Don't Switch Careers Into The Trades!

You got your college degree, but you can't find a job? Well, go into the trades, they say. Well, according to the world's largest recruiting firm, that's exactly what they're suggesting. And I'm going to give you my opinion on whether or not I think this is good advice.

Hey everybody, and welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Brian. I'm the founder of a life after layoff, a career strategist, and a corporate recruiter. And I've made it my mission to demystify how job search and careers work at major corporations. So, if this kind of content interests you or maybe you're navigating a particularly tricky career challenge, make sure you follow along.

So, let's talk about the most cliche career advice going around on the internet. Just go into the trades. Is this actually a good idea for most people? Well, let's break it down.

So, I came across a recent article where this CEO for the world's largest recruiting firm is suggesting that college to office job, that pathway that's been so well established over the last several decades is completely dead. And that he's actually suggesting that Jensen grads consider trade and hospitality jobs that don't require college degrees. And I thought that this was a very fascinating look into where we are in the job market. So, I want to dive into his reasons why and then discuss whether or not I think that this is a good idea for most people.

So, the article reads, "Millions of Jenzers are facing unemployment as entry-level rules get absorbed by AI and millennials regret taking on thousands in student loans for careers that have significantly diminished prospects." And this is something that I've talked about extensively on this channel and will continue to talk about. There is starting to become a real question of whether or not college is worth the price of admission given that there is an AI imposition. Let's just call it what it is. That is taking out large portions of entry-level jobs at these corporations.

In the spirit of efficiency, companies are looking at roles that can be easily reproduced using AI tools. And it's usually repetitive tasks, things that don't require a ton of independent decision-making. However, that is starting to become even more advanced with Agentic AI coming out, which can do multiple steps, can take on more complex tasks. Unfortunately, entry-level work is prime for being replaced by AI. And there's a bigger problem that I'll probably explore in future videos about this, but what happens when you don't have any bench strength to promote into higher levels in the organizations? I'm wondering if these companies are really thinking about this as they're racing to push these AI tools and eliminate all of these entry- level positions.

But the millennial situation is very real too where you know you're sitting on these thousands of of student loans and in some cases these degrees are costing people $100,000 plus. So college keeps going up in price and the entry level or near entry- level job market continues to be clobbered by job cuts, layoffs and it's a brutal environment for people to get started in their career. So it's not really a major surprise that the world's largest talent company Randstad has confirmed but you many young grads are fe fearing is is the traditional college to office pipeline officially dead and this CEO I'm I'm going to butcher his name so I apologize in advance to my Dutch listeners but Sander Van Nordent Dendi says that people need to reflect on taking on student loan and going to college and being trained in a profession that is rapidly changing whether that is still the right path.

And this is something that people do need to take into consideration when they are looking for a new opportunity. They're training for a new career type or even if you're considering moving in switching careers. You got to ask yourself if you have to move back into a let's just say like a more entry level type of role in order to get a footing. What are the prospects there? And what's the cost? You have to do a cost-benefit analysis. How much is it going to cost you for the degree? What's the the long-term prospects? And the problem I'd say an even bigger problem is that this is becoming a much harder analysis to make because the market is changing so rapidly. Just 2 or 3 years ago we never even heard of AI coming into the workplace and now in such a short period of time we're suddenly having this existential crisis that we need to make videos like this to discuss.

So it is a very real thing and I'm not discounting that there is a very serious and real challenge and I think that this is almost becomes a political issue of how do we as a society look at careers and entry-level people coming into the workplace because we need pe we've got a boomer generation that is retiring in mass there are more boomers retiring than there are entry-level people coming into the workplace and now a lot of these jobs are being displaced as it were by AI I and other things. Efficiency offshoring is a major problem. They're hiring tons of people overseas. At the very same time, they're announcing major layoffs in the United States. And so, we've got this really serious problem that is continuing to brew and it's only going to get more amplified.

So, this question that you I mean, I have this conversation with my my own child who's getting ready to go into college. What do you do? What kind of career path do you take that is going to be futureproofed? There are certain job types that are probably safer than others. We'll talk about those in another video. But it is a very real question of if you're going to spend this kind of money, is there a job path for you at the end of it? And people who started 4 years ago did realistically have a job path. So it wasn't like they made bad decisions. It's just that the market is changing so rapidly that they can't keep up with it.

