Reinventing How Career Records Are Shared Across the Labor Market

Episode Transcript

SB S1 E3 – Yvette Cameron

Kelly: [00:00:00] Hi welcome to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. I am your host Kelly Bailey. Each week, I get to speak with inspiring visionaries about the skills that made them successful, how they develop those skills and how they improve skills based hiring and learning around the world. So come join us and learn what skills can help you live your best life.

This week I’m joined by Yvette Cameron, our guest. Yvette, thank you so much for joining us. So let me give you a quick little introduction on Yvette. Yvette is currently the co-founder and EVP of Ecosystem at Velocity Career Labs, the innovative technology organization behind the Velocity Network Foundation.

And just for anyone who’s not familiar with Velocity Network Foundation, it is an industry consortium that is reinventing how career records are shared across the global labor market through the development of an open public trusted and [00:01:00] self-sovereign professional profile powered by blockchain technology.

She’s also an international speaker on innovations and HCM processes and technology and the future of work. Welcome. How are you today?

Yvette: Terrific. Thanks for having me on your your program today. I’m excited to be here and have a good conversation.

Kelly: Same here. I’m really excited to have you. So I thought since we gave a quick little introduction, it would be so nice Yvette, if you wouldn’t mind sharing with us a little bit about your journey that led you to Velocity.

Yvette: So how long is this program?

What led me to Velocity? Yeah. I have been in the human capital management space for over 25 years. I actually started as a practitioner and then moved over into technology. I probably spent about the last 20 years or so in the technology space directly. Even from that first job in technology I was focused on self-service applications, how [00:02:00] individuals inter-operate with technology, and that really flamed a passion in me, it fueled that passion in how do we, how do we get more from our, our, our systems?

And so that kind of early. That early focus in my career carried me through different different jobs at different technology organizations. I spent about four or five years as an industry analyst, working at Constellation and Gardener. Most recently was at SAP as their their Head ofSstrategy. I spent a lot of time in those last couple of years at SAP, really looking at the technologies that were on the, on the horizon.

What was coming and again, with this mindset, this passion of how do we focus on the individual? How do we do good and bring better for the individual? I found myself looking at technologies like blockchain at the employee experience and all the different ways that the experience was emerging.

And that got me to ultimately meet my co-founder Drucker Ravitch for Velocity Career Labs. And[00:03:00] put this organization together, focused on individuals, owning and controlling their professional data to change the way they present themselves and the way they interact with education and employers to really have full control.

So, I mean, that’s how I got here. It was a long journey across different employers in technologies and consulting, always with a passion in mind about people. Ultimately that’s the Genesis here of velocity, putting people back in control of their data. It’s been a long journey.

Kelly: Yeah.

It sounds like it. Was there any moment in time, like a particular moment that made you really passionate about this particular, you know, people having data in their own hands?

Yvette: It actually started when I was, when I first became a parent, anybody who’s been a parent and had to take their children to daycare, knows the pain of having to fill out the same forms every year, even though nothing [00:04:00] changes except the age of your child and maybe their eating habits, but at the same address and phone number, and doctor information every single year on paper, no less. Right. And this was 20 odd years ago with my first kid. But that repetitive process and then as a job seeker and working in, in human capital management, right.

I’ve worked in the recruiting applications and whatnot and again, that repetitiveness as a job seeker, as you go looking for jobs, having to fill in the same background information again and again, even though you’ve just entered and updated your profile, you’ve still got to put in the same information.

So early on my frustration with inefficiencies and the expectations that I had for technologies, it was like this expectations of reality they just weren’t meeting for me right here in the middle, very unhappy. So that was the, but really it hit home for me with the kids and all the forums and so I’ve long since been looking at how do we, how do we help [00:05:00] people not just be more efficient in those processes, but why can’t I, at the time I was thinking why couldn’t digest have some sort of an ID that was recognized everywhere and that I could take with me.

 And then as self-service was emerging and more digital technologies, why couldn’t that one password, that one profile I fill out, be used in this area of my life and this other area of my life. Why did I have so many profiles? I am one person, I want to have one comprehensive digital profile that people trust. And I was thinking, I guess, blockchain years before I even realized what it could do, but yeah, it’s it’s been a long growing, frustrating experience with technology that has driven me to try to find a better way to to make things happen.

Kelly: Anytime that you’re trying to change something that frustrates you, that’s kind of like the sweet spot, right? It’s like, well, I’ve felt it and now I know.

Yvette: I mean, you know, We all have it, right? I mean, how many, come on, be honest with me. It’s just between [00:06:00] us now. Right? Nobody else is looking, do you have a spreadsheet of all of your passwords?

