma, I'm gonna save that money for Grandma
every time, right because I want to, Because I think
that that's the call that many of us are gonna get.
(05:11):
So I think that that mobility of getting to wealth
starts with like reimagining how we think about that money
in the beginning. That one we get more money when
we talk about money and have money conversations with people
that we trust that we can you know, we sort
of grow together. You need to grow with your peer group.
And so when you're sharing that information, like one thing
(05:31):
about me, I'll send you my old offer letter from
from Facebook, I'll send you my old offer letter from
you know, previous companies that I had. So at least
you should know that this is where you should level set. Right.
The other thing is like, we know that we're gonna
get hit in different ways, so we have to think
about money and stability just totally different. And here's the
thing that I think is more in line with what
(05:52):
I think everybody really wants the answer to be from
this question is like, can you build wealth while working
for other people? Absolutely? You can. It happens every single dissa, Right.
You have to just really plan for and account for
your career in certain ways. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, So you got a couple of questions there that
you speak my interest on. And so I've read some
of your posts and you had talked about how the
job market has tightened and there's one job for every
two applicants, right, and how can black people, black professionals
negotiate effectively to secure competitive conversation, not just accept what
(06:31):
they give you, but to negotiate that compensation and ensure
that you know financial reward is there in the market
where employers have a whole bunch of options for who
wants this job.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Here's the things I think that you can't is that
you can't go into it without the confidence that, hey,
I know, I know what my skills are and I
know that I can do in this role. And so
I do think that part of it is being really
confident about what you bring to the table and being
able to articulate that really well. And that's not just
about spitting workplace game, right. I think that that confidence
(07:06):
really comes from, you know, being really secure about how
you tell your story. And that is how you tell
your professional story, how you talk about your superpowers, what
you bring to the table, how you talk about your skills,
how you match up the skills that you that you
have with what the company is actually asking for and desiring.
(07:27):
And a lot of that comes from really being able
to practice and rehearse that. That's just table stakes practicing
and rehearsing how you tell your story and how you
talk about it. But the information piece of it. If
you're really trying to negotiate for a great for better
compensation at a job that you already really want, I
(07:47):
think there are a couple of things that you have
to do. One is make sure that you understand sort
of the value in the marketplace in terms of most
of the companies now will give you a somewhat of
a range. We all want the top of that brain
right when we see it. I think that what you
have to then do is negotiate for why you want
that at the at the top of the range. Also,
(08:10):
there's gonna be it's really competitive, and I think that
you know, yeah, we all want to get that next job.
But the worst thing that you can one of the
worst things that you can do, unless you just desperately
need a job. If you desperately need a job, do
what you got to do in I respect, right, But
if you're in a position where you actually have some choice,
and we have a lot more choice than we truly
(08:32):
have been, you know, sort of conditioned to believe. If
you've got the choice, I think you do have to
go in and sort of negotiate for what you want.
That negotiation begins with how much information do you have
about the role? How much information do you have about
the company. You're eight times more likely to get a
job at a company if you know somebody who's at
(08:53):
that company, and that doesn't have to be your work
best friend. That could be somebody that you worked with
ten years ago. That could be so that goes to
your church, but you you don't really know them, but
you know of them, right, because that just even that
conversation gives you a better idea of what the culture
is and how much and how much you can think
about it. They don't have to tell you how much
(09:13):
money they make or any of that kind of stuff.
But the little clues that they can give you, or
even just then mentioning your name, puts you in a
better position. Your network really really matters. And I think
that we have been sort of conditioned not to think
of our network as the way I feel like our
non Hispanic white counterparts think about it, right, is that
we oftentimes get caught up in thinking that if I'm
(09:36):
networking with you, it's got to be like a business
cards exchange or at a party or something like that,
or a cocktail hour or that, like it's got to
be some kind of quid pro quo or I'm asking
you for a favor or something like that. Our white
counterparts don't even think about networking in that way. They
don't think about, Okay, well, look, will gave me your number.
(09:58):
So anything you anything you say to me is a
reflection on will. That's just not how That's not how
anybody else thinks about it, right, It really is will
gave me this person's number. Maybe something comes from it,
maybe something doesn't. My connection, my connections that I sort
of share that network sharing man, your network is so powerful.
(10:20):
So I think using your network to get a better
idea of like what your opportunity is. But don't just
take the first offer. I always say that you have
to negotiate. Even for that recruiter to really or that
hiring manager to truly respect you, you need to and
at least negotiate something. And you negotiate like that.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
There are a lot of people with jobs, careers, I
should say, who are concerned about how AI is about
to impact their roles. Like, you know, I think about
like if if I can marry grammarly and chat GPT,
I never have to hire a copywriter again. Like, so
there's there are certain roles that are definitely under the gun,
(11:01):
you know, to use that phrase. So how are you
advising professionals to acquire in demand skills so that they
can be you know, still marketable in the years to
come in the professional workplace?
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Oh man, I love this question because let's even even
if you take AI out of the game, that our
research shows that even if you're not changing jobs, your
job is changing on you. Most people's jobs change about
fifteen to twenty percent every two years. Right, so you
could be in the job that you've been in that
job five years. Your job is so different from the
day you started to today. And you know, when I
(11:38):
have these conversations with my uh with my white counterparts
about AI, they're like, oh, man, it's gonna change the world.
We're gonna be doing all these crazy cool things. And
you know, sometimes I talk to my friends in the
group chat and they're like, man, the devil is busy
with that AI, right, Like, you know, you're getting different
impressions about it, right. But we actually, we actually talked
(12:02):
to a large number of black professionals about how they
were feeling about AI and sort of what's happening. And
what we found, man, was that actually most black professionals
were actually were actually really intrigued and excited about AI.
But what they also said was that about forty seven
(12:23):
percent said that they didn't know where to start getting
AI skills and getting up to speed. And so's the
that's the hook right there. What we did at LinkedIn
when we saw that was we said, okay, well we're
gonna make our top ten AI courses free for everybody.
You don't have to have LinkedIn premium or anything like that.
So we've made our top ten AI courses for free,
(12:45):
and that's everything from understanding you know prompt engineering to
understanding you know AI one on one. We've even got
some more advanced courses. And if you if you follow
my newsletter The Black Guy in Marketing on linked and
then I've got all of the courses listed there, you
can literally click on the courses and take the courses. Right.
(13:06):
It's like tons of free courses. But I think that
that's the key to it is that for black professionals
in particular, I think that if you don't know what
a large language model is, and you're listening to this
conversation right now, I know there are a lot of
tech people who probably do know exactly what that is.