So he's saying that you're going to see graduates finding it harder and harder to find a job. You're going to see professions like marketing, communications, design that are basically, you know, they're already AI is already really good at that stuff. Coding, entry- level coding is a real serious problem. Companies are finding very very quickly with with anthropics CEOs talking about this and and I'll probably make more content about this as well. They're finding that the coding is becoming so good that they don't need entry- level coders nearly as much as they used to. And it and flash forward 2 and 3 years if we've made this much progress in the last 2 or 3 years. I'm just very concerned for all careers in the next 2 to 3 years from here. So the speed at which this is improving and being implemented and rolled out is pretty shocking to be honest with you.

So what he's basically saying is that he's suggesting that these the white collar job markets frozen. talked about that in a previous video and now bartenders, baristas and builders are the future of work. So basically the old adage and everybody's heard this is just go into the trades. Just get a job in the trades. That's where the the future is. And and I even suggest that some of the trades are being imple uh impacted by AI. There are you I've seen robots building roofs on houses. Tesla is really pushing for these robotics that they're building that can do a lot of this manual work like in in a in a warehouse. Material handling is all automated in a lot of these more advanced kind of like futuristic manufacturing facilities. You got robots running over. I worked in places where robots will be running behind you while you're working. And even with truck driving, there's automated trucks driving down the road. You're going to be driving down the road in the not too distant future. Look over and see a huge truck driving next to you, but there's nobody in it.

So this stuff is already happening and it's only going to continue. You've got to think that anywhere where there's a person working. There's going to be benefits cost. There's going to be people calling out sick. There's going to be people complaining. There's going to be human error. I mean, when you get on an airplane and you fly from, you know, uh, New York to Tokyo, the actual time that a pilot is taking the the controls of the plane and manually flying it is probably, and pilots chime in here, I I would guess maybe five maybe 10% of the time, probably takeoffs and landings. And a lot of those are even automated as well. They're just making sure that everything's where it should be. But a lot of that work is done on autopilot. But they stick on autopilot and then they're just managing and monitoring equipment. But if you think that AI can't do it, even even when you look at doctors and surgeons, you say, "Well, become a doctor or a surgeon." They're now coming up with robotics that is actually going in and doing the surgeries and they can look at all the different surgical procedures that have ever been done and have it immediately trained. Whereas a surgeon himself has to study and practice and do years of training in hands-on experiment. you hands-on work in order to become competent enough to take on a surgery of themselves where a robot can learn it almost instantly, program itself to do the the micro adjustments, and then every single surgery that's done successfully by an an AI robot somewhere, it can talk to they can talk to one another and share all that data. If you don't think that even jobs like surgeons are going to be taken out, I think you're being naive.

But he's saying that there's a massive demand in the skilled trades. Mechanical engineers, which is not really a skilled trade, but mechanical engineers, I I'm assuming in a manufacturing setting, machine operators, maintenance engineers, forklift drivers, truck uh truck drivers, you name it. So he's if he's suggesting that people go to college, have this college degree, and then become a truck driver. I mean again truck driving and material handling is even becoming uh I mean machine operators especially if it's not requiring a lot of independent decision-m there are some very skilled machinists which is which is I would consider to be a skilled trade but for a lot of the stuff you could automate machine operating fairly easily. you know, a lot of these jobs I don't I don't necessarily see these as as a safe long-term prospect either.

And saying, well, while the job market in the, you know, white collar job market may seem seemingly frozen, he says that it's no longer good advice to tell people to follow their passions. But he says that with white collar job market seemingly frozen, that it's no longer good advice to tell young people to follow their passions. And I don't know if that was ever really great advice to begin with. Following your passion can quickly lead to burnout and quickly lead to you no longer having that passion. I think it's better to find a career that you are reasonably interested in and can be successful in given what your current skill and your competency, your aptitude is. He's saying no, learn a skilled trade or a skill or profession that you can make a good living and provide for your family. That's the much better advice to follow.

So he's saying that advice for those who've already wasted time and money on a degree that's dwindling in relevance. Retrain, become something else. Become a truck driver or a plumber. Now, that kind of sucks for the person who just dropped $150,000 on a degree and now has to face the reality of going back and training for something that they may not have a high aptitude for. And I'm going to talk about that more in just a second here. But what he's ultimately saying is look around and see where the opportunities that match your skill, your background, your interests are, and that it requires mindset shift.