Kelly: Yes, of course. How else would I keep it? And then it’s mine. Of course. Like my husband has a tab on there.

Yvette: Exactly. I have the same tab. I mean, again, just managing your passwords because each password represents access to a system which represents another piece of who you are and what is shame that we can’t find a better way to bring that together into more of a holistic process now. So that’s what we’re focusing on on at Velocity is bringing the professional and educational elements of all of those profiles together so that you don’t have to go to all these different places, but I tell you the spreadsheets that we all have? Yeah, not good.

Kelly: I hear you. So before we jump into Velocity, which I really want to, because I just love everything about what you’re working on there. I just wanted to keep it personal here for a second. I’d love to go over this journey [00:07:00] that you’ve had until you’ve come to this time, obviously. I will say that, you know, you’re very successful in the work that you’re doing.

So I know we don’t often say that about ourselves, but you are. Is there anything along the way that you would have said, you know, these are really the skills for me that have made me successful in this work?

Yvette: Yeah, that’s a great question. My personal nature wants me to make a joke right now, but maybe I’ll hold off on that, okay.

I’m going to say a sense of humor is probably one of the skills and that’s not something you learn. Right. I was reading an article yesterday about grit and determination being keys for your future success. And I thought, how do you validate and scale and score grit? You know, is there an assessment that, you know, test grit?

I don’t know. But, but to be more serious, one of the I think, some of the skills by my nature, I think I’m very detail oriented. Again, that’s not something that, [00:08:00] right. I don’t have macros associated with it, but I think an attention to detail has always been for me really important.

I’ve got a degree in mathematics and statistics in which goes hand in hand with that detail orientation, but analyzing, thinking, using data to make decisions. That analytical mindset has been really helpful in the work that I’ve done across my career weather-wise managing HRS systems or evaluating acquisitions, et cetera. That has been, that has been really key.

I think communication skills have certainly evolved over time as I have matured, as I have taken communication courses and being a more empathetic leader. What has always served me well in the communication is transparency and honesty and a sense of humor.

I think [00:09:00] for a lot of people they struggle with being transparent and honest. You want to give feedback for example, as a manager and you maybe worry about you might worry about hurting somebodies feelings or making them less enthusiastic about a position or their work, if you are critical about something and yet you need to help individuals grow.

And so learning how to be an empathetic leader, who’s providing that constructive criticism, I think is really key. For me, as I said, transparency, it’s always been a number one thing for me. Tell what you know, when you know it, there’s always things that as a senior leader in an organization, maybe there’s only so much that you can tell that in all cases, I always try to err on the side of as much honesty and being forthright as possible because it avoid surprises, et cetera. So I think those are some, some fundamental skills from a technical, from a technical perspective. And on [00:10:00] top of just the tools that we use to get work done.

Even since the pandemic that arose several months ago I have had to become familiar with some new web meeting tools, and I thought I knew them all, but I finding new ones and becoming more adept at some of the perks and bells and whistles and these things. New technology that comes out there, years ago I didn’t use the task management tools that we use today, and now it’s in Slack on almost a daily basis and other other pieces.

Right. So staying on top of technology is super important for pretty much any worker. I think it doesn’t matter if you’re a line worker in retail or an executive and high tech, the ability to stay fluid conversant in all of the digital tools that we’re using today is super critical.

And it’s just evolved over time. I remember 20 odd years ago being so excited when the Palm pilot came out. Do you remember?

Kelly: I had a set. No, I had one [00:11:00] and I had the stylist and I would write on there. I had like Franklin planner before that. Come on now.

Yvette: Exactly. I used to think the Franklin planner was the bomb.

And so when the, when the Palm pilot, those things came out, I thought this is fantastic. We’re getting digitalized. It took a while and it took effort to become proficient at it and then how quickly it became usurped by other technologies, but that’s it, make the effort.

If you are determined to make the effort to stay current, I think for your own social networking, for the promotion of your work, it’s a cornerstone of being successful and staying agile in this market that is changing crazily almost every day.

Kelly: And do you find that it’s easy to stay current? Like do you find staying current is about just figuring out on your own, going through like the online tutorials, do you think there has to be some like actual formalized training around staying current or it’s just something you can do on your own?

Yvette: You know, if you can get to formalize [00:12:00] training, consider yourself lucky. A lot of employers are providing that.

I think that’s fantastic, right? If you’re lucky enough to work for an employer who has formalized training around that. Fantastic. There are a lot of curated kind of courses and and programs online for individuals that also will help guide you. What are you trying to do?