But if you don't, now is the time for you
to start at least get the language and the lexicon
of AI down because we need more black people using
(13:30):
the tool. We need more black people getting the skills
and getting the certifications because major revolutions in work have
not always been kind to us. But now we're in
a space where the information is literally at our fingertips.
If you've got a computer, you've got a smartphone, you
(13:51):
can get access to starting to learn how to use
these tools and play with these tools. And I think
that that's the key to it is to get in
there and start playing with it now because AI is
coming to work. It's at work already, and I don't
want us to feel like that it's this scary thing
because we've been I mean it, all it really is,
as you know, is like really well educated guesses to
(14:14):
what you to answering questions for what we all need.
And if you've used you know, almost any technology tool
that in the last you know, five or six years,
there's been some bit of it that is making some
educated guesses for you. Right then, completely on the Google
search bar. Absolutely, I use that example all the time
(14:34):
auto completely on Google. Right. But here's the other thing
is that I don't want people to have this. I
think that people have this fear, Oh AI is going
to take my job. That's not what you should be
afraid of. AI is not gonna take your job. But
someone who understands AI, who has AI skills, may take
your job. And so that's where that's that particularly. Yeah, Yeah,
(14:58):
to that particular point you just made.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
LinkedIn has this Jobs on the Rise twenty twenty four list,
which includes industries like AI, sustainability, and et cetera, which
are often associated with earning potential, And you talked about
these core courses and curriculums that are available. What should
we be looking for specifically when we go because it's
kind of like you know when they tell you five
years ago, ten years ago, and they say you should
(15:22):
learn the code, and they said, all right, I'm gonna
go learn the code. Now, there's twenty thirty different languages,
these Ruby on rails, there's Python, there's C plus plus,
there's all these things. So I'm like, I don't I'm
swimming in the sea of options of what to learn,
and you don't know everybody's gonna tell you something different.
And so when I say, okay, the earning high earning
potential is in sectors like AI is sustainability, What should
(15:44):
I be going to learn when I go to that
list that you talked about what should.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I be looking at? I think the first thing you
got to do is get the basics. So there's literally
AI one O one, like, how to talk about it,
what the language is, explaining how AI works so that
people can can really get a baseline understanding. Then I
would graduate up to prompt engineering because I feel like
that once you start to understand how the tools work
and you start to build the language and the lexicon
(16:10):
to understand it, then the next thing you need to
do is learn how to harness the tools right. Because
there's a bunch of tools that are to tell it
what to do. You got to learn how to tell
it what to do right. And that's the biggest part
is that because garbage garbage prompts give you sort of
once you learn how to right, once you learn how
(16:31):
to really harness the technology, there's a lot of fun
to be had with it right. And I think that
that's the that that's where I think people should start
to go and then think about what it is that
you do every day or what it is that you
eventually want to do. So if you're once you start
to understand the technology, then you understand how to actually
use it and how to make the technology do what
(16:52):
you want to do. Then I think it goes into
where then is the technology being applied in your field?
And where do you feel like the inking one make
your job easier, make you faster, make you smarter, make
you be able to you know, maximize your workload. And
that's where you start is then take your time and
your attention to Okay, what are those tools. The other
(17:15):
thing I would say is there's been there's no better
time than now than to start talking to other people
in whatever your industry or your profession is about how
they're using AI. I would say too, for most people,
once you get some some basic language around on how
to talk about it, I would start talking to people
at work like, hey, how are we thinking about using AI?
(17:35):
Talk to your manager, how are we thinking about that?
There's probably an almost everybody's company right now, there's an
AI task force or AI or you know, an AI
like working group. Start to figure out, now that you've
got some information about it, how do you get on
that AI working group? How do you start to have
those conversations? And if you're a member of you know,
(17:56):
any other groups or professional ORGANI start talking to the
people in your profession by yo, what are y'all seeing?
So that you can be ahead of it. Information sharing
is again one of the major things that I feel
like is one of our biggest gaps to career advancement.
And now they're tools that can collapse geography. They're tools
(18:18):
that can where you can go out and you can say,
you know, okay, I'm gonna just jump on LinkedIn and
connect with people that I used to work with in
my old job or in my industry and say, or
join one of the groups on there. If it's an
engineering group, lem's join this engineering group. Is if it's
PR group, let me join this PR group. You know,
if it's nurses or people in the medical field, let
(18:39):
me join this and see how are y'all using this right?
And I think that that's the way that you figure
out what's next, because what's next isn't gonna come to you.
You gotta get to what's next, or you got to
start to investigate what's next, because by the time it
comes back to you, is somebody asking you to do
something that you may or may not have the skills
to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
And so I want to talk about resume building and skills.
And so I'm number one, So I got to preface
it's like I'm a university chair of the board.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So I'm chair the board of a university. But I
get also.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That there's been and a lean towards skills and not
necessarily degrees, and we're grappling with that, grappling with that also,
and so you admonish people to highlight their skills versus
necessarily their resumes their credentials in such a way. And
I'm a small business owner also, and I think about
(19:35):
my small business like, I can really care less what
school you into. I want to know what you can do.
And I think most small businesses might think that way
because what we need is people who can hit the
ground running faster. And your credentials don't necessarily say that
you can hit the ground running faster. What you can
show me shows me that you can hit the ground
running faster. And I think I feel like what that
(20:00):
as more small businesses hire more people. Number one, there
are more people who are employed by small businesses than
anything else in the country. Yeah, so as more of
us think that way, then the degree the credentials mean
less over time. And so can you talk about help
me think about think that through yep.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I listen everybody from LinkedIn the world's largest professional network,
to the President of the United States and the s
in the State of the Union is talking about skills,
skills based hiring, and skills first hiring. I think it's
the way of the future. I think it is the
way I think is a It is a pathway to
more and to a more equitable workforce. Having a four
(20:42):
year degree requirement actually just puts tons of jobs that
don't that should not be out of reach, out of
reach for large swaths of people of color in particular.
Let's just point blank period. I mean, that's just it
is what it is. Yes, our educational attainment is going
up every year, particularly by black women, but if we
(21:02):
took away the four year degree requirement, it would open
the aperture for many, many more people of color to
get knowledge, knowledge based you know, air quotes white collar jobs.
So I do think that that is where we're where
we're going to go. I think that it's going to be.
But we're not completely there yet, right like we I
(21:23):
just be honest with you, We're not completely there yet.