So, becoming a going from a desk job where you've trained for, you know, maybe several years of school, now you have to consider going back and becoming a plumber, a teacher, or a nurse. All of these things require a lot of experience, a lot of training. These are not easy to get into. Ask any plumber that's actually making a good living. How easy is it to become a plumber? How easy is it to get through all the the training that you need to go through? Because you have to be trained to do that, to be able to troubleshoot and diagnose and work on plumbing. It's not something you just show up. You have to be licensed. You have to go through apprenticeships. You have to get potentially into a union. And those things are all not easy. Same thing goes for teaching. You have to go through years of training for that. It's not like you can just suddenly become a teacher. You have to get certified as well. And the internet's full of people who are fed up with teaching jobs trying to go into other things. So it's like the grass is greener always somewhere else. Now the world does need a lot of teaching. I've even seen some some stuff about AI coming in taking out some certain teacher roles or certain aspects of teacher roles. And I don't know how I feel about my kid being trained by or taught by an AI bot. I I just don't think that that's a good a good outcome for anybody. Um or nursing, you know, people suggest nursing is a a viable option. And nursing is a high skill career path as well, especially if you get in a nurse practitioner. My entire family is full of nurses. And I'm telling you, they've invested years of training in order to get where they are. It's not an easy path to go in and just suddenly switch over. It doesn't mean that you can't. I know some people that have made very drastic changes. I have a friend of mine who moved from he was in a doing trading like Wall Street type trading and decided to become a a nurse and he's been very successful at it but it was a very long shift. It was a very personal and long shift. So it can be done and there probably are opportunities to do that.

However, I'm going to push back and say that a lot of people who are working a certain type of job that they have an aptitude for a white collar role are not necessarily the same people that have the aptitude to go into the trades. I don't think that the advice of just going into the trades is such a a relevant advice for most people. The reality of being in a trade versus being in a white collar job is a very different type of work. Intellectual work and working with your hands in the elements or doing something that's more manual or physical is a very different type of work. And it's not to say that one can't do the other the other you or vice versa, but it is a very different world. And I don't think that most people are cut out for it. I'll I'll be perfectly honest with you. I think that the fantasy of well, I'm just gonna become a plumber is in theory it sounds great until you're actually doing it and you're realizing that you're not doing what you love to do. You're doing something just simply to survive, which I I suppose I can understand, but you're not loving what you're doing and you're dealing with all these conditions. You're going to spend your entire career trying to figure out what else that you could do with your life. Not to mention how many plumbers do we truly need in the world? If everybody coming out of school now, the millions and millions of people that are graduating suddenly shift into plumbing, you're just going to have a society of plumbers fixing other plumbers clogged toilets. [laughter] At some point, we only need so many of the trades. And I think that the trades are a very viable option for a lot of people. And I think that they can be very lucrative careers, without a doubt. But there's not that many of them to be able to replace the entire intellectual type of work. And suddenly you have this massive influx of trades. You you still need people to produce the designs of things that the trades are building. You still need people to engineer the things that the trades are constructing. You need all of that stuff in order to have a successful trade. Otherwise, you both of them can't they you need each other. You can't have one without the other. So, I don't necessarily think that the trades are a great idea for most people. I think that that advice is pretty harmful to be honest with you.

But I wanted to give you some perspective of people who are actually in the trades so that you can hear from them yourself. Can we please stop with all the become a plumber, just be an HVAC, work a bluecollar job? I as someone who grew up working in bluecollar as old as 13 years old to around 20 and there's nothing wrong with it, right? Like my family grew up very blue collar. Um but for me, I think that's a slap in the face to people, right? When we constantly tell people, hey, get a blue collar job. Don't go to college. Don't don't push to be an intellectual. Just continue to do what everybody else does. And I know you can make good money. There's always going to be the argument of like, "Hey man, I made six figures and became a business owner and when I was like 24 years old." And I know a lot of my friends, specifically here in Texas, that, you know, have been able to accomplish a lot in their lives. And I and I do think people need to get more into the trades, but people don't understand like how how you run a business, what goes into it, what goes into marketing, what goes into getting leads, generating opportunities, right? Like or working manual labor and you're 21 years old until you're 41 and you wake up and your back is shot, right? And you're unhealthy, right? People don't talk about those things. And I think that's it's just a talking point to continue to keep people controlled, right? Like I will always push college for my children uh no matter what, right? Like all of all the richest people in the world, they don't send their kids to be an HVAC or a plumber. They send them to Yell. They send them to Harvard. They send them to Stanford, NYU, Michigan, USC, like schools in order to build a network, in order to become an intellectual um and to grow from there. So, yeah, I am not a fan of everyone should be a plumber or get into HVAC.

