Sunday 14 August 2011

10 skills you need to survive the job market

via Guardian careers: The Careers Blog from guardian.co.uk by Clare Whitmell

The Future Work Skills report (PDF 19pp) predicts that six trends will dominate the job market over the next 10 years. To be successful, employees will need to acquire 10 key skills.

Sense-making: while computers can automate certain tasks or jobs, they can't perform reasoned analysis, which is where humans excel.
Social intelligence: working effectively with large groups of people involves the ability to adapt language and behaviour.
Adaptive thinking: finding solutions to unexpected situations, whether these occur in high-skill professional / technical roles or in lower-skill roles.
Cross-cultural competency: being able to work not just in different linguistic or cultural settings, but in groups including different generations or people with varied skills and working styles.
Virtual collaboration: adopting strategies for virtual team working, such as providing immediate feedback or staged challenges.
Computational thinking: with increased data comes the need to understand it, and to make decisions based on it.
New media literacy: producing content with non-text communication, such as video or audio.
Cognitive load management: using filtering techniques and tools to deal with the information overload caused by huge amounts of data.
Transdisciplinarity: working longer or in multiple careers means having a deep understanding in one field, as well as familiarity with a broader range of disciplines.
Design mindset: as physical environments affect mood, the ability to plan work environments for different tasks or work processes will allow employees to perform better.

What does this mean for today’s graduates?

Read the answers here

Hazel’s comment:
It’s not only graduates, whether initial entrants to the job market or returners with higher qualifications, who should be thinking about future jobs. People of any age need to be aware of the changes taking place in the world of work and adapt themselves to take advantage of the current conditions. 

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