But it is where people are starting to go. Even
our company, we've removed four year degree requirements from most
of our jobs at LinkedIn, and we're a tech company, right.
I will say, the thing that I want people to understand,
and even people who are at universities and who are
who are getting degrees and getting master's degrees and all
those things, is that you still are going to have
(21:45):
to talk about your skills. Regardless of how great your
grades were, You're going to be able to talk have
to talk to recruiters about what you know how to
do and where you have done it previously. You've got
to have a skills conversation. I want to see your portfolio.
I really don't care ABOUTIO, right, And that's that's just
(22:05):
what matters like listen. I mean, I love to tell
people that I graduated from Morehouse College. I love to
tell people that I have a business uh NBA from
of course what a school of business at EMMRA University.
But ain't nobody asking me? Not usually, you know what
I'm saying, Nobody's really, ain't nobody asked me yet? Ain't
(22:26):
nobody asked me? And here's the deal? Is that? And
what what I will say? And here's this goes back
to the AI thing to a little bit. Is that
we just released our most in demand skills. These are
the skills that companies are asking for most for all
of the out of all of the job postings on
our entire website, right, and the number one skill across
(22:50):
the board for the second year in a row. Most
in demand is communication and so part of that is
human skills, people centric skills. The future of work is
going to be human, no matter how pervasive AI becomes.
You the people skills are really in Those human skills
(23:11):
are really what's most in demand. Yeah, and more technical jobs.
There's gonna be other parts of it, but leadership, management,
team work, analysis, communication, those things really matter. We see
so many recruiters who say to us, we've got people
who are in their early careers, who are graduating from
(23:33):
college and they've got, you know, education, but they can't present,
or they can't write, or they can't or they can't
make a concise or data based argument. They're arguing with
feelings and what they you know, and what they think
as opposed to facts and data. And they're like, we,
(23:55):
you know, we're trying to grapple with how do we
train them to have these skills for these skills of
analysis and things like that. We talk to recruiters and
over forty eight percent of recruiters say that they are
using skills to source for talent. And we've got to
teach candidates how to now reimagine how they talk about
(24:18):
their skills in job interviews, and employees how to make
sure that they're always upskilling and keeping their skills fresh
and tight, and looking at how they continuously talk about
their skills and action.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
To you, great point, because it brings me to a
quote that you gave, I think in an article on
afrotech and so you taught. You said in twenty twenty four,
we have agency. We want more than just jobs. It's
a new era where it's not just about stability, it's
about thriving and telling our personal story in a professional world.
And so with that in one hand, you think about
(24:58):
at least historically, longevity in the role meant trajectory. It
meant that you were gonna make more, you were gonna
get higher.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Better, prestigious jobs.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And what you're saying is that we're not just looking
for you know, jobs for fine ten twenty years like
our predecessors. Yeah, so then how do you reconcile being
able to make more and more money when we might
jump every three ish four ish years.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Or more longer? Right? Listen, I think that there that
longevity has a place as long as you're being compensated
and appreciated, as long as you are still you're being
whatever you the thing that you get from work that
you're getting right. I'm very money motivated. So I've made
a lot of my decisions early in my career based
(25:46):
on how much bang for the buck am I getting,
Like carried to one, what's my carry with one my institute,
what's my check on the person? At fifteen? Now I'm
a little bit older. Now I'm almost fifty, and I
am thinking about how I spend my time very differently, right,
And so money is still a great motivating factor in
(26:07):
my career, but I'm also thinking about where do I
take my skills and my talent? Right, So I think
that that's part of it. What I would say to
people in their careers of like, okay, yeah, you have
the agency piece comes in. I have a plan for
my career. I see the pathway forward. Most jobs are
(26:30):
vehicles and not destinations. And I think that once you
sort of get that as part of the mentality, how
does this job as is this a vehicle that gets
me to the next opportunity? For if visibility is important
to me, if opportunity is important to me, if money
is important to me, how does this job become a
(26:53):
vehicle that gets me to that next destination? And that
vehicle and that job becomes a vehicle to get me
today next destination. Sometimes that that move may be within
the company. I tell employers all the time that your
next best employee might be your current employee. You just
have to move them into a space to where they
can thrive.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And so that's the other thing that I say to
to black folks, right, is that you have to have
a plan for your career. The last thing that the
REF says to a fighter in the ring every time
is protect yourself at all times. And that is the
way I think about us and our careers. Protect yourself
at all times means that if I get that pink
(27:35):
stuff tomorrow, I ain't got I ain't gotta get ready
because I'm already ready. My resume is updated every six months. Right,
if that comes at me, I also have I also
have a network where I'm keeping people. I've got my
personal border directors in place. They can help me walk
through that. Right. I've been thinking about what my next
(27:56):
opportunity should be or could be anyway, so I don't
have the same emotional attachment to this particular job, even
if I enjoyed the work, because I'm thinking about what
my next move could be Now, I may be disappointed, absolutely,
but I'm not gonna be disillusioning and not gonna be
defeated because I'm thinking about how do I protect myself
(28:20):
at all times and if I'm in a job where
i feel like that I'm contorting and I'm you know,
assimilation is exhausting, and if i feel like I'm balled
up in a not all the time, I always tell
people like, look, do not let these jobs rob you
of your hairline, or your edges, or your relationship, or
(28:41):
your happiness, or your joy or your time with your kids.
Like there's so many places out here that will actually
appreciate the goodness that you bring to a professional setting.
And I talk about work in this way because we
when we talked about code switching at and our latest
(29:02):
survey with black professionals at LinkedIn, sixty black professionals felt
like that they had to code switch at work, and
forty two percent of them said that their parents and
their families told them that they need to do it right.
And so what I try to do is speak agency
into the professional lives of my friends or people who
(29:25):
see me on TV, or people who who I'm giving
career advice to because I recognize that nobody was speaking
agency over my career until I was almost thirty or
forty years old. They were saying, don't do this, don't
do that. Better be thankful for that right, And I'm like,
you have agency if you put the right strategy in place,
(29:48):
You're looking at your network in the right way, you
get your skills to where they need to be. You
understand what your superpower is and what you bring to
the professional world that is special and you that helps
people solve problems that are important. You gonna be okay.
And you don't have to be in a space or
(30:08):
a job or a role for long periods of time
where you feel defeated or that you feel like that
there's no opportunity for you to grow. You better than
that you better at a.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Job to that point, and this is the last one
I got for y'all. Want to do respectful. Your time
is DEI is under attack, right, and I have a view,
and it's been shown that every obstacle presents an opportunity.