>> I think he brings up a really good point with what the elites do. Where do they send their kids? They're not sending them to HVAC and plumber school. They're sending them to become intellectuals, to have careers where they lead people and the networking component, the the alumni association who you know becomes such an amplified thing. Also, the percentage of people who actually make really good money in the trades is actually fairly small. Yeah, there's going to be some people out there will say, "Well, I made $100,000 doing this or doing that." But most of the people who are making good money, like truly good money, are people who actually become business owners. I have a a relative here who has a very successful trades type of of business, painting business where he no longer does the painting. He's actually he's now got a cruise. He became he was bluecollar then turned into essentially a white collar job. Now he's managing jobs. He's doing business development. He's billing. he's um doing you know the work of a white collar role and it's a totally different competency and I've asked him about it like what's the the change for you and he says I spent all my time now just chasing after this business and building up reputation and worried about marketing and doing all this stuff rather than actually painting. Most people aren't cut out for being their own bosses either. They think that they are. But when you get into the reality of having to run a business yourself, paying your own insurance, always having to hustle to get your next paycheck coming in, it is a very difficult way to earn a living. People say it's the this fantasy about, well, I'm just gonna be my own boss. I think it's as unreal, it's even more unrealistic than everybody moving into the trades.

Next, this is does not have a uh I'm not going to put the sound on because I'll get a copyright strike, but um just check this out. This is a plumber and I don't know. It look like he's doing some sort of line work. But how many people can actually do this type of work? You can see cockroaches running all over this. I I'm pretty sure this is older than AI. [laughter] Some people say this is AI, but I don't actually don't think that this is. This guy's in a sewer cleaning out something, standing in this nasty stuff, and he's got all these bugs crawling all over him. Now, maybe this is a very drastic example, but I don't think people understand the reality of plumbing. You're going in and doing some of the nastiest work there is. You're going in and unclogging sewer lines. And trust me when I say this, if you have never seen what a or or smelled what a sewer line smells like coming from from the main from your house out to the street, you don't know what you're getting yourself into. That is a very dirty, nasty job. That is not for the faint of heart. And certainly I can just see some software engineer or some somebody who sits behind a desk somewhere like even myself getting into a sword. There is no way that I would do the work that they do. It's just not something that I'm cut out for. It's not something that most people are cut out for. You think your job sucks now? Wait till you're standing as sore with critters crawling all over you and sewage and and nasty nasty stuff leaking everywhere. because that's the reality of plumbing for a lot of people unless you get into new construction plumbing. But the world only needs so much construction and construction industry is slowing down as well.

Then finally, we've got just one quick video of um and then one other final video just the reality of what it's like to actually get a trade job.

>> This is the ultimate guide for young guys wanting to get into the trades. Number one, there is no shortage of tradesmen. Everyone online says that the trades are empty and there's guaranteed work, but this couldn't be further from the truth. We do have a shortage of skilled licensed guys, but in terms of apprentices, there's no shortage whatsoever, and you're going to struggle to find an apprenticeship. Number two, work fluctuates. You're not always guaranteed to have a position in construction because it's one of those industries that fluctuate. Sometimes there's a lot of work going on, and other times there's not so much. For example, where I am, there's no demand for new homes. So, a lot of builders aren't building. Therefore, a lot of us trade guys are out of a job right now. Number three, you'll never get rich as an employee. I feel like this is something I need to put into perspective for a lot of you young guys. A lot of people are fed that narrative that they're going to be making six to seven figures in the trades. And I promise you that will never happen if you stay an employee your entire life. Get out there, learn your craft, and then start your own business. Number four, the physical toll is no joke. Construction looks really easy on camera, but the truth is it takes a big toll on your body. You're going to be working 10-hour days. You're going to be driving long distances, and over time, your body will feel it. So, make sure to take care of yourself.

>> Follow for Mart.

