Project

• Overview / Forward

Veterans returning from the war faced economic uncertainty and many used the GI Bill to retrain and retool in order to find employment, sometimes with the help of headhunters (who worked for individuals). Resumes became an standard for profiling yourself. Still, many were left out. (see the milestone #5 from the 1940’s decade about how the GI Bill was misused and excluded African Americans)

The most abundant jobs in this decade were blue collar- usually in agriculture, manufacturing, or refineries. Professional services jobs were increasing quickly…for men. Women, unfortunately, were expected to return to the role of mother and homemaker with the recognition they gained during the war years too often erased as opportunities for many positions were no longer available.

This was also a decade of civil rights marches for equal opportunity.

1950’s Milestones:

• 1951 – Shaker Recruitment Advertising (Shaker Recruitment Marketing) and Nationwide Advertising (NAS) founded.1
• 1952 – McCarran-Walter Act passed.2
• 1953 – McKinsey hires its first two MBA graduates into ‘Middle Management’3
• 1954 – Hodes Advertising (Symphony) Founded.4
• 1954 – Brown vs Board of Education, Topeka ends [legally] segregation in education.5
• 1955 – American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) created.6
• 1956 – Federal-Aid Highway Act passed.7
• 1957 – The College Placement Council (CPC), forerunner of NACE founded.8
• 1958 – The National Defense Education Act.9
• 1959 – Landrum-Griffin Act passed.10
• ‘Knowledge Worker,’ coined by Peter Drucker.11

References

1. The rapid rise of help-wanted ads in the classified sections of newspapers post WWII established a new industry of specialized marketing agencies. Shaker Advertising, Nationwide Advertising and Hodes were three of the half dozen firms that pioneered this field in the 1950’s by supplying employers and newspapers with professionally written in-column and display ads on tight deadlines to attract job seeker’s attention. Shaker Recruitment Marketing celebrated its 70th year in 2021 with a comprehensive video history of recruitment marketing in the US (see link below)
   AboutShaker
   https://shaker.com/celebrate70/
   About NAS • NAS Recruitment Innovation
2. The McCarran-Walter Act removed previously established barriers that excluded immigrants from nations such as Japan and China. These countries were now assigned very small quotas.
   McCarran-Walter Act goes into effect, revising immigration laws
3. Arguably Mckenzie started a trend to move up younger business educated graduates over older more experienced but, less business educated professionals, leading to an MBA becoming the most popular degree. This move was considered brilliant after WWII but led has led to an imbalance in recent years as often noted by Professor Peter Cappelli at Wharton
4. Hodes Advertising was initially founded in 1954, formerly incorporated in 1970 and eventually merged with Omnicom, the world’s largest agency before being sold off to Symphony. They started one of the earliest job boards, Career Mosaic, in the mid 90’s
   https://bit.ly/3u0kxGI
5. The U.S. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously May 17,1954 (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and was inherently unequal.
   https://www.britannica.com/event/Brown-v-Board-of-Education-of-Topeka
6. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) merged into the largest federation of unions in the United States representing more than 12 million active and retired workers.
   AFL–CIO
7. The Federal Highway Act authorized the building of the US highway system. It allowed industries to grow by delivering products quicker, but also made travel to and from cities simpler — enabling “commuting” from the suburbs as well as allowing firms to relocate to the suburbs.
   A Road System’s Unintended Consequences
8. 33 delegates from regional college associations met at Ohio State University in 1957. They created the name College Placement Council, Inc. (CPC). The Council was organized as a federation of the seven regional associations in the United States. The University and College Placement Association of Canada, later to become CACEE-Canadian Association of Career Educators and Employers-became a Charter Associate member of the Council. In 1995, CPC changed its name to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)
   NACE Organization History
9. During the Cold War, Americans worried that US schools were not producing enough scientists and engineers to compete with the Soviets. Spurred by the launch of Sputnik, The National Defense Education Act ensured federal funding for low-cost student loans, where public opinion had been against higher education funding previously.
   US Senate: Sputnik Spurs Passage of the National Defense Education Act
10. The Landrum-Griffin Act granted equal union membership rights and protected them from unfair practices by unions, including members’ right to vote in elections.
    1959 Landrum-Griffin Act
11. The terms knowledge work and knowledge worker first appeared in The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959) by Peter Drucker. Drucker later (1966) coined the term ‘knowledge worker’ in The Effective Executive and, in 1999, he suggested that “the most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.
    Knowledge worker