Finding Your Unique Skill Shape

Episode Transcript

SB S2 E8 – Yustina Saleh

Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. I am your host Kelly Bailey. Each week, I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills that make them successful, how they develop those skills and their innovative approaches to improving skills-based hiring and learning around the world. Come learn what skills help you live your best life?

So my guest today, so excited for this, is Dr. Yustina Saleh. So first off Yustina and I are friends, we worked together for a long time. We share a lot of the same passions. So I’m just going to start with that, but I’m going to give you a little bit of a background on Yustina. So she is currently the Senior VP of Analytics at Emsi.

She has nearly 20 years of experience driving enterprise wide transformation through a combination of leadership skills, advanced analytics techniques, and [00:01:00] entrepreneurial innovation. And let me just tell you, so Yustina was a pioneer in using job postings for unstructured labor market supply demand analytics.

She is the one that made me fall in love, actually made me, I was in love with what skills could do, but it made me see that it was possible. First, she started doing this work as the Deputy Executive Director for the Labor Market Information at New Jersey Department of Labor.

She later did what you’d like to say parallel to me at Burning Glass, and she was the Director of Analytics and Strategic Research there. After her time there, she also served as the Director of Analytics at Rutgers University. Then she joined Emsi in 2017. But let me just tell you about her obsession, which you might be like, wait a second. It’s very similar to yours.

But it is in, and, but that’s just because again, I learned from her. So her obsession is building tools to [00:02:00] help job seekers personalize and optimize their career pathways. She uses advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to help workers, employers, and regions define their unique talent niches, and then build talent strategies that enhance the strengths and bridge the gaps.

I have to say this because listen, Dr. Saleh, she earned that title because not only does she have a Bachelor’s in Economics from American University in Cairo, she also has her Doctorate of Philosophy and Political Science from Rutgers University, and that is an earned title that I need to mention.

So thanks for bearing with me Yustina. And thank you so much for joining me today.

Yustina: It’s been a pleasure working with you for so many years, let’s not count.

Kelly: I know we don’t want to count, but it’s been an amazing, amazing journey. And I just feel like we need to almost start back at the beginning of your [00:03:00] story, because for all of us in this world of skills innovations, in the world of people who really thought it was actually possible for people in general, lifelong learners, as we call them to actually understand their skills and be able to make choices off of that information.

Like you were there right at the beginning, thinking those things through. And so I feel like let’s just start there. Go into the details, I gave the brief high-level, go into the details of this story.

Cause it is so fascinating.

Yustina: Oh my God. In 2006, I started working for the Department of Labor. I had of course, a labour market information which is supposed to be “here’s your employment stats, here’s your unemployment, this is the industry statistics” and all that. But in 2008, my boss, the Assistant Commissioner, got deployed to Iraq for 18 months.

And then September, the sky [00:04:00] literally fell on all of us. So September, 2009, the financial crisis happened. It’s just a meltdown everywhere. And at the time I felt so helpless. And also the statistics that we were providing, we were supposed to be here, the provider of information that guide people into decisions and tell them what to do.

This data is incredibly useful. But at the time, it was not useful at all. So meeting after meeting, I would be invited to all these thoughts one time and all the Northern workforce boards here, and then another discussion there.

All I have is present this employment and unemployment numbers. I’m saying, well, here are the projections. Finance is expected to grow and healthcare is expected to [00:05:00] grow. And they literally, everybody in the room literally looks at me like, have you been under a rock? Have you read any of this news?

It’s like, I know eventually, if we make it out of this crisis alive, finance will grow again. It wasn’t working at the time. It was just not working. So every time I would go back to my office and just literally feel despair that, one more opportunity where I could be guiding people, providing information.

And I can’t. So I heard that there is this database that feeds New Jersey Department of Labor job board. It’s a very simple job board where people go in and search for jobs, and then there you go. They find all those index jobs. So I called the vendor and I said, Hey, this [00:06:00] database, that one that feeds our job board and I don’t know if we pay how much for it, and that much, how much would it be for me to get the data dump before it goes into the tool?

And the person at the time looked at me like I had several heads and crazy. He’s like, “what do you mean? Yeah, that database, we throw it in the trash” and I go like, can you give it to me before you throw it?

Kelly: Let me, let me just add in here.

This is the first time that I heard of Yustina. So I was actually working for that small company. The State of New Jersey was our client. We were feeding the jobs into that job board and the call that she made was to my colleague. We literally all were, I remember in the conference room being like why would someone-

Yustina: Why would someone want garbage?[00:07:00]

So I asked for the garbage and was just like, “are you going to charge me because I need it and I don’t really have money because I don’t have even a value for it yet.” I need to investigate. So I got it for free, out of the trash and he’s like “Be my guest, you want to play in my garbage you can go ahead. Play in it.”