And also that diversity is good for a business. It's
(30:39):
not just morally good, it's good for the bottom line,
and so that can't be lost.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I'm hoping.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You know, I'm saying it's completing like that can't be
lost on smart companies, that diversity is good for a business.
So if taking those two things, diversity is good for
business and they're is an opportunity in every obstacle, how
could this attack on the the E and I be
(31:09):
looked at differently other than just you know, woe is us?
You know they're trying to attack us again. How do
we see the opportunity here potentially?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yo? So I look at it like this, right? Is
that I feel like D and I and DEI has
needed an overhaul for probably the last twenty years. I
think that, you know, we've made great strides, but I
think we low KI have been maybe doing it wrong
and not had the courage to actually you know, pull
the pull the lever stop and make them and make
(31:42):
a market shift. I think what the what the the
silver lining may be in this is that now DEI professionals,
the people who are really committed to it, they're about
to go back into the lab. They're going to go
back into the lab now with attorneys. They're going to
go back into the lab now with policy folks. And
(32:02):
that they and if they do the real work of saying, Okay,
how can we make this work unassailable? How can we
still get to what we need to do and make
this work unassailable. Let's go in and go under the
hood and actually take this moment and fix all of
these things. Let's fill in these gaps. And because Deus
(32:23):
has had some gaps, even the companies that have put
in major work, how do you now say, Okay, we're
about to go back into lab and what comes out
of this is gonna be unassailable. Right, It's gonna work.
We're gonna take the best of what we've seen and
we're gonna kick the old stuff out. Right. I hope
that we see on the other side of this is
that a whole new strategy emerges, a whole new way
(32:44):
of talking about this. The legislation and the potential court
cases is gonna make us use different language and different
words to talk about this, right, And I think that
we needed a language overhaul in DEI for a long
time anyway, And so this may be the forcing factor
that takes us from good to great. That's the way
I see it. I think the people who are truly
committed to it may be quiet in this next view,
(33:06):
this next eighteen to twenty four months. Some of the
people that have been really loud may have to get
quiet for a little while. But when they come back,
my gut says to me that a lot of people
are gonna come back, and they're gonna come back with
better ideas, better impact, better innovation, better ways of measurement,
and better ways of thinking about what impact looks like.
(33:28):
Because here's my think on it, will is that if
I go to a company and they say, oh, well,
I want you to know that they're fourteen percent of
the view of the of the US population is African
American and we have you know, ten percent African Americans
at this company, and you're like, oh wow, that's crazy,
Like that's crazy good for most companies in terms of representation.
(33:52):
But if all of those all of those black people
went to Dartmouth, went to you know, they went to Dartmouth,
they went to Harvard, they went to Yale, talk to
me a little bit about representation again, right, Because you
can go to some companies and all of the black
(34:13):
folks came from the same three schools. I'm not saying
that that's a bad thing. I'm saying it ain't necessarily
representation thing, right, it's a thing. It's a thing. It's
a thing that we don't talk about because you know,
oftentimes we just happen to see some more black folks there,
you know what I mean. But I think that we're
gonna come back smarter, We're gonna come back stronger. And listen,
you're right about them. This is the last thing I'll
(34:34):
say is you're absolutely right about the the These companies
need representation. Ninety percent of the population growth that has
happened in this country in the last fifteen years has
come from communities of color. If you don't have black,
Latino Asian folks and listen also LGBTQ plus folks in
your companies helping you decode culture, you're not gonna sell
(34:56):
You're not gonna sell products in the way that you
need to sell products because you can't just engage. You
can't engage us in the same ways that you did
because the younger, younger people of color and younger women
of color in particular, are just not down for to
take the same things from companies that they do business
with that you know, previous generations were down to do.
(35:19):
And you've got to have that representation to really understand culture,
and I think culture is going to be particularly in
as the country becomes more and more diverse and becomes
majority multicultural in just a short order of time. It's
going to be even more incummon upon these companies to
(35:40):
make sure that they not only have representation, but they
have representation that they're listening to and that they are
giving voice and optionality.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
To Black Tech.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro Tech on
the Black Effect Podcast Network and Ihurt Media. It's produced
by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with additional production
support by Sarah Ergin and Love Beach. Special thank you
to Michael Davis and Kay McDonald. Learn more about my
guests and other tech. This is an innovators at afrotech
dot com. I'm joining Black Tech Green Money. Share us
(36:30):
with somebody Go get your money.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
He's in love
Check me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival,
happening Saturday, April twenty seven in Atlanta. Live podcasts are
on deck from some of your favorite shows, including this one,
Black Tech, Green Money, and also some of the best
podcasts in the game, like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown
and Carefully Reckless. Atlanta is one of my favorite cities
in the world. I've lived there for two years actually,
and my worldview seeing a successful in every industry and
(00:23):
not having any limits on our potential largely was shaved
by Atlanta. So to be there with you doing this
podcast talking about how we build or leverage technology to
bill wealth. Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want
to see you there. Get your tickets today at Black
Effect dot comback Slash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And when I have these conversations with my with my
white counterparts about AI, they're like, oh, man, it's gonna
change the world. We're gonna be doing all these crazy
cool things.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Hey.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You know, sometimes I talk to my friends in the
group chat, They're like, man, the devil is busy with
that AI, right, Like, you know, you get different impressions about.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm Will Lucas and this is black Tech Green Money.
Andrew McCaskill is a communications executive with twenty years of
experience delivering award winning communications and be our campaigns at
Fortune five hundred companies and highly successful technology startups.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
He was SVP of Global.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Communications and Multicultural Marketing at Nielsen, head of D and
I Global Sales and Marketing at Facebook.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Is an investor and advisor at.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Culture Genesis and its career expert in Global communications at LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
He's also pr Week's Top forty under forty.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Not everyone who listens to this podcast is going to
start a company, many, if not most, will be career
professionals in climb the ladder regardless. You want to make
sure you build wealth. And it's often said, however, that
you can't build wealth by selling your time. I asked
Andrew to speak on that.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, man, I think it's so important because you're right,
everybody's not going to be an entrepreneur. Many of us
are points, have most of our working lives and some
version of a nine to five. And I think that
the biggest thing that I feel like that people can
do to build wealth is to start having wealth conversations, right,
And what I mean by that is, you know, I
(02:17):
grew up middle upper middle class, right, and my parents
did not talk to me a lot about money. Money
in my household was grown folks business, and you know,
they basically gave me a couple of things is save
some money and don't spend more than you make, right,
good luck, and you know, call us if you need us.
