Education is one of the most strategic investments you can make, Monster.com exec tells Fletcher students
Marcel Legrand, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Corporate Planning at the top career website Monster.com, advised Fletcher students to, "Learn how to learn, and invest in yourself so you get something that can never be taken away."
He came to Fletcher for a luncheon discussion on corporate strategy, Monster.com's international plans, and how to stay competitive in the dynamic new labor market. The event was organized by the International Business Program Global Speaker Series.
Legrand is a regular visitor to Fletcher, and teams of Fletcher students have worked with Monster.com to research potential emerging markets as part of the popular course "Field Studies in Global Consulting."
Most of the session was a lively back and forth dialogue between Legrand and students. He opened his speech by saying, "You don't learn from people's success - It's the mistakes that you really need to understand. I'm full of mistakes - hundreds of them," and in this spirit illustrated his ideas with a range of stories and observations from Monster.com's rapid growth and his own career.
Emerging markets have the potential to give Monster.com new room for growth, but foreign companies may emerge as serious competitors as well. Legrand noted that in countries such as South Korea, the role of the Internet in job hunting is already more sophisticated than in the US, and startups from these countries have the potential to completely alter Monster.com's business model.
"What keeps me up at night and keeps Monster's R&D lab busy innovating isn't the traditional competitors you expect – it’s three women working in a garage who will come up with something disruptive - and likely they aren't working on it in the US," he commented.
In the 2005 spring semester, a team of Fletcher students examined the job search phenomenon in several emerging market as Monster.com considered its strategy. Ben Presnell, F’06 one of the student consultants who took part in the consulting work, observed at the session, "You think about issues like equality and Internet access levels in your course work and then can apply them in your research."
Legrand argued that in Internet business, not only can companies from emerging markets compete effectively, but new challengers actually have the advantage over established companies. "On the Internet, the first mouse doesn't get the cheese. This ending the first to market advantage because the first companies spend huge amounts of money inventing the market," he said.
Technology is changing the way professionals structure their careers in profound ways, Legrand argued. "We have some smart guesses on where the labor markets are moving but volatility is always there," he said, but nevertheless offered many interesting insights on what graduates should do to remain competitive in the increasingly dynamic labor market.
Continuing education is becoming more important, and, "The jobs of the future are all about EQ [Emotional Intelligence]," he observed. Just as technology is making it easier to find jobs, "Every job of the future is going to be more performance based because work and accomplishments are becoming more measurable."
Despite these rapid changes, Legrand observed that the resume, the main way job seekers present themselves to employers, has remained remarkably static. "The resume hasn't changed much in a hundred years, except you have windsurfing in the section on personal interests instead of fox hunting," he pointed out. "It’s up to the candidates to express more about themselves than just their experience."
To stay ahead of the changes, Legrand advised students to be proactive and think strategically. "Work for yourself to keep yourself ready. A company is rarely going to look out for your best interests, it’s a free market economy." he said.
