The Causey Consulting Podcast
The Causey Consulting Podcast
Robert Herjavec Says the $100K Career is Over – Is He Right?
🔴 Is the dream of a stable, high-paying job with benefits really over? Entrepreneur and Shark Tank investor Robert Herjavec recently posted that the traditional $100K career path is “dead and gone.” In this episode, I break down his claim, what it means for the future of work, and how you darn well better adapt in this shifting economy.
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/robertherjavec_the-days-of-a-secure-lifelong-job-with-steady-activity-7300693366332133377-Vn0H/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAg_dycBIFdR4Ml0hP3epObGLSzd5JODvIk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz3HKkVrJE4
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Transcription by Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos!
Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com, and now here's your host, Sara Causey.
Today, I want to talk about a very interesting quote that I read. It was posted by Robert Herjavec. If you're a regular watcher of Shark Tank, then you probably know him as a frequent contributor, one of the entrepreneurs on that show. And I was debating, do I want to release this as a video on YouTube, or do I want to release it as a podcast episode? And I thought, well, it's easy enough to just do both. The message is too important. I would rather reach people wherever I can. So I want to read this quote to you. Give me just a second. So there's a graphic and there's a quotation explanation that goes along with it, and in the graphic, Robert has written, the idea of getting a lifetime job and making $100,000 a year with benefits is dead and gone. It's over, and it may never come again. That's a very scary thought for a lot of people. Then on the LinkedIn post where he explains the quote he goes on to say, the days of a secure, lifelong job with steady pay and benefits are no longer guaranteed. The world has changed, and the traditional career path so many once depended on is now rare. It's unsettling, even daunting, to realize that job security is becoming a thing of the past. But within this shift lies opportunity. In today's world, success is built on adaptability, innovation and self reliance. For those willing to embrace change and carve their own path, the possibilities are endless. The future doesn't belong to those who wait. It belongs to those who adapt and take action. End quote, I saw that and I just thought, holy smokes. Is that powerful? Wow. I get that. He's giving an inspirational bit there toward the end, and I'll get there too. This is not all about pessimism and being sour and dour. I just really want to highlight the point that he's making the idea of a lifetime job. Or I would say, I would add to that, the idea that you're going to bunny hop from one job to the next to the next. We saw this a lot during the Great resignation 2021, a very hot, crazy FOMO YOLO time in the job market. It was in the housing market too. And those two things are not unrelated, by the way, the idea that you're going to get in one job and make 100 grand, or you're going to bunny hop from job to job always get the guarantee of some six figure salary if you're a white collar worker. Oh, and benefits, some kind of full decent benefits package, dead and gone and it may never come again. Those days are over, and people need to accept it. I thought, yeah, really, they do. I have seen so much desperation in the market over the past few years, and it has been depressing and insane, not surprising, and that's one of the things that I also want to talk about in this video. I'm going to go several places, and I know some of you might be thinking, you're getting a lot of threads in this tapestry. Sara, where is this going? But I promise you, especially if you're a frequent tuner, enter to the podcast. You know that I do this sometimes we are going somewhere. And really, I'm not going to bury my thesis here. How do all of these threads weave together to make a tapestry? Yes, those days are over, in my opinion, clearly, in Robert's opinion. So it's like, if you don't want to listen to me, if you think I'm a Charlie nobody, that's fine. You can listen to Robert. The days of doing this bunny hop to 100k or getting a job and staying there forever and making 100k dead and gone and they're not coming back again. So here's my point, you had better be able to improvise, adapt and overcome. If you think that you're going to do the same old, same old that you've done before, maybe for 1020, 30 years, in my opinion, you're screwed. I have just never seen circumstances like this before. I was in staffing and recruiting for well over a decade, and I recently made the decision that it was time to let that chapter of my career go. Was it nerve wracking? Yeah, it was, but it needed to happen. And, my God, I feel like I have been set free. So here's another thread of the tapestry that I want to put in. Actually, there are several, and I'm going to try to just interlink them together here as best I can. You know, I said that I've seen so much desperation in the market, and I think people get into this mentality of Desperate times call for desperate measures. I have to just be ubiquitous. I have to go everywhere. So you see these posts of people on social media and their. Outside a building with a sandwich board sign announcing that they're unemployed and desperate, or they're standing outside a building an office space of some kind, handing out old school paper copies of their resume to just try to get