I got the data. It was huge, and Lord have mercy was so dirty. It was very, very dirty at the time. There were no kind of standardization for this data at all. All it is, is the employers are asking for these jobs, you’re going to find something that says a title and then the rest is a text.

So I said, well, there must be some value in it. If the vision is, if I have data on the unemployed and I did, which New Jersey was in a very, very unique position and we get [00:08:00] this on the demand, the employers, what they’re asking for, a lot of this would be the perfect demand supply.

So it’s like, okay, nobody out there to build a taxonomy for all this data or to standardize it. Well, I did it myself. So I created a little tiny occupation parser, industry parser, title parser. It was so much in its infancy. But I ended up doing it and then I kept putting pressure on all the vendors and was like, we need this data standardized.

We are going to use it. But not before I actually got some buy-in from the Department and from the Commissioner and the Governor that this, there is something there. And with that, we started investing. Then all vendors started competing on who would do the best standardization.

Kelly: How many job posting do yo think were even online at that time? I feel like it was [00:09:00] still early.

Yustina: I mean, New Jersey had 30,000. I remember a month, in a full month New Jersey had 30,000. So, the full economy, and it had 30,000 because we were a client. Probably nationwide at the time, there were I would say like 200K max. And now like nationwide, you’re talking about 12 million in any given month.

So it’s a huge transformation difference.

Kelly: And at this time, and I’m just like stopping on these things, cause obviously we share the same passion, but like at this time when you were looking at this and you felt this despair, right? So you felt this despair, like I want to help these people, what information you had at the time to help these people.

You just felt like it wasn’t going to help. So maybe talk for one second, about the difference between what you had available to you and why when you saw this [00:10:00] in that early stage, it was sort of like, aha.

Yustina: Yes. So, structured labor market information is based on time series. So it will capture things, seasonality it captures very well. Like, are you in summer or are you in fall? It captures a business cycle, a normal business cycle decently well. Many of this data will be just a time series where we do a survey and these are the employers, this is how the occupations are made up.

But you’re looking back at what’s happened and trying from the trend of what happened in the past, to project what do you think will happen in the future?

Kelly: And so when that moment in time happened, this financial crisis, how were you going to project anything from that? Because that’s a scenario that hadn’t been seen.

Yustina: We have never seen something like that. This complete melt [00:11:00] down, that basically the blood that flows into the economy, all the cash flow was dried up. All of a sudden, all businesses were crashing, literally crashing. Their banks crash and pull down with it. It was the worst structural problem.

It was a long time coming, but no one predicted it. So with that, there’s our data, which is generally good but didn’t help at the time. And I go into those meetings, especially when I build some rapport with the workforce agencies, and I would hear them saying this would just melt my heart.

I don’t see a point in getting up every and going to work. What should we train them for? There are no jobs. We know there are no jobs. And that’s just like, no, there are jobs. [00:12:00] Employers are still hiring. It’s like, no, they’re not, no they’re not, stop it. When I started providing this data, all I wanted to say, is yes there is hope, it’s sometimes a needle in a haystack, but this kind of tool will actually bring that light.

That laser light into that needle in a haystack. When this opportunity came up, there were all kind of debates about the value of this data. It’s like no but this is very flaky. Yes, there it is. You know, how should we be trusted? Look at all those duplicates, look at this, it’s like, yes, I understand.

But I’m giving you the employer, call them up. Are you really looking for 400 people to do X? It’s like, no, it’s really 50. Well, 50 is something. I had on [00:13:00] my raw roster, like 500. I can get 10% out of that right into these jobs, through this maneuvering. So it is something like, I am looking, I’m struggling as an employer and I still can’t find talent even though there are so many unemployed, but unemployed, like they don’t fit my needs.

And so with that perspective, where it all started to come together that even the taxonomies that I built, no, they’re really looking for very detailed information. And the only way they could do it is through someone calling up the employers, like what is the composition of that?

That was what is available now. And then we’ve come a very long way since then. But it was beginning. It was a lot of resistance, but it’s like bring it. Bring it, because I knew there is value and I knew there’s not much relevant information [00:14:00] elsewhere. So are you going to just dismiss it because the data is not clean enough?

Well, then you might as well dismiss your own job because there are no jobs. Yeah. So it was good times.

Kelly: In the early days of this, I laugh when you say most people, the naysayers out there basically, but you and I both experienced this in our own ways through that time period where people, honestly, if you talked about real time data, they thought you were crazy.