Improve your technical acumen on a daily basis? There’s things that you can find out there. You know what I really find on, I’m curious to hear your perspective, but I find my social network is my guide for what to do. Right. Having grown LinkedIn and Twitter and just being in the business for so long, right.

I can put out a message on any channel Facebook say, Hey, I need a better way to do XYZ. And I’m getting recommendations from everybody, from people I trust, from people I don’t know, but as I tally up because I’m an analytical person, who’s voting for which technology the best that helps me [00:13:00] chart my course.

So yes I think that it is a little bit of fun doing the research on your own, but engage your network and opportunities. I mean, but what do you think? Technology is changing. you’ve just started this podcast. I don’t know if you used to use –

Kelly: I know I googled how to do that. I watched a YouTube video.

I had a friend that helped me as well. So it’s yeah, it’s the same thing. I feel like the first thing I always do is Google that, is Google something. If I can’t figure it out, if there’s not a YouTube video about it, which there’s sometimes is, but it might not be exactly what you’re looking for.

Then I do the same thing. I turned to the people that I know. It’s great because we’re just so connected that you can ask those mass questions to any of your networks and they come back to you. So I completely agree with you. That’s what I would do.

Yvette: Yeah. I do want to put the question back on you, you talked about skills and I mentioned leadership and openness to technology.

I would probably add a little bit of mindfulness over the [00:14:00] next last few years. Things have been crazy. I have taken more and more courses literally, and read more and researched more about being mindful and meditative which really helps personally and professionally. So those, I think are some areas for me that I would tend to focus on.

But I want to put that question back on you, Kelly, what do you, what would you say are some of the key skills that got you where you are today? If you don’t mind my asking.

Kelly: Of course, no I love it. I mean, I always love to share this stuff too. For me, I really think it’s been sort of what I would call like resilience skills. Things like persistence, being able to problem solve, being able to sort of like try stuff. Fail and know that it’s not the end, just keep going becaus you have this goal and this focus.

I think really for me, and I don’t know if this is actually a skill, but I kind of put this in this bracket. It’s just this, like finding the thing that you’re passionate about because all of the other things to move forward, all of the other ways to be successful, like just a bumpy road, right?

I mean, there’s not one way [00:15:00] to get there. It’s not like everything you’re going to do is going to be successful, but you have to be strong enough inside of you. That passion really has to be there for you to keep going all of that time. Those are the skills that I really lean on a lot. And I also agree with you, just being able to figure out things along the way, whatever they may be, if it’s the new technology, if it’s the new moving from outlook to Gmail.

Oh my goodness. Those are the ways and for me beyond some of those are formal courses. A lot of them are free courses that I look up, you know, anytime I try to absorb like reading it’s just what do you look for? Like actual formal courses with an institution?

Yvette: For the most part I’m looking for articles and interviews. I really love to hear the words of people who have done this before me. I’ve taken a few specific courses, I’ve gone to the online E-learning you know platforms and [00:16:00] have taken some courses. I’ve got a son in high school, so I’ve actually enrolled in some various technology courses so that we could converse better over the table.

 I would say 85% of mine is reading research and interviews, watching videos and listening to podcasts. Yeah, everybody has different ways of learning is exactly.

Kelly: And that’s what I love about it. It’s like, there’s really just an endless number of ways to go about this.

Yvette: I’m so glad that you mentioned though, the resiliency. I was one of the a hundred folks interviewed and enlisted as like an HR tech innovator for, HR executive magazine and they asked about skillset. Yeah, I guess that was self promoting. I’m sorry. Let’s cut this.

Kelly: No, I love it. I’m like, Oh, this is so great. Congratulations.

Yvette: Thank you. One of the things I talked about during that session was indeed resiliency because throughout all of it throughout all of it, whether you’re trying new technologies or moving into new careers, you’re moving your house from one [00:17:00] state to another, whatever.

Resiliency is such an important thing to practice and learn, because things are changing quickly, you’re not always going to be excellent at something the first time you do it. What a wealth of knowledge you gain from those failures or from those less than totally successful efforts.

 I’ve always told my family we’re, we’re very active outside and we are all covered with scars on her legs and arms cause we rock climb and we get out and kayak and we hit the rocks and whatnot. And if you don’t have scars, then it’s showing that you’re not trying hard enough.

You’re not trying to improve those skills and get better and better. You’ve got to have the scrapes and scuffs.

Kelly: Like those battle wounds, you know.