(02:37):
And what I think that that sometimes we do with
that is that we don't information share enough. And so
I feel like that one of the things that is
the beginning of financial mobility, financial mobility starts with financial stability.
And I think that amongst amongst particularly younger black folks,
(02:58):
younger black professionals, we have to collaborate and not compete.
And that means that many of us are not gonna
get somebody from some ivory tower to come down and
tell us all these things about money. So we have
to peer to peer mentor each other in a lot
of ways. Right, My group chat has saved me so
many times from making mistakes about money at work. And
(03:21):
so the first time I had a job in tech
where I had to actually negotiate for equity, I had
to go and look up on the internet what restricted
stock units were. I had no idea what I was
potentially leaving on the table because I didn't have that information.
Luckily for me, I had not even necessarily a mentor,
(03:44):
but a dude that I knew in tech that I
had met at a conference, and I was like, yo,
I noticed, dude is senior. I still have this number.
I'm just gonna roll the dice and call him, and
he broke it down for me in a way that man,
I could have left so much money on the table
as a nine to five or if I hadn't really
thought about it in the right way. So the number
(04:07):
one to get from that mobility stability is having the
most information, and sometimes that information is gonna come from
people who look like us. Right. The other thing I
think is is really just the behavioral shift and a
mindset shift that you know, I think that we all
have to have around that is that many of us
who are in that nine to five world, a lot
(04:29):
of us are grappling with something that our non Hispanic
white counterparts don't have to grapple with. And that's the
untold story is the fragility of the black middle class.
Middle class status is very fragile for us in our
communities because oftentimes, Man, you know, you might be the
one in the family that's got that good job, but
(04:50):
when big Mama's water heater breaks down, you getting that call, right.
And so I feel like that one of those things
that we have to do is that we're constantly sort
of accounting for that. So if it comes down to
Gucci versus Grandma, I'm gonna save that money for Grandma
every time, right because I want to, Because I think
that that's the call that many of us are gonna get.
(05:11):
So I think that that mobility of getting to wealth
starts with like reimagining how we think about that money
in the beginning. That one we get more money when
we talk about money and have money conversations with people
that we trust that we can you know, we sort
of grow together. You need to grow with your peer group.
And so when you're sharing that information, like one thing
(05:31):
about me, I'll send you my old offer letter from
from Facebook, I'll send you my old offer letter from
you know, previous companies that I had. So at least
you should know that this is where you should level set. Right.
The other thing is like, we know that we're gonna
get hit in different ways, so we have to think
about money and stability just totally different. And here's the
thing that I think is more in line with what
(05:52):
I think everybody really wants the answer to be from
this question is like, can you build wealth while working
for other people? Absolutely? You can. It happens every single dissa, Right.
You have to just really plan for and account for
your career in certain ways. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, So you got a couple of questions there that
you speak my interest on. And so I've read some
of your posts and you had talked about how the
job market has tightened and there's one job for every
two applicants, right, and how can black people, black professionals
negotiate effectively to secure competitive conversation, not just accept what
(06:31):
they give you, but to negotiate that compensation and ensure
that you know financial reward is there in the market
where employers have a whole bunch of options for who
wants this job.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Here's the things I think that you can't is that
you can't go into it without the confidence that, hey,
I know, I know what my skills are and I
know that I can do in this role. And so
I do think that part of it is being really
confident about what you bring to the table and being
able to articulate that really well. And that's not just
about spitting workplace game, right. I think that that confidence
(07:06):
really comes from, you know, being really secure about how
you tell your story. And that is how you tell
your professional story, how you talk about your superpowers, what
you bring to the table, how you talk about your skills,
how you match up the skills that you that you
have with what the company is actually asking for and desiring.
(07:27):
And a lot of that comes from really being able
to practice and rehearse that. That's just table stakes practicing
and rehearsing how you tell your story and how you
talk about it. But the information piece of it. If
you're really trying to negotiate for a great for better
compensation at a job that you already really want, I
(07:47):
think there are a couple of things that you have
to do. One is make sure that you understand sort
of the value in the marketplace in terms of most
of the companies now will give you a somewhat of
a range. We all want the top of that brain
right when we see it. I think that what you
have to then do is negotiate for why you want
that at the at the top of the range. Also,
(08:10):
there's gonna be it's really competitive, and I think that
you know, yeah, we all want to get that next job.
But the worst thing that you can one of the
worst things that you can do, unless you just desperately
need a job. If you desperately need a job, do
what you got to do in I respect, right, But
if you're in a position where you actually have some choice,
and we have a lot more choice than we truly
(08:32):
have been, you know, sort of conditioned to believe. If
you've got the choice, I think you do have to
go in and sort of negotiate for what you want.
That negotiation begins with how much information do you have
about the role? How much information do you have about
the company. You're eight times more likely to get a
job at a company if you know somebody who's at
(08:53):
that company, and that doesn't have to be your work
best friend. That could be somebody that you worked with
ten years ago. That could be so that goes to
your church, but you you don't really know them, but
you know of them, right, because that just even that
conversation gives you a better idea of what the culture
is and how much and how much you can think
about it. They don't have to tell you how much
(09:13):
money they make or any of that kind of stuff.
But the little clues that they can give you, or
even just then mentioning your name, puts you in a
better position. Your network really really matters. And I think
that we have been sort of conditioned not to think
of our network as the way I feel like our
non Hispanic white counterparts think about it, right, is that
we oftentimes get caught up in thinking that if I'm
(09:36):
networking with you, it's got to be like a business
cards exchange or at a party or something like that,
or a cocktail hour or that, like it's got to
be some kind of quid pro quo or I'm asking
you for a favor or something like that. Our white
counterparts don't even think about networking in that way. They
don't think about, Okay, well, look, will gave me your number.
(09:58):
So anything you anything you say to me is a
reflection on will. That's just not how That's not how
anybody else thinks about it, right, It really is will
gave me this person's number. Maybe something comes from it,
maybe something doesn't. My connection, my connections that I sort
of share that network sharing man, your network is so powerful.