And not a little bit of people, I’m saying almost everyone. I know my experience, but I’d love to hear, you’re saying you knew and you just kept flushing. Is there anything in particular that helped you through that time where you just kept wanting to go?

Yustina: Yeah. It’s almost like either [00:15:00] a really good devil or angel came on me that I zoned out. And whatever they’re saying, I did not hear it. But also I didn’t come out until I worked on it a little bit. So I was testing a little bit for a few months until I saw the value.

And then especially when I put the demand and supply next to each other, it’s like I am doing this because I know that there are people who can benefit from this. I had access to training. All of that on training, all that unemployed, all that unemployment, all that on industries, you name it? I had it on my little computer.

So like, I see how many you already trained, and this was probably one more motivation. In the middle of all this, you would see if it’s a male, they go to truck driving, CDL. If it’s a female, it’s CNA. A [00:16:00] certified nursing assistant, that was it. That was all they could do.

It’s like, do you know how many people are already on your rosters that you could have just called and sent? You’re hurting people. You’re hurting the person that you already trained because you’re putting more and more pressure on the competition for them.

And because I was seeing those stats, it’s like, well, what else would we do? And this was the biggest mind shift for me. That as long as I say this training is not working, this data is not working. It’s not working. I am a broken record. I’m not helping anyone.

Once I shifted it into, well, this is something that could work. I’m gonna show you, I’m not going to evaluate your programs and say what you are doing, but I’m going to give you the option of something else. [00:17:00] I think before the whole thing got a little bit into the politics of training and who’s going to get what kind of dollar, this was a very, very helpful mindset. Because there were so many jobs for people with high school or people with no experience.

And I actually called those out and said you can do this. Not every IT job needs a bachelor’s degree, and I would call them out. So bit by bit, it was a little bit of a mind shift, especially when the tool or dollars that determine what happens with this tool.

And there were many times I would go into these meetings and it’s like, here she comes again, talking about her garbage data and every time it’s like, oh, and you have all those duplicates that is like, [00:18:00] yes, I understand. But does it provide any value? Was always my question back at them.

 Is it something that you could do with a phone call? And every month I would send the report with here are the employers that are hiring, here’s that occupation that they’re hiring. This is what not. And some of the directors, actually they were so upset with the data that how could the great and refutable labor market information provide this kind of data to us?

It happened one time that I was, I got many rotten tomatoes at my face so many times. But you just keep going because I just felt that it is way better than not providing any kind of tool.

So my last this was, one conference I remember.

I was at that [00:19:00] conference for all the state employment and training conferences, an annual conference, and I was presenting and then one of the biggest critiques of the data that I was sending, stood up after my presentation.

And I was like, okay, this is not going to be good. She’s going to tell people “please don’t listen to a word she says.” I just looked down and was like “okay, it’s going to be okay. She will do whatever she always does, that this data is not good.”

What she said is “she’s been sending us for several months, data about manufacturing jobs in New Jersey, and that there were some companies, manufacturing companies, that are hiring. And I just was tired of it, I was tired of getting this report. So I called up the top employer because I was tired of her. Like I wanted to tell her once and for all stop sending this data and I called [00:20:00] and asked are you really hiring?”

They were like “Yes! We are hiring and we’re looking for people with these skills and we can’t find anybody.”

And that’s when we started going and actually –

Kelly: Do you know what year that was? Do you remember?

Yustina: I think it was 2010.

Kelly: Let me paint the background picture for everybody here, because we know each other, we know the trajectory. So when this all first started, when this financial crisis hit, was about 2008 when that happened, but obviously the reverberations from that happening between 2008, 2009.

Yustina: It was probably July of 2009. I take it back. July 2009, I was pregnant so I know it was then.

Kelly: We’re going to share a story about that too because this is how passionate Yustina is, we’re going to get there. So [00:21:00] EmployOn, that’s the organization that we’re talking about here.

So EmployOn was purchased by the startup that I was with, I believe that was 2007. You guys were a client at the state of New Jersey that entire time, and it wasn’t until conversations, we had been thinking about like, what are we going to do with this? Like, I remember these meetings in the conference room.

I was very young, this was early days in my career for sure and I was just there to learn. Then, you came along and I just remember how much conversation that started. And that’s when we started figuring out, “okay, we need to find a partner in this” because we heard you and we were like, we saw it.

There’s something you guys, first of all, and I’m going to just like add in this, there’s something about Yustina. I would say there are so many valuable skills. I’m going to bring it back to skills for a second. The one that I will come back to from probably like the first moment I was ever in her presence was, what she [00:22:00] sees in this data, it just comes to her.

