Fighting the end of jobs as we know it

Grab Your Career by the Long Tail and Make Your Own Job Opportunities

College graduates are increasingly faced with untenable or unsatisfactory “traditional” job opportunities, requiring them to “invent” their own career paths.  Whereas many, if not most, undergraduate business degrees either treat this issue with secondary importance, or skirt it altogether, the College of Law and Business (CLB) is embracing it in its international BA in Business Administration that focuses on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, giving students the tools to MAKE good jobs for themselves instead of trying to find employment that is mediocre at best.

The Long Tail and Entrepreneurship:

In 2006, Chris Anderson, the then editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, published “The Long Tail”, which states that demand is increasingly shifting away from a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) toward a vast number of niches “in the tail”.  Over the years, owing to technology, automation, and mobility this phenomenon has spread into many other arenas, perhaps most importantly, into the job market. All of the aforementioned means that companies have great freedom in hiring the needed skill-set, often from anywhere in the globe, leading to a cost-based outsourcing work model and a significant reduction in wages.

However, the Long Tail works the other way as well: because of the “movement towards niches”, the opportunities to specialize and the means to develop and sell your product and/or offer a service have never been greater.

In a conversation with Professor Gal Raz, dean of CLB’s business school, he told us

“Simply put, competition for jobs today is global and fierce, giving employers the upper hand, and making it difficult, at best, for college graduates to find secure, well-paid and gratifying jobs, regardless of how well their degrees look on paper.  At the same time, talented young people have easy access to everything they need to become successful entrepreneurs and to take destiny back into their own hands.”

credit: Shlomo Mizrachi
photo of CLB class

Helping Students Take Back Control of their Careers

As you might expect from an institution in a country well-known for innovation and technological advancement, the College of Law and Business is not sitting on its laurels in the face of this monumental paradigm shift, and is strengthening its business degree curriculum to address the ever-shrinking job market, beginning with its Business BA program, taught completely in English in Israel, the Start-Up Nation.  The program is structured around the students, fortifying their aptitude to strike out on their own. Courses are taught in “quick” quarter-based semesters, utilizing the Case-Method approach, by which students are given the opportunity to develop their managerial acumen by thinking and deciding for themselves in simulated real-world scenarios.  In addition, students may partake in internships with recognized, international companies, and in the final year, help to build new ventures in the College’s startup incubator.

 

Professor Raz summarizes: “Israel is a hotbed for small businesses, startups, and, in general, for individuals or teams to pursue independent careers and activities. It is the perfect place to learn entrepreneurship.  Graduates of this degree program will be able to create their own jobs or join the managerial team of a startup.”  He continues: “In addition, because of the College’s social conscience and focus on social justice and activism, the Global BBA emphasizes sustainability and social responsibility, opening doors to the 4th ’for-benefit’” sector, and putting forth graduates who can be leaders and catalysts for social change.”

CLB is hosting an Open House event on January 18, 2018 where Professor Gal Raz will be speaking about the startup incubator and the BA degree.

The college of law and business in Ramat Gan