(10:20):
So I think using your network to get a better
idea of like what your opportunity is. But don't just
take the first offer. I always say that you have
to negotiate. Even for that recruiter to really or that
hiring manager to truly respect you, you need to and
at least negotiate something. And you negotiate like that.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
There are a lot of people with jobs, careers, I
should say, who are concerned about how AI is about
to impact their roles. Like, you know, I think about
like if if I can marry grammarly and chat GPT,
I never have to hire a copywriter again. Like, so
there's there are certain roles that are definitely under the gun,
(11:01):
you know, to use that phrase. So how are you
advising professionals to acquire in demand skills so that they
can be you know, still marketable in the years to
come in the professional workplace?
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Oh man, I love this question because let's even even
if you take AI out of the game, that our
research shows that even if you're not changing jobs, your
job is changing on you. Most people's jobs change about
fifteen to twenty percent every two years. Right, so you
could be in the job that you've been in that
job five years. Your job is so different from the
day you started to today. And you know, when I
(11:38):
have these conversations with my uh with my white counterparts
about AI, they're like, oh, man, it's gonna change the world.
We're gonna be doing all these crazy cool things. And
you know, sometimes I talk to my friends in the
group chat and they're like, man, the devil is busy
with that AI, right, Like, you know, you're getting different
impressions about it, right. But we actually, we actually talked
(12:02):
to a large number of black professionals about how they
were feeling about AI and sort of what's happening. And
what we found, man, was that actually most black professionals
were actually were actually really intrigued and excited about AI.
But what they also said was that about forty seven
(12:23):
percent said that they didn't know where to start getting
AI skills and getting up to speed. And so's the
that's the hook right there. What we did at LinkedIn
when we saw that was we said, okay, well we're
gonna make our top ten AI courses free for everybody.
You don't have to have LinkedIn premium or anything like that.
So we've made our top ten AI courses for free,
(12:45):
and that's everything from understanding you know prompt engineering to
understanding you know AI one on one. We've even got
some more advanced courses. And if you if you follow
my newsletter The Black Guy in Marketing on linked and
then I've got all of the courses listed there, you
can literally click on the courses and take the courses. Right.
(13:06):
It's like tons of free courses. But I think that
that's the key to it is that for black professionals
in particular, I think that if you don't know what
a large language model is, and you're listening to this
conversation right now, I know there are a lot of
tech people who probably do know exactly what that is.
But if you don't, now is the time for you
to start at least get the language and the lexicon
of AI down because we need more black people using
(13:30):
the tool. We need more black people getting the skills
and getting the certifications because major revolutions in work have
not always been kind to us. But now we're in
a space where the information is literally at our fingertips.
If you've got a computer, you've got a smartphone, you
(13:51):
can get access to starting to learn how to use
these tools and play with these tools. And I think
that that's the key to it is to get in
there and start playing with it now because AI is
coming to work. It's at work already, and I don't
want us to feel like that it's this scary thing
because we've been I mean it, all it really is,
as you know, is like really well educated guesses to
(14:14):
what you to answering questions for what we all need.
And if you've used you know, almost any technology tool
that in the last you know, five or six years,
there's been some bit of it that is making some
educated guesses for you. Right then, completely on the Google
search bar. Absolutely, I use that example all the time
(14:34):
auto completely on Google. Right. But here's the other thing
is that I don't want people to have this. I
think that people have this fear, Oh AI is going
to take my job. That's not what you should be
afraid of. AI is not gonna take your job. But
someone who understands AI, who has AI skills, may take
your job. And so that's where that's that particularly. Yeah, Yeah,
(14:58):
to that particular point you just made.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
LinkedIn has this Jobs on the Rise twenty twenty four list,
which includes industries like AI, sustainability, and et cetera, which
are often associated with earning potential, And you talked about
these core courses and curriculums that are available. What should
we be looking for specifically when we go because it's
kind of like you know when they tell you five
years ago, ten years ago, and they say you should
(15:22):
learn the code, and they said, all right, I'm gonna
go learn the code. Now, there's twenty thirty different languages,
these Ruby on rails, there's Python, there's C plus plus,
there's all these things. So I'm like, I don't I'm
swimming in the sea of options of what to learn,
and you don't know everybody's gonna tell you something different.
And so when I say, okay, the earning high earning
potential is in sectors like AI is sustainability, What should
(15:44):
I be going to learn when I go to that
list that you talked about what should.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I be looking at? I think the first thing you
got to do is get the basics. So there's literally
AI one O one, like, how to talk about it,
what the language is, explaining how AI works so that
people can can really get a baseline understanding. Then I
would graduate up to prompt engineering because I feel like
that once you start to understand how the tools work
and you start to build the language and the lexicon
(16:10):
to understand it, then the next thing you need to
do is learn how to harness the tools right. Because
there's a bunch of tools that are to tell it
what to do. You got to learn how to tell
it what to do right. And that's the biggest part
is that because garbage garbage prompts give you sort of
once you learn how to right, once you learn how
(16:31):
to really harness the technology, there's a lot of fun
to be had with it right. And I think that
that's the that that's where I think people should start
to go and then think about what it is that
you do every day or what it is that you
eventually want to do. So if you're once you start
to understand the technology, then you understand how to actually
use it and how to make the technology do what
(16:52):
you want to do. Then I think it goes into
where then is the technology being applied in your field?
And where do you feel like the inking one make
your job easier, make you faster, make you smarter, make
you be able to you know, maximize your workload. And
that's where you start is then take your time and
your attention to Okay, what are those tools. The other
(17:15):
thing I would say is there's been there's no better
time than now than to start talking to other people
in whatever your industry or your profession is about how
they're using AI. I would say too, for most people,
once you get some some basic language around on how
to talk about it, I would start talking to people
at work like, hey, how are we thinking about using AI?
(17:35):
Talk to your manager, how are we thinking about that?
There's probably an almost everybody's company right now, there's an
AI task force or AI or you know, an AI
like working group. Start to figure out, now that you've
got some information about it, how do you get on
that AI working group? How do you start to have
those conversations? And if you're a member of you know,
(17:56):
any other groups or professional ORGANI start talking to the
people in your profession by yo, what are y'all seeing?
So that you can be ahead of it. Information sharing
is again one of the major things that I feel
like is one of our biggest gaps to career advancement.
And now they're tools that can collapse geography. They're tools
(18:18):
that can where you can go out and you can say,
you know, okay, I'm gonna just jump on LinkedIn and
connect with people that I used to work with in
my old job or in my industry and say, or
join one of the groups on there. If it's an
engineering group, lem's join this engineering group. Is if it's
PR group, let me join this PR group. You know,
if it's nurses or people in the medical field, let
(18:39):
me join this and see how are y'all using this right?