I can’t even imagine what’s in your head. I’m trying to break it down for people that are just not data people, but I’m just envisioning this crazy puzzle laid out on the floor, those thousand piece, really small puzzles.

You’re seen as like that brilliant mind that like all the connections, she’ll just be playing with it. And then it’s like, oh yeah. And so that’s how I remember you from the beginning. So again, recession hits 2008, we’re engaging with this small company with the state of New Jersey, with Yustina, with these crazy ideas, but we saw it, we believed it.

We felt it the same way that you did. And we were like, okay, we’re going too. And that’s when we started looking for partners. So Burning Glass came into the picture we thought originally, maybe as a partner, we weren’t really sure.

And then Burning Glass ended up [00:23:00] acquiring EmployOn, and this all happened in 2009, late 2009. So these were conversations that were happening. I can remember you coming in to the office, and I remember these conversations happening and there was so much excitement. For anyone that’s ever worked with a startup, I can say if you ever have experienced those moments, when all of a sudden it’s like the tipping point of everything going, you feel it. It’s coming out of your pores, the excitement, that was the feeling that was there at that time, it was like we’ve got something and we can feel it.

And so when this all came final, now I was the same. I was at this small little startup. I was acquired through Burning Glass with this acquisition. And then, Yustina, we were like, what’s going to happen? And then Yustina came and joined us. And this is kind of where it all, everything that she’d been working on separately, she came in because she was like, “yes, this is the [00:24:00] thing, and I want to work on this.” So now that everyone is on the same page as us with the story and all, what was it that you were like, okay, originally you’re at the state of New Jersey and you’re like, I can help people.

What was it that made you just want to go further with this and figure it out?

Yustina: Yeah, so I’m a little bit of a control freak, just a little bit. So every little piece of this and every little thing that I will need to make my dream come true. So there was a very, very long RFP process for, and I insisted rather than renewing the contract.

I insisted that we go through a very, very long RFP process, request for proposal. It lasted 18 months.

Kelly: I remember that. There was a lot of stress and late FedEx runs because I was the person who was doing that stuff.[00:25:00]

Yustina: I was the one who insisted that I am going to go and get the best of the best. I don’t just want occupation. And I don’t want just some pretty little standard classifiers. I want to go skills. I want to go into the nitty gritty of the job. And when I do that, I can actually really influence how training is packaged. Which job seekers should go into which kind of training? How will we help employers best?

And all the pieces were really like, I could see it. I could see so clearly. But to start explaining to everybody like, this is what we need here, and this is what we need here. It was gonna never be what I see. And the only way I can –

Kelly: For those [00:26:00] of us that love Yustina, we call this Yustinies.

Yustina: Like, can I do it and get it over with? I remember it was after everything settled, I called for a meeting with EmployOn.

I understand like Burning Glass was partnering, but I didn’t know the capacity at all. And I called for a meeting and I looked at EmployOn and the face of the person from them. And I said, don’t you think that just because you got this contract, you’re going to get it easy. You may probably regret sending your proposal because of what I am planning to do to you.

Kelly: I did not witness this conversation, but I witnessed what was said internally, afterwards.

Yustina: I [00:27:00] want industry, I want certifications. I want skins. I want it all. And guess what? I’m going to get it all. That was that meeting. And then we went into, It was October 22nd. I called for a four hour white boarding session and it was a huge conference room. And I got people from EmployOn, people from the unemployment insurance. Everywhere.

And I said, this is what we’re going to do. And I went on the whiteboard and I started variable by data element by data element. This is how I’m going to need it. This is how each piece, I’m going to need it. And then I looked at the whiteboard and for whatever reason, I said, like, there is no way this is going to be done if you’re not doing it yourself.

So, you know what? I’m going to go do it myself and [00:28:00] that’s how it started.

Kelly: I was so glad you did.

Yustina: I could see everyone in the room was sweating. Like, how are we going to do this? And that’s when I need those data elements.

Kelly: I’ve been in so many meetings where you described something that’s like totally amazing. And I’ve learned now, I totally speak the language of Yustinies now. I love when there are people that don’t, and I see the sweating happening and it’s like, oh, just wait, because it’s going to be amazing.

Yustina: I don’t know, I have this, you call it blinders or whatever. When I decide I’m going to do something, I become like a truck. I just keep going. And many times I won’t even tell people what I’m cooking. Because I don’t want to hear it. And when I hear it, by the time I communicate it to [00:29:00] people, I’m already seeing all the pieces. I have an answer to all the pieces and I’m going to do it and that’s it. That’s it. Are you with me or not?