Yvette: It’s our badge of honor. I think in your career, that’s part of it too, is trying new things and recognizing, “Hey, this wasn’t quite wide. I could have done something different,” but it’s about being resilient.

Kelly: Yes, [00:18:00] I know, I totally agree with you. I mean, that’s just like a big part. I think as the world is changing right now too, the interesting thing that I think we’re all seeing as sort of this like concept around the innovation being agile, but that’s like really as a person too.

Those are not things that are not, most of that is learned, it’s not like we’re born this way. Those are all learned things. So I think anyone who’s interested, wants to get out there and figure it out for themselves. Like there’s tons to look up, so yeah. Let’s focus a little bit on Velocity if you don’t mind, because I am just obviously in love with the work that you’re doing.

Surprisingly enough, you might not know this, but like my whole passion around being in this work is because I actually had a real pain point myself in understanding the return on investment for education and through the process of trying to figure that out, I realized that there’s so many, it’s so hard to make decisions because we don’t know.

[00:19:00] Number one, all the things about us, right? Like we know like our education, trying to keep track of all those bits and pieces along the way, along your journey. But then also it was like, we don’t even know all the opportunities we have available, how to even find those opportunities, how to let people know we’re ready for those opportunities.

So coming across the work that you guys are doing, this is like stuff in my dreams of like people actually owning their own data and being really like, taking the reigns in their life, and to me, this is like the beginning of so much more. So I’d love for you to let the audience know a little bit more about how this came to be, what the focus is.

Maybe even talk a little bit about some of those members, cause this is a really strong group that you guys have.

Yvette: Yeah. Yeah. As we mentioned at the top of the show Velocity Career Labs was founded by my partner and I back in 2018 and immediately our intent was to form an industry consortium that would guide this new vision we had for how career [00:20:00] credentials are exchanged and owned and managed by individuals in control of who’s seeing and who’s using their data. Many things in the labor market led up to it, but eventually in 2019, we put together the Velocity Network Foundation.

So it is a nonprofit foundation comprised of industry organizations from across the HCM industry, education tech, essentially the global labor market. So very diverse members from across that market have come together, all with a vision to developing what we’re calling the internet of careers, which is fundamentally a new way.

The world’s network for exchanging verifiable career credentials and putting people back in control of their professional data. So the foundation is building this velocity network, this is the exchange protocol. We are essentially the [00:21:00] transfer mechanism that enables people to accumulate and curate their information about themselves.

So the technology that enables it is what the velocity network is all about and as we’ve said, as an individual, if I, rather than being at the whim of my former employers, my educational institution, having to keep records and log in information so I can go to the 20 or 30 different websites of my employers and online learning and gig work platforms, et cetera, to find, to get proof of what I’ve done. If I can curate all of that into a secure digital wallet that can’t be tampered with, that people will trust and that I can control who I share it with?

What a totally changed game right here. I’m suddenly now in control of my future, as opposed to others being in control. All these silos are now aggregated, essentially on my mobile device. [00:22:00] When we started the foundation, we started with 15, 16 organizations. We’re up to close to 20 now and slowly adding some on during this first year.

You are one, we’ll talk about that, I have some questions for you. We have essentially across the membership, I would say roughly about 23, 24% of the HCM market globally represented from a revenues perspective. Members of our organization include names that you’ll recognize SAP, Oracle, Randstatt, Korn Ferry, Ultimate Software, Hire Right, Sizes, Unit Four, ZipRecruiter, SHL, and on, so many, right. So many organizations and they come from different areas of the labor market because they all see the opportunity and the way that we can change the dynamic by putting people back in control.

[00:23:00] We are well underway. We just launched our test net platform, which is the first version, the alpha version of the technology platform last month, and we have some exciting new stuff coming. The goal is to deliver this platform in early next year and leverage the fact that our founding members themselves, have tens of thousands of clients, who themselves represent hundreds of millions of individuals.

So that pretty much as we go live and as our partners go live with us in their software platforms, the potential volume, the potential reach out to individuals is hundreds of millions of lives. It’s a transformational, it’s an amazing, it’s an amazing dream. My partner and I have, and every day we’re closer and closer to actual go live.

And everyday I pinch myself how exciting to be here, how lucky I am to be here and how proud I am to be driving this initiative [00:24:00] alongside the industry leaders and the visionaries that have come on this journey with us. I am over the moon. It’s amazing.

Kelly: It’s such an amazing project. So for people that might not know a lot about how this works, let’s like talk for one second, just break it down.

Cause I know we’ve talked about sort of this manual process that existed. But maybe to help, you know, someone understand. So what would be the difference of me having a resume or a social media profile versus me having a record, like this record?