And I think that that's the way that you figure
out what's next, because what's next isn't gonna come to you.
You gotta get to what's next, or you got to
start to investigate what's next, because by the time it
comes back to you, is somebody asking you to do
something that you may or may not have the skills
to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
And so I want to talk about resume building and skills.
And so I'm number one, So I got to preface
it's like I'm a university chair of the board.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So I'm chair the board of a university. But I
get also.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That there's been and a lean towards skills and not
necessarily degrees, and we're grappling with that, grappling with that also,
and so you admonish people to highlight their skills versus
necessarily their resumes their credentials in such a way. And
I'm a small business owner also, and I think about
(19:35):
my small business like, I can really care less what
school you into. I want to know what you can do.
And I think most small businesses might think that way
because what we need is people who can hit the
ground running faster. And your credentials don't necessarily say that
you can hit the ground running faster. What you can
show me shows me that you can hit the ground
running faster. And I think I feel like what that
(20:00):
as more small businesses hire more people. Number one, there
are more people who are employed by small businesses than
anything else in the country. Yeah, so as more of
us think that way, then the degree the credentials mean
less over time. And so can you talk about help
me think about think that through yep.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I listen everybody from LinkedIn the world's largest professional network,
to the President of the United States and the s
in the State of the Union is talking about skills,
skills based hiring, and skills first hiring. I think it's
the way of the future. I think it is the
way I think is a It is a pathway to
more and to a more equitable workforce. Having a four
(20:42):
year degree requirement actually just puts tons of jobs that
don't that should not be out of reach, out of
reach for large swaths of people of color in particular.
Let's just point blank period. I mean, that's just it
is what it is. Yes, our educational attainment is going
up every year, particularly by black women, but if we
(21:02):
took away the four year degree requirement, it would open
the aperture for many, many more people of color to
get knowledge, knowledge based you know, air quotes white collar jobs.
So I do think that that is where we're where
we're going to go. I think that it's going to be.
But we're not completely there yet, right like we I
(21:23):
just be honest with you, We're not completely there yet.
But it is where people are starting to go. Even
our company, we've removed four year degree requirements from most
of our jobs at LinkedIn, and we're a tech company, right.
I will say, the thing that I want people to understand,
and even people who are at universities and who are
who are getting degrees and getting master's degrees and all
those things, is that you still are going to have
(21:45):
to talk about your skills. Regardless of how great your
grades were, You're going to be able to talk have
to talk to recruiters about what you know how to
do and where you have done it previously. You've got
to have a skills conversation. I want to see your portfolio.
I really don't care ABOUTIO, right, And that's that's just
(22:05):
what matters like listen. I mean, I love to tell
people that I graduated from Morehouse College. I love to
tell people that I have a business uh NBA from
of course what a school of business at EMMRA University.
But ain't nobody asking me? Not usually, you know what
I'm saying, Nobody's really, ain't nobody asked me yet? Ain't
(22:26):
nobody asked me? And here's the deal? Is that? And
what what I will say? And here's this goes back
to the AI thing to a little bit. Is that
we just released our most in demand skills. These are
the skills that companies are asking for most for all
of the out of all of the job postings on
our entire website, right, and the number one skill across
(22:50):
the board for the second year in a row. Most
in demand is communication and so part of that is
human skills, people centric skills. The future of work is
going to be human, no matter how pervasive AI becomes.
You the people skills are really in Those human skills
(23:11):
are really what's most in demand. Yeah, and more technical jobs.
There's gonna be other parts of it, but leadership, management,
team work, analysis, communication, those things really matter. We see
so many recruiters who say to us, we've got people
who are in their early careers, who are graduating from
(23:33):
college and they've got, you know, education, but they can't present,
or they can't write, or they can't or they can't
make a concise or data based argument. They're arguing with
feelings and what they you know, and what they think
as opposed to facts and data. And they're like, we,
(23:55):
you know, we're trying to grapple with how do we
train them to have these skills for these skills of
analysis and things like that. We talk to recruiters and
over forty eight percent of recruiters say that they are
using skills to source for talent. And we've got to
teach candidates how to now reimagine how they talk about
(24:18):
their skills in job interviews, and employees how to make
sure that they're always upskilling and keeping their skills fresh
and tight, and looking at how they continuously talk about
their skills and action.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
To you, great point, because it brings me to a
quote that you gave, I think in an article on
afrotech and so you taught. You said in twenty twenty four,
we have agency. We want more than just jobs. It's
a new era where it's not just about stability, it's
about thriving and telling our personal story in a professional world.
And so with that in one hand, you think about
(24:58):
at least historically, longevity in the role meant trajectory. It
meant that you were gonna make more, you were gonna
get higher.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Better, prestigious jobs.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And what you're saying is that we're not just looking
for you know, jobs for fine ten twenty years like
our predecessors. Yeah, so then how do you reconcile being
able to make more and more money when we might
jump every three ish four ish years.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Or more longer? Right? Listen, I think that there that
longevity has a place as long as you're being compensated
and appreciated, as long as you are still you're being
whatever you the thing that you get from work that
you're getting right. I'm very money motivated. So I've made
a lot of my decisions early in my career based
(25:46):
on how much bang for the buck am I getting,
Like carried to one, what's my carry with one my institute,
what's my check on the person? At fifteen? Now I'm
a little bit older. Now I'm almost fifty, and I
am thinking about how I spend my time very differently, right,
And so money is still a great motivating factor in
(26:07):
my career, but I'm also thinking about where do I
take my skills and my talent? Right, So I think
that that's part of it. What I would say to
people in their careers of like, okay, yeah, you have
the agency piece comes in. I have a plan for
my career. I see the pathway forward. Most jobs are
(26:30):
vehicles and not destinations. And I think that once you
sort of get that as part of the mentality, how
does this job as is this a vehicle that gets
me to the next opportunity? For if visibility is important
to me, if opportunity is important to me, if money
is important to me, how does this job become a
(26:53):
vehicle that gets me to that next destination? And that
vehicle and that job becomes a vehicle to get me
today next destination. Sometimes that that move may be within
the company. I tell employers all the time that your
next best employee might be your current employee. You just
have to move them into a space to where they
can thrive.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And so that's the other thing that I say to
to black folks, right, is that you have to have
a plan for your career. The last thing that the
REF says to a fighter in the ring every time
is protect yourself at all times. And that is the
way I think about us and our careers. Protect yourself
at all times means that if I get that pink
(27:35):
stuff tomorrow, I ain't got I ain't gotta get ready
because I'm already ready. My resume is updated every six months. Right,
if that comes at me, I also have I also
have a network where I'm keeping people. I've got my
personal border directors in place. They can help me walk
through that. Right. I've been thinking about what my next
(27:56):
opportunity should be or could be anyway, so I don't
have the same emotional attachment to this particular job, even
if I enjoyed the work, because I'm thinking about what
my next move could be Now, I may be disappointed, absolutely,
but I'm not gonna be disillusioning and not gonna be
defeated because I'm thinking about how do I protect myself
(28:20):
at all times and if I'm in a job where
i feel like that I'm contorting and I'm you know,
assimilation is exhausting, and if i feel like I'm balled
up in a not all the time, I always tell
people like, look, do not let these jobs rob you
of your hairline, or your edges, or your relationship, or
(28:41):
your happiness, or your joy or your time with your kids.