Are you on my train or not? This is happening. It was interesting, but it was I think, it’s the load of the people that were hurting and just coming up so close to the problem, that I think put me on fire.

I know how they are disserved by whatever tools there that we have. And I felt that I have an answer. I felt that there is something that this kind of data can provide that nothing else would provide it. And that was just the fuel with the gasoline and the little spark. [00:30:00] I have all the gasoline and that, which is the people I’m serving, and this data, nothing is stopping me.

Kelly: I love in all of this, that the whole time it’s been about helping people. It truly has been, and again, I’m fortunate enough to know you and seen it in person, and I can tell you in all honesty, that is what she lives and breathes. That was something that we shared and something that we still share and it’s amazing.

So before we jump into what it’s looking like for the future from here, when you start to see all of the things you started seeing when this recession happened and this work, before we jump there, one question that I want to ask you is, I’ve pointed out some skills that I think just make you stand out.

But I’d love to hear from you, is there maybe like one or two skills that you feel like you learned along this life journey of yours, that [00:31:00] have really led to you being where you are today? And I’m curious, because I know you have a fantastic educational history, do you feel like those were learned while you were in school, while you were working? How do you feel like you developed those along the way?

Yustina: Yeah. So there was a seed. And I think the first person who stowed that seed, was my dad. Everybody in my family is an engineer. My mom, my dad, my sister, brother-in-law, everybody. So I was like sorta programmed that of course we have very strong quantitative skills.

It was a matter of pride for, especially my mom who happens to be very feminist, that we be that top of the class in math, like no 59 is not good enough in math, not acceptable. So with all this automatically, you say, okay, we’re going to go into some kind of [00:32:00] engineering or computer science or engineering.

I actually declared because here we go. Like, it’s one in a bunch. And there’s always a piece of me that I feel like, “no, I want to come up close to people. I don’t want to be just doing buildings. I want something with people.” But I just kept ignoring it because people, that means you’re going to waste your quantitative skills.

That’s that’s a waste of time. And I think my dad said you have to study people or else you will be very, very sad. You are a very different person. So always there is this solving a real problem for real people, rather than just a structural problem and some object, has been a drive for me always. I want the data to solve a problem.

I was never interested in a model per se. [00:33:00] I was interested in a problem. I was interested in providing alternatives and opportunities to highlight opportunities. So I think what I learned in my career is how you can make the data, peak to the policymaker and to the job seeker.

Cause that is there. So the navigation, I started off first doing evaluation research, which is a lot of statistics, but it always starts with “here’s what is not working.” And after a zillion of these reports of the things that are not working, I can’t do myself. I was like, girl, it’s a come to Jesus kind of conversation.

It’s like, it’s not going to work. Telling people what is not working, is not going to [00:34:00] work because you’re not helping them by saying all this is wrong. Well, you have to get into, okay tell me what I should do. That is what I learned. You have a set of tools and you can use it in multiple ways.

You can use it to just provide some stats and you can use it to do like very, very beautiful models. The thing about me and the more I did it, the more I wanted to do more of it, like it started to read and blossom, is finding opportunities. Where instead of telling you what doesn’t work, I’m going to show you the opportunities.

That’s how I shifted from programming evaluation, into analytics. And analytics that actually you look at the data and say, well, this is what I’m going to do. This is how I’m gonna, I have resources, what are the [00:35:00] opportunities? How can I use it to optimize what I have?

So like from there, the scarcity, which is a very, very big concept in economics. I don’t believe in it. I believe in it, of course there is scarcity, but there is so much that we don’t do because of scarcity, because we think, okay, if we have more resources, we can do more and more and more, but what have you done with your resources?

That’s what I’m going to focus on. You can go get some more money, but let’s focus on these opportunities. That is it, this obsession with opportunity with showing opportunities and possibilities.

Kelly: It’s extremely entrepreneurial and innovative, this mindset that you’re referring to. In the second episode of this podcast, I had a chat with Tony Tsai, and he talks about something called your plus.

But essentially in your career plus. But in [00:36:00] his article, he really describes quite in depth, if you go after solving problems, you will always be successful. And not that concept of innovation, and that’s really out of the box thinking. In all aspects, like, I love that this mindset of yours, the idea that don’t focus on. I mean, really what you’re saying is don’t focus on the negative. Whether it be in life, economics, whatever. Focus on the small window where the light is at run towards it.

Yustina: I feel that is that mindset has been my biggest blessing. That no matter what, I can always find a way out with that little opportunity window that I could find.

Kelly: Yep. And every time you go, there’s more like, that’s the best [00:37:00] thing about that.