Yvette: Yeah. In today’s environment you have your social profile on different social channels, but that information is self-reported, you’ve put your resume together. You’ve essentially recreated it on your social profile, your jobs and your experience, et cetera. But again, it’s self-reported and I’m sure this isn’t the case for you, but the majority of self-reported information is challenging to [00:25:00] believe at best.

There’s just report after report about how anywhere from, you know, 50 to 80% of resumes and social profiles have inaccuracies in them, whether it’s outright intended or misrepresentation or just gaps. There’s challenges with that but regardless as an individual, let’s use the job search use case.

That’s a very straightforward one. We all understand it. You’ve got to apply for a job. You either upload your resume, you upload your social profile. The employer looks at it, based on how well you presented yourself they may take you through an interview and a background process. That background process can take anywhere from a couple of days to literally weeks.

 As they are trying to valid and depending on the type of job, and if there’s a medical history background and passing certain certifications and whatnot anyways, and then ultimately you move on to a job. Now as just getting to the point of a background check requires that or even the, the [00:26:00] callback once your data has been submitted, requires that you’re presenting yourself.

Well there may be others who don’t have half the experience or expertise that you do, but because they have added in information or characterized it in such a way, they’ve emphasized certain things in ways that aren’t necessarily accurate, but it’s really impressive. So they’re getting, they’re getting seen and you’re not, you may just be put at the bottom of the of the pile, so you’re not even able necessarily to compete fairly based on your actual experiences if somebody else is –

Kelly: And that’s just how the system is reading your resume. Yeah.

Yvette: It is, it’s how the system is reading your resume. It’s how that’s getting fed in. And then our algorithms on top of that, it’s saying, “Hey, here’s a, here’s a senior vice president versus a vice-president. We want a senior, we’re going to bring that guy forward.”

But what if he wasn’t really senior, but he’s just now unfairly. Right? You served your position. So in this new world, in this new world that we envisioned with digital, [00:27:00] verifiable digital credentials, the idea is that the individual has accumulated all of their history onto their digital device and in the process of doing so, we have validated the source of the of the company that has issued you, those credentials.

So the schools, employers online learning, et cetera, whatever that might be. And when we talk about credentials, Kelly, I’m not just saying degree and education information. I am talking about skills assessment, badges, and kudos. I’m talking about licenses and certifications, whatever data related to you, that can be documented and verified by the issuing authority is what’s what you should be able to bring onto your wallet.

So now imagine you are looking to apply for a job and instead of uploading a resume or applying with your social media, maybe you apply with my digital wallet, right.

In this case would be the velocity, apply with velocity. But the difference is this, as the information is shared from your [00:28:00] validated digital wallet. Again, I’ll say in this example, the velocity digital wallet, the information comes through as pre-validated. So the titles of my jobs that I’m sharing with you come associated with an indicator that says, yep, pre-checked right.

My degree, pre-checked, these skills validated. The employer suddenly sees, “okay, this is the information and I can trust it because of the source it came from now”, just by virtue of coming in through this particular digital experience, the employer has that level of trust, but if they want to go further and say, “I want to certify that this, this really hasn’t been tampered with since it was issued”, then with the click of a button, they can certify, they can say yes, I want to validate this.

I want to certify it. And because that certification the way it was recorded, it’s anchored in what we call the blockchain technology distributed ledger, all these things, but the bottom line is [00:29:00] with a click of a button the employer is able to see, not only do we think it’s valid, but now we’ve proven that it’s valid and it’s real time, it’s instantaneous.

That then puts you in a different category of the other applicants. Your data is trusted. Maybe you still don’t have that SVP title. And it’s just a VP title, but we know we can count on it. Right. We’ve just trusted it. That alone takes care of that from the employer’s perspective and it puts the better competitive environment, but also maybe you’re applying for 10 other positions.

Again, with a click of a button apply with your velocity background or your velocity ID apply with your digital wallet and it’s there. So it’s saving you the effort of having to fill out forms, add information, it’s removed and that background and the background checks again, remember I said, the employer wants to validate it.

It’s instantaneous. We don’t have issues where [00:30:00] we’re going to have days and weeks and you no longer get people to work. Kelly, that’s super important in today’s environment. Right? We laid off millions, millions.

Kelly: You don’t want them hanging there in the balance while they’re waiting to go to work.

Yvette: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. We can put people to work.

I think it was Walmart, right? They were touting that they had hired over a hundred thousand workers in just a couple of days or something. I don’t know the exact stat, so apologies, but it was a ridiculous amount. And when he got under the covers, what did they do? They didn’t do the background checks.

