Final Kenexa World Conference Keynote Speaker: Mike Rowe, Creator and Executive Producer, Discovery Channel’s Emmy® Nominated Series “DIRTY JOBS WITH MIKE ROWE”
By Mark Derowitsch
October 15, 2012
Mike Rowe is a self-confessed Human Resources nightmare. But his admiration and respect for dirty jobs – and the hard-working men and women who do them – educated and entertained a room full of HR professionals and experts to close out Kenexa World Conference Orlando.
Rowe believes there’s a growing disconnect between society and work, and one way to turn economic problems around is for society to embrace the trades. In other words, society can’t look at skilled labor as a career alternative anymore.
When business is personal to you, every job is valued.
The key question to ask yourself is, how personal is business to you?
So when Rowe, the creator, executive producer and host of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, performs a “dirty job,” it’s personal.
Like when he’s working on a crab boat in the middle of the Bering Sea and the deck is icy and he’s trying to wrestle an 800-pound crab pots. Like when he’s changing a mega light bulb on top of a tall suspension bridge. Like when he’s mining for opal in Australia 85-feet below the surface of the earth in a tunnel the size of a manhole.
The key question to ask yourself is, how personal is business to you?
“Our country has become disconnected with a critical part of our workforce, and we need to start to value these jobs and the people who do them,” Rowe said. “We all have a stake in it – I have a stake in the game – every time we turn on a light switch or flush a toilet.”
So whether he’s changing a light bulb or castrating sheep (you’ll have to watch the show to get the details about that one), Rowe values work. And that’s not an HR nightmare.
Read the complete Kenexa World Conference Orlando blogs – HERE
2 Comments
There is a trade you have left out of the linup Mike, that of the graphic artist. Sure, you installed a billboard, but did you bother to check out the amount of blood, sweat and tears it took to design the thing? How about what it takes to do courtroom illustrations, stoeyboards, comic books, and every other type of artwork that is used (by Discovery and all other channels) as well?
Difference of opinion here. Mike, so you don’t fit into an HR office setting. I’m sure you’re not good at meetings or filling out forms. But I think you have figured out what human resources really are.
Human resources figure out new ways to do things, and they keep the infrastructure running, and they take risks, and they learn new work.
Plus you have gone on to celebrate human resources, and put your voice and energy into showing the rest of us what they are.