Yustina: Yes! It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Kelly: It really is. I love that. Now that you answered the question of where you feel these skills that you have, and I think these skills especially are so powerful, this sort of like concept of out of the box thinking, this problem solving, but for you, do you feel like this was something that you learned through life, through work, through school?

Yustina: Through school because I did extra curricular activity. A lot of activities, a lot of organizations that I started leading, even when I was at school. So anyone who tells you, you need to get your 4.0, is actually misleading you because your 4.0 is going to be like a pretty round number that if you haven’t complimented it with real life problems, it’s just [00:38:00] gonna be a piece of paper.

So actually personally, I get a lot of resumes and anyone who’s gets a 4.0 GPA and no activities whatsoever, and they didn’t do anything, Nope. Nope, Nope. So I think that the focus on exposure on doing more than just the book and seeing outside and getting exposed and see how people think. That is number one.

Kelly: Yeah. If you didn’t know this, if you didn’t experience these things, how would you be able to see the answer to those problems in the data?

Yustina: Exactly. I have worked with a lot of data scientists that no matter what I do, they can’t feel a problem. The model works. It doesn’t. Does it help someone out there? No. Then it doesn’t work. No, but it’s you see, look at [00:39:00] the score and look at all these, like, I don’t want to look at your score. I want to look at my people.

Kelly: You don’t want the number.

It’s funny because I look at your degrees too, and I laugh because we talk about this all the time. Especially when you’re hiring people for your team, I’m just going to sit on this for a second, because this is really skill related and I think this is important for everyone to hear this.

You have a great combination of focusing on economics, and then focusing more on sort of this philosophy, but I’ve seen, and we’ve talked about it before, where you look for these people that have sort of this mesh of this analytical mindset with the understanding of how people work.

And I really think in terms of this type of work that you’re doing, not that it works across the board, but it is a really great concept. That understanding of people, I really want to press on this. That understanding of the solving of the problem, what the problem is, feeling it in a way, being able to experience it.

[00:40:00] So if anyone is sitting here listening to this today, if you haven’t been on unemployment and I don’t mean unemployment for like a short period of time, I mean truly on unemployment at a time when you did not have a prospect, where you didn’t know what to do, you didn’t know. And I’ve been there. I’ve been there early on in my career and it was a difficult place to be.

I’m finding those things. So if you haven’t yet felt that or experienced it in that way. I mean, there’s ways to find it. Go and talk to a lot of people. You can get their experience and bring that into you. But if you can’t have that emotional aspect of that understanding, what do you think?

Do you think that that is a negative if they don’t have that?

Yustina: Yes. In my career, we are supposed to be providing the labor market information here, but one thing that I think also served me very well is that, we had some funding for [00:41:00] field research. There are supposed to be people will go out and see how businesses are doing and all of that.

And guess what? That’s not what we’re going to do anymore. You’re going to go to the workforce locations, and I want you to sit next to the people who are serving, just sit next to them. And then after you’re going to say like, here’s one source of data that you could use, but you’re going to come back to us and say like, this has been data that just really didn’t work.

And I don’t care what are the requirements for publishing this data, if it doesn’t serve a person, it doesn’t serve us. So what I learned in my career is, I was blessed with some opportunities that I took advantage of. They are not readily available to go into the field where your data is being served.

If a [00:42:00] chef is sitting in their kitchen and never gets to encounter anyone that they were serving, how would they know if they are doing a good job or not?

People came back, but which part did they like? And so you would find in good restaurants that the chef comes and say, how is everything?

Yes, the manager can come, but the chef has to come out and check how things are being served. And I just forced myself onto situations where I can see how the data is served and be part of the conversation, whether at a policy level of what is hurting really? What are the pain points?

Experiencing a day in their lives is what I tried very much to understand, and that probably shifted all what I’m doing [00:43:00] from just it’s another table, it’s another tool, into there could be a solution here. This is their workflow and I can make it easier, more effective this way, I think is something. It takes interest in the beginning.

And the very, very beginning of my career when I actually did a lot of sales, like the first three years, even when I was in high school, I did a lot of sales. It just taught me a lot about how to think people. How do you see what-

Kelly: Yeah, I do agree, everyone in their life at some point, however much they might hate it because sales is not for everybody, but everyone should try that hat on some point in their life.

Yustina: And then customer service. I would say sales or customer service. Yes.

Kelly: Yeah. Just try it. You don’t have to love it. It’s just to have that [00:44:00] understanding completely.

I want to kind of shift now because we talked about the early days, I love to hear the stories of where you saw this. You saw how it could solve this problem.