somebody's attention. As the saying goes, attention is the new currency these days. So if I can just get somebody to pay attention to me, someone to acknowledge my existence. Maybe I can finally get a freaking job. You see people talking about how they're spending 1012, hours a day doing nothing but mass supply, thinking something's got to hit, something's got to change, something's going to give. And to me, it's like, okay, look, if you're posting that you have been on the job market, you've been unemployed for the past year, two years, two and a half, three years, it would seem to me that you would say I need to take things in a different direction. Whatever I'm doing is not working, and it's time to move away from this. It really is like the cliche that we've all heard it bazillions of times by now, I'm sure, but it's like the cliche insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet hoping for a different result or expecting a different result. If you've been sitting there on these job boards, mass applying over and over again, you're not even reading what you're doing. You're just easy applying, thinking something somewhere will hit if I throw enough pasta at the wall, eventually some of the noodles will stick, and I'll get a job somewhere, and even if it sucks, at least it's income, and then I can begin the whole process over again of continuing to look for something that doesn't suck. And it's like so many corporate jobs suck, the vast, vast majority of them. And yes, you can quote me on that. I said it, yeah, I said it. I can own it. Now I'm out of the business. I can say whatever the hell I want, and I intend to, but it's like, why are you doing the same things over and over again? But let's extend this out, because especially in light of what Robert is talking about, it may be time to consider something totally different. Now I always say on my podcast, and I'll say it here on YouTube as well, for those of you that are watching by video, I don't give you advice, and I don't tell you what to do. You have to come to your own best judgment, make your own decisions. I sit here and I opine for your entertainment only, and that's it. If we were just two friends having a little drink at the pub, which I'm going to do right now. By the way, it's water, though, so my throat doesn't give out in the middle of this. If we were just hanging out having a pine at the pub, and we were talking about this topic, I'd be like, you know, it seems to me that maybe, just maybe, it's time to consider getting the hell out of the corporate world. If you have been looking and looking and looking and you've been doing all of these theatrics that give super desperate vibes to people, and you're still not finding a job, maybe it's time to start your own thing. Can you freelance? Can you start your own business? Is there something that you can do even cobbling together two or three side hustles. Is there something that you can do other than desperately looking for another job in corporate America where, let's face it, in two or three years, you're going to be back in the same boat when they lay you off again. My God, what a hamster wheel. And I'm not saying that as a judgment like, Oh, I think I'm better than I've been on that hamster wheel. I know what it feels like. I know how badly it sucks. So here's another thread that we can weave into our tapestry. Here, one of the things that I have noticed, I've seen it a lot with sales careers in general, but for me, you know, I can speak specifically to staffing and recruiting, because that was my career for well over a decade. There are people that say they want out. It's a lot like Michael Corleone and the third Godfather, where he's like, I'm trying to get out, and they pull me back in. There's so many people that look at sales jobs in general, and I'll use staffing specifically for the purposes of what we're doing here. They look at it and they're like, I want to get out. I hate this. I'm burned out with the clients. They all want signs, wonders and miracles, and they get mad when I'm not Jesus. I can't turn water into wine. They want $150,000 candidate for 75k they act like they don't have good sense, and you can't coach them. You can't counsel them. Oh, and then there's the candidates who flake out. They say, I'll do anything to get a job. Okay, great. Here's an interview. I have somebody locked loaded and ready to go, who can talk to you at 2pm today. Oh, no, I don't want to do that. I know I said I needed a job, and I'll take anything. But like, No, not really. They get tired of it. They get tired of all the nonsense, the robbing Peter to pay Paul, the maybe the client pays you. Maybe they don't, especially if you're working on a contingency basis, that's a complete freaking nightmare. So they say they're going to leave, and then they don't. They just stay on that hamster wheel. And that was me for years. I worked outside the home. Them for other people. And then I also did staffing and recruiting work here at the Hacienda for myself. And oh, God, stick a fork in me. So many times I would say, I need to get out. I want to go do something else with my life. I don't even completely know what that is yet, but I just know it's something. I just know it's not this. And I would get trapped on that hamster wheel, I'd put those golden handcuffs right back on. And the crazy thing about it was they weren't even that golden. They weren't I've been very honest on my podcast. I'll be honest here on YouTube as well. My 2020 that was really like my first real year in business, doing Causey consulting LLC, I was okay. I