They did some cursory stuff, brought everybody on and said, we’re going to deal with things as they come up. They had to avoid that. Imagine, imagine if it was instantaneous.

Kudos for them, for putting people to work fast, but they did have to assume a risk and employers where necessary want to remove that.

And so that’s what this velocity initiative is about.

Kelly: Yeah, exactly. And I could really see how from an, like [00:31:00] you, as a job seeker, you’re feeling really competent. You’re not trying to track down like transcripts and all the things that I can imagine, especially nowadays where we don’t just go to one school anymore and all the little things we pick up along the way, like, that’s always there with you.

You don’t have to track back and worry about references or things like, it’s all there and knowing that those jobs. So I can feel, I feel like from a job seeker’s perspective, this is so powerful, but especially from the company’s perspective. I can’t imagine the amount of time and money saved on that.

I mean, I used to work for a background check organization, Marsh McLennan, and it’s honestly, it’s like, it’s a really difficult process. So I get it. Someone introduced me to an example the other day, and so I kind of bring it to this because it’s not only one type of job that this type of record could be used for, just so that everyone understands that, the example that was given to me was a truck driving example.

So a truck driver takes a delivery. Brings it likely into another state and then they’re there [00:32:00] and what they want to do is to be able to take a new delivery back towards where they’re from. But the process, so they have all these certifications, different driving certifications, which means you can take on different types of loads, but they have to wait because they might want to take a different type of delivery back.

And when they say they want to take that different type of load, they have to show someone the certificate that they have that’s verified for them to be able to take that. Sometimes it’s three to five days until they have that verified that they’re just sitting there, not working, not doing anything, not getting paid.

What they could do is they could just have like a barcode on their phone with everything, like you said, already authenticated. They could scan that and they could literally get a good night’s sleep, take their delivery and go on.

Yvette: Exactly. It’s fantastic for the individual because it puts them to work faster.

The truck driver example is perfect. Again, I’m only going to lose pay for the day that I choose to delay. Right. Because right now I can show you instantaneously I’ve [00:33:00] got all the certifications for a completely different load type than I brought here, but you need a whole new set, but I’ve got it.

The good thing too, from the employer side is, or the labor chain supply chain is that product is getting moved, right? Everyday that it’s sitting there, it’s costing us, it’s costing

Kelly: The organization money. Exactly.

I can’t even imagine the amount of money lost in this process where that’s just going to tighten that up to like, no, very minimal money loss.

Yvette: Now, let me tell you another story. I was sharing with a friend of mine the other day who’s been in the space forever. The challenge of trying to do background checks again in this environment where so many companies have shut down. So what do you do if you’re trying to validate employment and the company’s no longer there.

 Or if your background checks provider is taking extra long because the local court is only open two days a week or they’re understaffed and so it’s [00:34:00] taking them longer. But the reality of companies being shut down and not being able to validate backgrounds is a real problem. I told my friend this and she says, yeah, you know, she was trying to apply for, I don’t know if it was a loan.

I think it might’ve been a loan, and she had to prove something, her employment and her pay. Right. And it wasn’t enough to show the W2, she was supposed to show a paycheck, a weekly or bi-weekly paycheck from eight years ago. And it was a ridiculous situation from eight years, and the company had since shut down.

So she was almost at a loss, fortunately in some divorce papers, she has some copies of something. It was horrible, but I mean, imagine, right. The thing about gathering your data, of course, it’s about getting to better jobs and opportunities now but it’s also about that permanent storage that safe and secure that you are no longer having to worry about.

Are they going to [00:35:00] be there, you know, and how quickly can we get to this information? You now have it, you back it up to the cloud of your choice, you’re in control. So the opportunities here, of course, it gets you to jobs and other things faster, but now imagine an employment marketplace, right?

In today’s employment marketplace, you bring up your resume. You might indicate a lot of us have side gigs, and we’ve been doing things, programming or different work for as a freelancer. When a lot of us are managed by freelancer platforms, but in these marketplaces, how easy is it to validate some of those side gig projects?

Well, again, if you’ve curated that in your profile and you now have a more comprehensive picture of who you are as you are exposing that data into marketplaces and other HCM and other technologies, and that artificial intelligence, those algorithms are run against it. You’ve given them more data to use to help better target learning opportunities, to help better [00:36:00] target career growth opportunities.

I like to say, rather than applying with a resume, I want to apply with me. I want a whole picture of who I am and the skills and experiences and capabilities I have. So rather than apply with LinkedIn or rather apply with this, I want to apply with me. Can I do that? That’s my vision.