>> Yeah. So, I think he brings up a lot of the same points I've already made. Becoming your own boss is not easy. It it is not a path for most I 99% of people are not cut out to be their own boss. I think 99% of people are not cut out for the physical demands and toll. You're working in the elements. You're out in the you know here we just went through a huge ice storm. You're out there working in frigid conditions. If you're an HVAC person, tell me how how it goes when you have to go out in the blizzard when people's power cuts out or or they're in the summer when it's blistering hot and you're up in an attic crawling around trying to figure out why their AC isn't working. Life is not nearly as glamorous when you're coming home covered in mud, covered in soot, covered in sweat, and your back is killing you because you've been bending over and working in in [clears throat] a confined space all day long. Also, the job prospects. I think that people think that it's easy to get a trade job. It's not easy. You train for years. You have to get an apprenticeship. You have to pay your dues. You start off at low-level wages. You don't just suddenly become an electrician making 80, 90, $100 an hour. those people have worked years to get to that point and oftentimes they have their own business or they're an independent contractor. They're not an employee for somebody else. So, kind of go back to my original point that it's not easy to be your own boss.

So, I think that the trades sound like a great idea for a lot of people. It's the easiest thing to suggest, especially somebody that's successful in the trades. They're going to say, "We'll just become a tradesman as if as if it's a badge of honor for them." And for them, it might be a very valid way to turn a living. But for a majority of intellectual workers, let's just call it, the trades are not a good fit for are not going to be a great fit for most people. Just the way pe people are programmed, the way that they're trained, the way that they operate, the way that they think. And just vice versa, you stick a bluecollar person into a white collar role, they're going to completely sink. You know, you take a a plumber and put them into an Amazon coding room somewhere, they're going to be like deer in headlights. And even if they have the basis of how to actually code, they're not going to be successful in that that pace. It's a totally different kind of work.

My wife and I have often talked about that with like white collar. I'm not physically doing a lot of manual labor at all. In fact, I sit in front of a computer most of my day. But when I'm done with my workday, I come out exhausted because I've I the energy of concentration and idea and talking to people and putting together these things and the stress. It's like it's no, it's just a different kind of stress. One's not better than the other. And honestly, I think the AI's taking both. I think that AI eventually is going to impact both types of roles. So, it's now a matter of us evolving. That's the name of the game. Where do we evolve to? So, jobs are changing. It's okay. We are going to change and evolve with it. This has happened before. We're just going to have to approach things differently is all. It means that you have to be paying attention and adapting just faster. That's the biggest issue for me is that how fast things are changing with AI, how fast things are changing in the workplace. Things are just iterating much quicker. So, you have to be much more adept and, you know, adaptable to the pace at which things are going. But there's still going to be a pathway forward. There's still going to be viable careers. AI even though it may take a lot of the jobs that are traditionally there it is going to create some new jobs but it might require us have to be more fractional thinking. Maybe the idea of a traditional career where you work at a single employer pull a paycheck with benefits is probably going to become less common and that's okay. We just have to adjust how we approach work. We'll look back some year, you know, maybe a decade or two and look at this as a period of just great change where things kind of just shifted into something else, but we'll still have work. We'll still have the ability to do that. So, pay attention to what's going on in the market. Pay attention to this channel. I'm going to try to talk about these trends and where I think things are going, but I just don't think that moving into the trades is a great opportunity for most people.

For somebody that's considering it or have made the shift, let me know what your thoughts are. How's it gone for you? Is it what it's cracked up to be? Is it as easy as as you thought it was or is it harder than you thought it was? Leave a comment. Let me know. Let let the other people know who might be watching this. Anyway, for somebody that's struggling in your career, whether you're entry level or you're further along and considering a career change and you're trying to make sense of all this and put together some direction, that's exactly what I specialize in. I've got a website called a life after layoff and you can go and check it out. It's got free resources on there. There's articles, etc. And I also have some really deep training courses that you can check out that walk through the entire gamut of the start of your career all the way to retirement and every aspect in between from job search to writing resumes to networking and then how to create career strategy because that's the most important one to me that I created a course called the ultimate career blueprint which is the foundation of everything else you do and I don't think that enough people are taking that seriously. So, check that out. And if you need some more private one-on-one help, I do offer some limited coaching opportunities, you can go to my website and you can check out the details on how that works and submit a request there.

Anyway, I hope that this video was as interesting to you as it was to me. I I find this to be a fascinating time that we're living in where things are just evolving and um this is something that I'm going to continue to talk about and pay attention to. So, if you're interested in this kind of content, make sure you follow along. Appreciate you watching. We'll see you in the next one.