was overworked and underpaid in my last position, and so a great many things would have been a step up. I'm embarrassed to say, but it's true. So I started this business, and I was in it full time in 2020 and I did okay. 2021 when the great resignation happened. Holy smokes, if you were even halfway kind of sort of good at staffing and recruiting work, and employers felt like you could help them overcome this insanity that was going on in the market, they could actually get resumes. They could actually get interviews. Somebody would actually show up for the job and stay for more than an hour. They were all about it. So money was easy. If you were good at what you were doing, the money was easy. It was a lot like real estate. Look at how many Realtors made a killing in 2021 with the FOMO and the Yolo and a bunch of those people now are washed out, and they're not even doing the same job anymore. Hello. That's what happens when we have these artificially manipulated, insane, oh markets. That's happening for a reason as well. I'll I'll get there. Don't worry. That's yet another threat in our tapestry that we need to weave in 2022 things not as good. I could already tell that the backlash against the great resignation was happening in corporate America. The Intercept published a memo from Bank of America saying, we hope that things get worse for the average American worker. And I'm like, Well, duh, corporate America is not going to let all of this insane FOMO and Yolo happen forever. They're going to take their power back. Oh and they did. Oh and they have, oh and they are. 2023 also not good. Profits were down 2024 which was last year, my profits were down 30% even from how lackluster they were in 2023 and I'm like, Yeah, so I don't even have on golden handcuffs anymore. I just have on handcuffs, and I refuse to live that way. I deserve more. I want more out of my life than this. I saw a post. It was actually directed to me by a friend of mine, and he was like, Oh, here's the same guy looking for a job again. There's someone that we know in the staffing community that every couple of years it's the same thing. He's back on the market. He's either been fired or he's been pink slipped, and he's back after it again. And he had made this big rant several months ago about how he was done with staffing. He was getting out of it. He didn't want any part of it anymore. He was going to do something new. Something new was coming for him. And I thought, Well, I hope he means it. I wish him well, and I hope he freaking means it. Not long after, guess what, on LinkedIn, here's the announcement. I am so happy to announce that I have it so and so staffing agency. And I was like, geez, people, they just get stuck. They get so stuck. So let me wrap this up by tying some more threads together. You know, I said these things are not happening on accident. Think it was in 2023 I'll go back and look for the link, and I'll drop it in the write up for this episode. I'll put it on YouTube. I'll put it in the podcast as well. Oxfam went to Davos with the fat cats at the web and told them that during the pandemic they amassed insane amounts of wealth. And it was like, Okay, you have everybody else. Yes, Theodore is here with me. In case you're wondering, you have everybody else that lost all of this wealth went away. Well, where did it go? It's like Gordon Gekko and Wall Street. It sort of changes perceptions, almost like it's by magic. So where did this money go that the middle class and the lower classes had? Well, it went up and Oxfam went to Davos, as if the fat cats didn't already know this. They went to Davos to tell them that the wealth got sucked up from the lower and middle classes and the working poor. It got sucked up like somebody sucking a milkshake through a freaking straw, and they amassed it. They had it true, like trillions of dollars worth of money during the the pandemic that went to this hyper elite class of people that were already freaking rich to begin with. These things are happening on purpose. So what Robert is talking about, the idea of getting some lifetime job, or what I would add to it, the idea that you're going to bunny hop from one job to the next, and you're always going to make six figures, and you're going to just kind of steadily climb that ladder and get ahead. It's gone. It's gone. Them. If you think that your future is in corporate America and you want to stay on the hamster wheel, you want to spend every two to three years getting a pink slip and having to try to fight for scraps with everybody else, I am not going to stop you from doing it. I always say, I don't give you advice and I don't tell you what to do. If we were friends having a drink, I would say I would really consider a different path. What can you do? Could you be an entrepreneur? Could you be a business owner? Could you cobble some side hustles together? Is there a hobby that you really enjoy that might be monetizable? I think it's time. If you haven't been considering those questions, it really it's not time. It's past time. What can you do besides banging your head against the wall and just over and over again, trying to find some job that's going to pay you starvation wages in corporate America? I saw another post on Medium recently, and the person used this comparison that it's like the goal posts are always moving. You get a job, and you think that the salary is going to be enough that you can have an, okay, decent life, but then it's like the goal posts keep moving. You know, you get inflation or stagflation, and it's like, here's you, and you think