Why industry values employability more than you think
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Our world of work is constantly changing. The skills and knowledge learned in our early schooling years, or perhaps a qualification earned in our early twenties, will no longer be enough. According to research, learners are finding themselves overqualified, under-skilled, and in some cases, both.
Technological advances are fuelling social, economic, and environmental challenges, so the world around learners is changing as rapidly as the wider world of work, which makes constantly evolving one’s workforce skills package a mission critical proposition.
The findings show that today’s learners no longer possess the skills required to meet the job market’s requirements and are unable to clearly communicate the skills they do have in ways that can boost their employability prospects. While this is alarming, there’s a solution to the skills gap problem, and it lies in the hands of the learner.
Through Pearson’s Future of Skills research, conducted in partnership with Nesta and the Oxford Martin School, we found that the future of work is far from a doom and gloom dystopia, where headlines of robots taking our jobs run along the news tickers at the bottom of our television screens.
It is instead the very things that make us human that will in turn make us more employable, such as things like being able to think outside the box to solve a problem, creativity skills to discover new efficiencies, or the ability to display leadership traits to drive outcomes, which are said to be missing from the talent pool leading to a skills gap in the wider employment marketplace. And more specifically, as the research suggests, these are the skills that are most in demand:
- The teaching and learning of oneself and others
- Understanding nuanced systems, whether those be human relationships, or the interface between humans and machines Creativity, such as originality and the ability to generate ideas, and be able to think flexibly
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Today’s job titles and industries that we work in are not likely to be dramatically different from those we would recognise today, however what’s constantly changing is the set of skills we need to remain employable, to boost our career progression prospects and the potential for professional growth.
It’s important for learners and today’s workers to understand that the growth and employment patterns will no longer be linear — the traditional understanding of professional development that involves the idea of climbing a proverbial ladder is now redundant. Employers want learners to think flexibly and laterally, and to be constantly upskilling to meet the demands of their industry, and the marketplace at large.
The way employers make their hiring decisions today is evolving, and no longer can you merely walk into a job just because of your qualification. It’s your soft skills, such as time management, collaboration, and project management, that help you stand out in the talent pool. Ultimately, these are skills that are now highly valued by hiring managers.
Further to what the research highlights, we will continue to see more individuals opting for self-employment avenues, such as gig work and freelance opportunities, to diversify the work they do, and to rebrand into a more modern professional identity.
Moving forward, industry will place a high value on the skills learners add to their repertoire today more than the qualifications earned straight after traditional schooling.
Your current employer, perhaps your future employer, or the hiring manager at your dream job indeed value your human skills, and it’s these 21st skills that now fiercely rival the value of the certificates you have hanging on your wall. This doesn’t mean that you no longer need qualifications, but instead, it means you need to bolster those credentials with a suite of soft skills to be truly competitive today and beyond.
And so, what this means for us is that we need to identify that we have an opportunity to reimagine our job roles and responsibilities, and if we embody a lifelong learning attitude then we’ll set ourselves up with the skills and human tools we need for a successful, sustainable future.
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