You just knew you had to get in there and do this on your own. Not that I want to fast forward through those early days, but what I’m thinking is, maybe we can talk a little bit about the comparison from then until now, because we’re all experiencing something that’s different right now.

COVID-19 has caused an economic crisis in our world at a bigger deal than we had experienced back in that time. There are moments, and we’ve talked about these, where we’re looking back and seeing this point in time that changed things and we’re living one of those points in times right now.

Just a little bit about the difference [00:45:00] between, we already heard how you approached it back then. How is it different now? What’s come along in terms of data, in terms of technology, that can help solve these challenges at a bigger scale differently?

Yustina: One of the books that probably impacted me most, and because I cringed at every thing about it, was the Brave New World. You’re gonna produce everybody in this bunch as exactly the same. Exactly the same here. And then another bunch and another bunch, they’re all the same.

And there is zero opportunity to break out of that box if you are not predestined into whatever that box looks like. You’re born into it and once you were born into it, whatever you will do, you [00:46:00] have to do it exactly the same. The reason I referenced this book because my entire work passion was about how to get out of that box, how to differentiate you.

So I love your focus in this podcast on the skill plus, what is your plus? And what has been happening in a lot of the skills and now analytics, is you’re always looking at the top. And the top will be very, very similar, no matter where you go. It is very, very similar. Where I go is, what will make Kelly very distinct from Yustina?

What will make Yustina very, very distinct from this other analytics for person? So all my analytics is about, let’s pull out your diversity and couple it with the skills that employers are really, [00:47:00] really hurting without. So now that I know something about unique about you, and give you something unique that the employer is looking for, wouldn’t you be able to just wipe out competition?

In doing so, you’re not just a passive receiver of a job description. You are making the job. The job is you and you are the job. You are constantly making each other. And that’s where I feel, it took a very, very long time. I always wanted to give you, what is your differentiation? And we hear it all the time in consulting. What is your differentiator?

As if, just tell me that one little thing, but it’s not. Like you are, you are the whole thing. Your entire package is you.

Kelly: It’s that very personalized look.

Yustina: So that’s what [00:48:00] I mean by the personalized pathways and all that. A lot of people are talking about it, but the entire motto that I am using for skills analysis is just like, it is tough.

Everything is upside down, where instead of looking at the most common, the most common becomes okay, you’re not going to be in a data science career without some quantitative skills, but how can I make you the one and only data scientist who can also think about anthropology this way or the GIS or whatever it is.

Can we find this perfect marriage and celebrate really this differentiation? That then you’re not going to need like 10 of those. It’s going to be very, very different. The team composition, everything about the team will be very, very different once we understand that differentiator, both for [00:49:00] the job and for the job seeker.

That’s my obsession.

Kelly: I know we can go into this, I’m struggling because I know this so well and we can just go into the depths here, but just for the audience I’m going to keep it at this level, asking back. So this sounds extremely prescriptive.

When you know what makes a person, a person. What makes them, them. Their personalized set of skills, their little puzzle piece in this world of skills. When we know that, what you’re saying can make them differentiated. Is that learnable?

Yustina: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That is the core, again, it has to be the opportunity.

You’re not different, your differentiation, according to the data, it’s never the color of one skins. Never gender, it’s never anything [00:50:00] that if you can’t change it, I’m not interested in even exposing it as part of the data. Whenever people say like, “oh, I want to, I am serving this population and show me the data that has this population.”

I say no. I’m going to kick out that population altogether, all those colors and deterministic factors, I’m going to take that out and I’m going to help you see what is unique about you and what is the unique about the skill and make you just the perfect fit. So while it is prescriptive, it is not that the brave new world kind of prescription what everybody is in that ittle incubator.

We try through this model, to learn a lot about you. And because there are so thousands and thousands of jobs out there, there [00:51:00] is a perfect match for you here. And the gap is X. And then there are four or five options, which one do you feel most you win and that’s where you can pursue.

And it’s not based on, okay, you’re going to be a teacher because you love teaching. Everything has to be based on jobs that exist. What employers are asking for today? And guess what many of them are asking for a Yustina Saleh or a Kelly Bailey, but they never said it.

They are asking for exactly what we offer, in those tons of jobs.

Kelly: Going back to everything that’s happening today, we’ve had a heck of a year, right? But this concept, this is nothing new. We all that have been working in this world, I’m talking everything that’s happened this year, the social issues, the economic crisis, everything that we’re seeing and [00:52:00] experiencing has just been blown up.

It was there, it was under the surface. Just most people didn’t feel it. So I love, number one that you talk about, because from a diversity perspective, this idea of thinking about someone as their person in terms of skills, means you don’t ever see any of the other things that people use in determining factors to hire someone.