you're catching up, but then the post moves again, and then here's you, and then here's the post, and then it just goes on and on and on so that you never really catch up. If you get in debt, it's very hard to get out. If you have some kind of emergency and your finances are wrecked or you obliterate your savings, it's very hard to ever get it back again. Not impossible. You know, I do talk about manifesting. I do talk about Neville Goddard, so I'm not saying that all hope is lost. What I really want to drive home in this presentation is, if you are doing the same things over and over again, yet hoping for a different result, that's a bit cuckoo, that's a bit dulu, and not in a good way, not in that's not a positive delusion to have, in my opinion, and that may include not only just chasing a job in general, but staying on the hamster wheel in corporate America itself. I mentioned Oxfam, I mentioned the weft, how these things are not happening on accident. You have Robert Herjavec saying that lifetime job of 100k it's gone, it's over. It's probably never coming back again. You also have to think about, you've all know a Harare saying, I mean, years ago, he predicted the rise of what he calls, not my words, but what he calls the useless class, that you would have people who are displaced by technology, displaced by artificial intelligence, and there's nothing else for them to do. Maybe they don't want to do anything else, or maybe they just are not, for whatever reason, trainable to do some other job. So they wind up in a coffin apartment, disappearing into virtual reality all day as they receive some type of universal basic income. And that's their life, putting on a VR headset and disappearing into some alternate form of reality becomes their life. I'll find the article and drop a link to it. If you don't believe me, read it for yourself. Then not long ago, he had an interview with The Economist where he said that the advent of artificial intelligence, like the takeover of artificial intelligence into our society, as we go into this sort of Next Wave industrial revolution, it's going to resemble an alien invasion, but instead of being extraterrestrials, it's going to be robots and AI program, and that's going to really displace a lot of people, and people have to be prepared for it. I have seen the writing on the wall in staffing for quite some time now. People started telling me about, oh, they just laid off half of the HR department, and they're not going to replace them with humans. They're replacing them with bots and or pieces of AI programming. And I'm like, Yeah, I mean, they expected me to be surprised. And I'm like, I'm not surprised by that at all. The only people who are surprised by that haven't been paying any freaking attention. But the all of these steps have been telegraphed to you, and I feel like with staffing in particular, I keep coming back to that, just because it's an industry that I was in for years. And I'm so glad to say I have recently retired from it. Oh, my God. That feels so good. I can't even tell you. It's like, maybe I need to add it. I need to get in Canva and add in, like a magical rainbow. That's like, oh. But for a while now, I have really seen the writing on the wall with staffing in particular, because I'm like, Well, yeah, there are so many functions that could be and probably at some point should be absorbed by robotics. I know that people will get mad. They will say that, well, you still need the human touch, and you do. I'm not saying that there won't be any humans at all in the Human Resources Department. I'm just saying that there's going to be more robots and more pieces of AI programming. When we look at the industry statistic that the average recruiter or HR manager, whoever it is, whatever human is looking at a resume, they spend six seconds doing an initial pan and scan of that first page, and if they don't see something in the initial. Seconds that captures their interest and really brings it home to them, your resume goes into the junk pile and it's never looked at again. We have ATS systems that are supposed to be parsing and looking for the right buzz words and the right phrases. Whether they actually help very much or not, is to be determined. But over the course of time, that will get better, and we start thinking about scheduling, automating emails, moving candidates through a hiring funnel. All of that could be done by pieces of AI and not by humans. So many of the humans have their time royally wasted by meetings that could have been emails. That's something from the corporate world that I will never miss. You know, how many meetings I have with me? Zero is so ridiculous. So I think what's coming, not only for staffing and HR, to be clear, but for a number of white collar industries, is you will see more and more integration of pieces of AI programming, and people who say, well, it will integrate, but it won't replace that's a very Pollyanna utopian way of looking at it. I hope you're right, but I fear that you're not. So to bring it home, here's my real point, if you are living in the past, if you think that if I ignore it, like like the idea of the ostrich burying its head in the sand. If I just ignore it, if I pretend I don't see it, if I pretend it's not happening, then it must not be there. You do that at your own risk. I would highly recommend that you take a look at Robert's quote and just see how it resonates for you see you next time you for those of you listening by podcast, stay safe, stay sane. Thanks for tuning in.
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