Larry Quinlan, Global Chief Information Officer of Deloitte, sat for an interview with the Diplomatic Courier at "Talent Mobility & the Future of Jobs: The World in 2050".
[Diplomatic Courier:] If you could submit one idea to help address youth unemployment, what would it be?
[Larry Quinlan:] I think there are one or two things that I would certainly want to try. The first is getting young people involved in the workplace early. I had an advantage—I had a father who was a serial entrepreneur. So I had a series of jobs while I was in middle school and high school, and it really taught me the value of getting into the workplace. I have a daughter in high school now and she’s doing an internship, and she’s getting to understand what happens in the workplace. So I think the more we can connect young people before they graduate to the workplace, through internships, job programs in the summer, etc, I think they’ll have a really healthy attitude towards the workplace, healthy attitude towards work. And it will allow employers to see firsthand the value that young people bring.
I think also, perhaps the second idea is that we also have to in some cases revamp parts of our university systems, and really allow organizations like ours—businesses—to impact what happens in universities so that we can end up with a much closer alignment between business and academia.
a global affairs media network
Larry Quinlan of Deloitte: On Addressing Youth Unemployment
February 19, 2014
Larry Quinlan, Global Chief Information Officer of Deloitte, sat for an interview with the Diplomatic Courier at "Talent Mobility & the Future of Jobs: The World in 2050".
[Diplomatic Courier:] If you could submit one idea to help address youth unemployment, what would it be?
[Larry Quinlan:] I think there are one or two things that I would certainly want to try. The first is getting young people involved in the workplace early. I had an advantage—I had a father who was a serial entrepreneur. So I had a series of jobs while I was in middle school and high school, and it really taught me the value of getting into the workplace. I have a daughter in high school now and she’s doing an internship, and she’s getting to understand what happens in the workplace. So I think the more we can connect young people before they graduate to the workplace, through internships, job programs in the summer, etc, I think they’ll have a really healthy attitude towards the workplace, healthy attitude towards work. And it will allow employers to see firsthand the value that young people bring.
I think also, perhaps the second idea is that we also have to in some cases revamp parts of our university systems, and really allow organizations like ours—businesses—to impact what happens in universities so that we can end up with a much closer alignment between business and academia.