You don’t need to know what they look like, what color hair they have. You don’t need to know any of it, their gender, anything. You can see what it is that they bring to the table and you can show them as the person what they bring to the table. What makes them, whatever that is, how special they are, and what is the step that they can take to become, to find that perfect match because that’s the thing at the end of the day and there could be more than one.

It’s just whatever makes them feel most confident. And going back to what you [00:53:00] described before, when I picture this in my mind, I honestly picture that entrepreneurial spirit in you that found the window, that looked for the light in the darkness. And that is exactly the same piece that we’re describing here.

Like if we look to the negative we’re only going to see the problems, but if we find our window in that darkness and go towards that, once you go through as a person, once you take that next step in your career, by understanding where you are, you then open all new windows for yourself.

Yustina: Exactly. And I’m not by any means saying that this is going to solve that diversity problem altogether, or people will not have their biases because we are all biased, but all it will do is, you will have no three people. One is yellow, one is green, one is orange, whatever the colors are.

And I like [00:54:00] orange more, right? But you will see the statistics about the skills that they bring. And you’ll see that this person has all these skills. This person has only these skills and this person looks like this. Are you really willing to let your biases kick in when your work is gonna be done much more effectively if you let go of these biases.

It’s a step to building a more diverse and more effective work pattern. Cause if you’re going to be hiring 15 people that looks exactly like you, that thinks exactly like you, maybe you should save your money and hire only one.

Kelly: Everyone’s going to think the same thing. I find you’re right, like this is one step, but when we talk about this whole journey that we’ve been on, we’re not going to talk about how many years it might’ve [00:55:00] been 20, but this time, if you think about where we are today, and we’re saying this is one step, imagine for those of you who haven’t been doing this for this long, imagine how we felt looking back 20 years ago.

And what felt like when we say one step back then, Ooh. But now when we look across this period of time and see how far we’ve come, it’s actually amazing.

So these little steps built up over time, truly make a difference. And for someone like Yustina, that’s always wanted to focus on how she can help people and solve those problems, this is a huge impact. The work that you’re going to continue to do, I have no doubt the amount of impact, and I’m going to cry a little bit because I know how passionate you are about it, but it seems small.

The windows seem small, [00:56:00] all the things that we’re talking about, these little opportunities in the big picture of things seem small, but they’re not.

Yustina: Yeah, they’re not.

Kelly: So unfortunately we can’t just go on forever because we could, anytime we have our meetings, they just go on and on.

We can talk forever. We can brainstorm forever, that’s the way we work. But we’re on the podcast today, we have to cut it short. So before we end today, Yustina, is there anything else? I even feel like we’ve only scratched the surface here, I know there’s so much more, but is there anything else that you’d like to leave people with today about where things are going or what hope to look for, or the excitement of something that’s going to be new soon?

Yustina: The excitement is you as you are with just few more fine tuning, can be just the perfect [00:57:00] thing that can bring so much value to a company, to an economy. To the world. I’m gonna leave with a note that really celebrate who you are.

You will face a lot of opposition. I did, but instead of dwelling on it, take a ride. They have a good point. Where are the good points that you can use to just like. Recalculating routes, you recalculate routes, but you’re still going to your final destination. The little things here and there, you should keep going.

But in terms of the world of skills, I’m hoping that the work that we are doing can just help a lot of people discover who they are and what they can bring to the table, as well as employers. Employers [00:58:00] sometimes are looking for too many things, and it’s like, maybe what you’re looking for is this. Same as an economy. This commonality between a training program that does exactly what an employer needs from a particular candidate, that perfect equilibrium is what we’re going for at the Emsi. And we’re going to keep on going.

Kelly: I absolutely love it. Well, thank you so much again for joining me today.

Thank you so much again, for being on this journey of skills with me in our life, in general, and thank you so much for all of the passion that you have around this. I never did get to share the story. Maybe we’ll have to save it for a later, one of our silly giving birth while still working stories when we get there.

We’re going to have [00:59:00] you back some time cause this work is just continually moving, and what she sees and finds is amazing. So we will have her back for sure.

But if you would like to follow Yustina, you can find her on LinkedIn, Yustina Saleh.

You can also look up any information you’d like on Emsi’s website, economicmodeling.com or skills.emsidata.com.

And I just want to thank you all for listening in today to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. If you did enjoy this podcast would love to hear about it. Please subscribe, share, comment, rate, whatever you need to do, and you can also follow me, Kelly Bailey, on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram at Kelly R. Bailey.

Well, thank you again and hope you all have a wonderful day.