Like there's so many places out here that will actually
appreciate the goodness that you bring to a professional setting.
And I talk about work in this way because we
when we talked about code switching at and our latest
(29:02):
survey with black professionals at LinkedIn, sixty black professionals felt
like that they had to code switch at work, and
forty two percent of them said that their parents and
their families told them that they need to do it right.
And so what I try to do is speak agency
into the professional lives of my friends or people who
(29:25):
see me on TV, or people who who I'm giving
career advice to because I recognize that nobody was speaking
agency over my career until I was almost thirty or
forty years old. They were saying, don't do this, don't
do that. Better be thankful for that right, And I'm like,
you have agency if you put the right strategy in place,
(29:48):
You're looking at your network in the right way, you
get your skills to where they need to be. You
understand what your superpower is and what you bring to
the professional world that is special and you that helps
people solve problems that are important. You gonna be okay.
And you don't have to be in a space or
(30:08):
a job or a role for long periods of time
where you feel defeated or that you feel like that
there's no opportunity for you to grow. You better than
that you better at a.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Job to that point, and this is the last one
I got for y'all. Want to do respectful. Your time
is DEI is under attack, right, and I have a view,
and it's been shown that every obstacle presents an opportunity.
And also that diversity is good for a business. It's
(30:39):
not just morally good, it's good for the bottom line,
and so that can't be lost.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I'm hoping.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You know, I'm saying it's completing like that can't be
lost on smart companies, that diversity is good for a business.
So if taking those two things, diversity is good for
business and they're is an opportunity in every obstacle, how
could this attack on the the E and I be
(31:09):
looked at differently other than just you know, woe is us?
You know they're trying to attack us again. How do
we see the opportunity here potentially?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yo? So I look at it like this, right? Is
that I feel like D and I and DEI has
needed an overhaul for probably the last twenty years. I
think that, you know, we've made great strides, but I
think we low KI have been maybe doing it wrong
and not had the courage to actually you know, pull
the pull the lever stop and make them and make
(31:42):
a market shift. I think what the what the the
silver lining may be in this is that now DEI professionals,
the people who are really committed to it, they're about
to go back into the lab. They're going to go
back into the lab now with attorneys. They're going to
go back into the lab now with policy folks. And
(32:02):
that they and if they do the real work of saying, Okay,
how can we make this work unassailable? How can we
still get to what we need to do and make
this work unassailable. Let's go in and go under the
hood and actually take this moment and fix all of
these things. Let's fill in these gaps. And because Deus
(32:23):
has had some gaps, even the companies that have put
in major work, how do you now say, Okay, we're
about to go back into lab and what comes out
of this is gonna be unassailable. Right, It's gonna work.
We're gonna take the best of what we've seen and
we're gonna kick the old stuff out. Right. I hope
that we see on the other side of this is
that a whole new strategy emerges, a whole new way
(32:44):
of talking about this. The legislation and the potential court
cases is gonna make us use different language and different
words to talk about this, right, And I think that
we needed a language overhaul in DEI for a long
time anyway, And so this may be the forcing factor
that takes us from good to great. That's the way
I see it. I think the people who are truly
committed to it may be quiet in this next view,
(33:06):
this next eighteen to twenty four months. Some of the
people that have been really loud may have to get
quiet for a little while. But when they come back,
my gut says to me that a lot of people
are gonna come back, and they're gonna come back with
better ideas, better impact, better innovation, better ways of measurement,
and better ways of thinking about what impact looks like.
(33:28):
Because here's my think on it, will is that if
I go to a company and they say, oh, well,
I want you to know that they're fourteen percent of
the view of the of the US population is African
American and we have you know, ten percent African Americans
at this company, and you're like, oh wow, that's crazy,
Like that's crazy good for most companies in terms of representation.
(33:52):
But if all of those all of those black people
went to Dartmouth, went to you know, they went to Dartmouth,
they went to Harvard, they went to Yale, talk to
me a little bit about representation again, right, Because you
can go to some companies and all of the black
(34:13):
folks came from the same three schools. I'm not saying
that that's a bad thing. I'm saying it ain't necessarily
representation thing, right, it's a thing. It's a thing. It's
a thing that we don't talk about because you know,
oftentimes we just happen to see some more black folks there,
you know what I mean. But I think that we're
gonna come back smarter, We're gonna come back stronger. And listen,
you're right about them. This is the last thing I'll
(34:34):
say is you're absolutely right about the the These companies
need representation. Ninety percent of the population growth that has
happened in this country in the last fifteen years has
come from communities of color. If you don't have black,
Latino Asian folks and listen also LGBTQ plus folks in
your companies helping you decode culture, you're not gonna sell
(34:56):
You're not gonna sell products in the way that you
need to sell products because you can't just engage. You
can't engage us in the same ways that you did
because the younger, younger people of color and younger women
of color in particular, are just not down for to
take the same things from companies that they do business
with that you know, previous generations were down to do.
(35:19):
And you've got to have that representation to really understand culture,
and I think culture is going to be particularly in
as the country becomes more and more diverse and becomes
majority multicultural in just a short order of time. It's
going to be even more incummon upon these companies to
(35:40):
make sure that they not only have representation, but they
have representation that they're listening to and that they are
giving voice and optionality.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
To Black Tech.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro Tech on
the Black Effect Podcast Network and Ihurt Media. It's produced
by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with additional production
support by Sarah Ergin and Love Beach. Special thank you
to Michael Davis and Kay McDonald. Learn more about my
guests and other tech. This is an innovators at afrotech
dot com. I'm joining Black Tech Green Money. Share us
(36:30):
with somebody Go get your money.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
He's in love
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