The traditional career ladder is dying, and we shouldn’t mourn it 
As young people enter the workforce, maybe the response to an unpredictable world is an equally unpredictable and multidisciplinary career.

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“So, what are your plans after graduation?”

I’m typically hit with this question at family dinners as all eyes fall on me expectantly. The question used to be met with one-word answers: doctor, teacher, engineer. One profession, encapsulated in just two or three syllables, that could carry on for decades.

Now, I get asked this question at career fairs or networking conversations, usually by someone who just introduced themselves with a complex, multi-syllabled job title I had never heard of. Suddenly, answering with a single word feels outdated. 

For generations, a career was imagined as a ladder. You’d pick a rung to start on, climb steadily upward, and hope that somewhere near the top you would find professional success waiting for you. A degree led to an industry, an entry-level position led to a promotion, and years of loyalty led to a pension and comfortable retirement. 

Recently, the rungs are moving while we, as students about to enter the job market, are still learning how to climb the ladder.  The change is more than simply generational restlessness. The work of planning and pursuing our careers itself is transforming beneath our feet. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report estimates 39% of workers’ existing skill sets will become outdated by 2030. Preparing for one profession and refining it over the next forty years cannot realistically set us up for our entire working lives anymore.

When I began my studies at the University of Toronto (UofT), I chose biology as my major and English and biomedical communications as my minors. They occupied different columns on my transcript, so I assumed they belonged in different parts of my life. Biology was the practical path toward healthcare while the other two were simply hobbies dressed up as electives. 

Then the boundaries between my programs started to disappear. In my first year, a new required course appeared on the biology curriculum titled “Introduction to Biological Data”. Suddenly, a world that only explored organisms and body systems now included algorithms and numbers. Subjects that once occupied different shelves were starting to lean into one another. 

In my upper years, that imagined distinction blurred even more. Research for my biology degree focused on health policy, and questions about the human body became questions about the systems surrounding it. What looked like changing directions was really an accumulation of different perspectives.

I think that is why young people—now more than ever—hesitate when asked what they want to be. Part of that hesitancy comes from having to navigate a world with complex, intersectional problems and no easy solution in sight; problems that generation rarely belong to just one discipline. Healthcare needs designers as much as it needs clinicians; climate change requires scientists, economists, and policymakers; and artificial intelligence (AI) is both an ethical and technical conversation. The innovative minds responding to increasingly complex challenges rarely draw solutions from one discipline alone. Their greatest strength is often the ability to translate and move between disciplines. Maybe predictable, linear careers aren’t what this world needs anymore.

My master’s in innovation management reflects this change. My peers and I were encouraged to pick a function, such as project management, research, operations, or strategy. By choosing this, the same skill can be packed into a suitcase and carried across industries and geographies. 

Increasingly, this is what the labour market appears to reward. Employers consistently rank analytical thinking, creative problem-solving, resilience, and flexibility among the most sought-after skills. More than specialization or expertise, they value people that can apply knowledge in unfamiliar contexts. 

As careers become less tied to a single industry, it makes sense why young people are less willing to define themselves by one. More than one in three employed young Canadians reported they were somewhat or very likely to look for a job in a different industry the following year. Changing direction might not be a sign that they don’t know where they are going; it might be something that happens when the world itself keeps changing at a pace faster than it takes to build linear careers. 

I believe we should imagine our future career planning less as a ladder and more like a map with roads that split, disappear, and reappear somewhere unexpectedly. A pivot no longer erases the road behind it and skills accumulate rather than expire. The year spent learning to communicate becomes useful in strategy; an education in science becomes the foundation for informed policymaking and analysis; and experience in one industry becomes the lens through which we understand and innovate another. 

I find freedom in a multidisciplinary career. As a student, I no longer have to choose between pursuing science or creative writing and as a professional, I can leave an industry without necessarily leaving behind everything I had built and learnt. 

But that freedom also exists in an economy that does not always make change a choice. Adaptability is empowering when chosen, but becomes exhausting when expected. Right now, our labour market rewards flexibility and  demands constant reskilling, turning curiosity into another certification and lifelong learning into another line on a resume. The freedom to change direction becomes the pressure to always be changing direction in order to remain employed and economically viable. 

Young Canadians are entering a difficult labour market, with university graduates facing harder transitions to stable employment and rising housing costs making it difficult to relocate or accept lower-paid opportunities for valuable experience. 

This is where we need to distinguish between flexibility and instability. Young people should be able to move between industries and pursue multidisciplinary careers because their interests and skills evolve, rather than because economic conditions leave them no other choice. A multidisciplinary career should expand our choices and passions instead of becoming another requirement to stay afloat. 

I see the value of that flexibility in my own journey. Biology, communications, health policy, and innovation management once seemed like separate paths. Now, I draw on all of them as I pursue a career in healthcare innovation.  

I think that is where the traditional career ladder fails us. It forces us to climb toward one fixed destination and stepping sideways means losing progress. But the careers the new generation is building differ, as the skills we gain travel with us even when the industry or role does not. 

I still do not have a one-word answer when someone asks what I want to be. My answers simply reflect the fact that I am building a career for a world that no longer fits neatly into one profession.

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