Kelly: That’s what gets me so excited about this, that concept, and not only the applying with me, but like that, that future vision that you just described, that whole view of how you have all of these different opportunities available to you, because you truly understand yourself now in a way that is completely different than you understood yourself before.

You don’t have to worry about crafting the perfect marketing language about yourself. It’s already you, and it’s just in that way that everyone will understand. The same way each person won’t be differentiated because of like the way that they talk about them.

Yvette: Yeah. Now a lot of people say, and this is going to segue into a question I have for you, but a lot of people say, great so I’m [00:37:00] accumulating all this information, these credentials as we call them. But again, that’s an all encompassing name for the many, many things that constitute bits of data about me, but what if those credentials are all speaking different languages?

I mean, just the idea of skills and let’s get back to, let’s talking about skills, baby. Just from a skills perspective, there is such a variation in what we mean when we say, somebody’s got a skill in a particular technology or area, and it’s hard to even understand.

Just because I took a course, what skills does that really confer upon me? And how does it translate to the skills that this employer is asking for? Now at Velocity, our approach is to say listen, any of those items however they’re defined, we’re going to bring in and transfer to your mobile wallet and you’re going to decide what’s important and what you want to [00:38:00] share in the future.

And there are many, many standards, you know even better than I am sure, around how we define badges and skills and common languages and there’s many different standards. So they vary by industry and Velocity is supporting all of them. The work still has to be done.

It’s so important to get that work to match up the entities who are giving and taking those skills, et cetera. Honestly, this is one of the reasons I was so excited to be partnering with you on Velocity. When we first started talkin, I saw an opportunity, but I know why I was passionate about, about having you join, but I can I turn the tables on the interview and say, why did you guys, why did Emsi join the Velocity and join us on this journey.

Kelly: Well, I’ll tell you that this is, I [00:39:00] haven’t really talked much about my work, but my work is with Emsi, which is an economic modeling specialist, and they are basically a labor market analytics firm. And so obviously my work being in skills I tend to.

The reason that we really joined in working with you guys and this is maybe a little bit more of my personal opinion here too, but this is why I do the work that I do was that I saw this opportunity. Number one I think the concept of these records is really the future. This is the first time that I was introduced to one that really had this industry collaboration that you have. And I thought this group coming together, the way that they focused this really understanding the problem at heart was a very different perspective. So that’s the first piece for me that was like, wow.

And then of course, when I started seeing what you guys were working on, I was like, this is absolutely amazing. You obviously all have a lot of passion around it. You’re obviously all very involved. So that was fantastic. And then I saw that potential from a skills perspective, because [00:40:00] exactly what you just said, it’s like this translation layer, this foundation that we need all of those pieces need to be able to speak to each other for this to be successful.

And that’s really where I saw, coming in in terms of a partner bringing in this, free open language that we offer in terms of skills. Helping all of those different players in that all of the education that’s being input, wherever it’s coming from. Right. All of the different jobs.

But if people at the heart of it could understand what we call at Emsi and with Strata, our parent organization Strata, what we call a skill shape because that person, that you, that record that you’re creating, is what we call a skill shape. That’s all the skills that you’ve gained throughout your life, through education, through all of your jobs.

And that’s how you create those choices for yourself, because you know that, you own that, you understand that. And then you know where is the best learning for you? You know how to make better decisions. You know [00:41:00] how to be more successful. Organizations know how to move their people. Like it, it just opens up a whole new way.

And to me, this record is really the piece that unlocks all of that potential.

Yvette: So, so how do I find out my skill shape? I know body shape. I know other shapes.

Kelly: Well right now we actually have a few free resources out there just to help the scenario that’s going on. In today, obviously there’s so many people on unemployment.

We have a tool that allows you to basically inventory your skills, enter in your education, entering all the jobs that you’ve had and it creates the skill profile for you. That’s available on the website, and I’ll make sure that I add it all in at the end here. But that’s available on the website.

So that’s, it’s a perfect way. It’s just a free resource, you can go in there, you can inventory, you can find out about you. And that’s kind of the same thing that I see on, like, it just has to then live somewhere, right? It has to be somewhere that we know is that [00:42:00] verified piece of you so that you can make your case.

We think of like matching skill shapes to things, because then you can see what learning, what jobs and all of that is just because you have that record.

Yvette: Yeah. So it does come down I think, ultimately to skills, we all want to understand past experiences, employment education, but fundamentally we’re hiring for skills.

We’re re-skilling we’re training for what’s coming and what we, what just hit us yesterday and making sure we can very quickly respond to it. You know, being able to understand how the education and the training and those experiences as jobs I held, translate to specific skills to be able to verify those through different assessments and surveys, sessions, and certification of those observations, et cetera.

And then present those I think [00:43:00] is super critical. But at the end of the day, there’s in many cases there’s always going to be some extra work needed. I gave the example of recently that you can be trained as a cashier at a Walmart and, and very proficient and top tier at the system that Walmart uses.

And then you take a job at Target, and you know your way around the cash register, but it might be a different system, right? There’s still going to be some learning there, but knowing that you were at a certain level on this related type equipment still has a high, high value as you move in, because it also shows potentially an ability to learn, et cetera.

So, there’s always going to be people who push back and say, well, skills are different from job to job from employer to employer. Yes, I understand. But the more we can get to a common language, and so excited about participating in the standards organizations and the foundation, right, as a whole representing so much of the market that we do, having [00:44:00] a voice in that and keeping on top of that is key.

Also just being able to accurately represent those assessments and things that we have done around those skills, I think is hugely valuable. It’s going to be a new market on how we compete.

Kelly: Being able to learn on this with you guys like that’s the best part about it.

Yvette: It is good and I can’t wait until your your online tool lets me just upload my velocity verified profile.

Kelly: Exactly. That’s where we’re going. Well, I know this is still early days for where you are. If anyone wants, is there anything at this point that anyone can interact with from the Velocity perspective? Or why should they be looking out for something to be available?

Yvette: Yeah. Yeah. I’m super excited. We are launching what we’re calling the Velocity Experience Center. And beyond a typical proof of concept or a pilot program, this is a virtual simulation environment to explore the art of the possible.

And because we [00:45:00] have so many organizations as part of this foundation, right? Organizations who are all trying to drive to this collaborative internet of careers, future direction, our experience center will be used to showcase the cross industry, multi-vendor, multi-user scenarios, that reflect kind of what’s happening in reality today. Students who are moving into a new industry, people who have been displaced in one industry, and are able to translate some of their skills and experiences that they’ve had today, perhaps coupled with additional learning that is targeted to them through an understanding of what they’ve done in the past.

Move into new industries. People mature in their careers who are looking to take a path horizontally as opposed to continually moving up. So really this experience center is a pilot on steroids. The individual being able to curate their profile, not just from one employer and [00:46:00] one educational institution, but from their whole mariate, their whole rich history.

But because we know people are changing jobs every two, three, four years, so I’m going to need to curate a lot of stuff and I’m taking learning online, and so that is that has actually launched within our foundation. We just launched it this past week, to start building now our first major demonstration, this first possible scenario and we’ll be showcasing it publicly starting in probably the first part of September, end of August, first part of September.

So really looking forward to some demonstrations, presenting it to the different work groups that we’re engaged with and publicly. So people can start experiencing, what is the future holding? What is the future in the next one to two years, really going to potentially look like if we’re all on board with this mindset of people owning their data? I’m super excited about the fall. Like I’ve never been before.

Kelly: Right, this is all very exciting. Well I’ll make sure that I also [00:47:00] keep my networks up to date on that so that we know when this becomes available, but is there any last parting words that you’d like to share with us?

Yvette: Gosh, parting words. First off I want to say again, thank you. I always love these conversations with you. I always learn something. I learned a little bit, some new stuff about you today, so that’s great. I guess my parting shot here would be you know, keep your head up.

Things are changing personally, professionally around the world and it can feel really, really daunting and heavy sometimes. But I think with resiliency, I think with a mindset of take every challenge as terribly challenging as it can be an ask yourself, how can I learn and grow and move forward with this?

You will find there are opportunities and there are so many organizations providing free resources for education. Just keep your head up. Reach out to your network when you think [00:48:00] that you can’t take it anymore. When it seems really dark. I’m so pleased to see so many good things coming out of the, the many bad things that have happened as far as new policies and approaches to work and whatnot.

So keep your head up, I guess, would be my parting thought.

Kelly: That is some fantastic advice. Thank you so much for sharing Yvette. For anyone who would like to follow Yvette, I just want to let you know she’s available on LinkedIn and Twitter at Yvette Cameron, that’s C A M E R O N. And you can learn more about Velocity Network Foundation @velocitynetwork.foundation

So thank you again for joining us today and thank you all for listening into Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, share, and offer a rating and review, I would love to hear your feedback. You can also follow me, Kelly Bailey on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram at Kelly R. Bailey.

Well, I hope you all have a great day and we’ll see you next week. [00:49:00] Bye.