This article originally appeared in our Autumn 2023 Property West Cork supplement – read the full supplement by visiting southernstar.ie/epaper
Data from the Future of Jobs Report 2023 suggests that skills including creative thinking, working well with others, flexibility, and a desire for lifelong learning are high on most employer’s wishlists when it comes to recruiting staff, especially with artificial intelligence making a mark on the jobs market.
DISRUPTION has been the name of the game since the digital revolution began about thirty years ago. Wave after wave of new skills and new sets of rules have been hitting industry and society, shifting the sands each time beneath employer and employee.
The Swiss-based World Economic Forum (a lobbying group for large international-operating companies) conducts regular surveys to see where industry is headed takes a close look at what companies believe will be important skills now and in the future.
Back in 2016, The WEF conducted a worldwide survey of large companies, asking them if they thought that there would be a disruption to skills in the coming five years. Just over one third of the companies (35%) responded yes. In the latest survey published this year, that figure has risen to 44%.
It indicates a growing realisation and/or concern amongst business leaders that skill sets are more and more evolutionary and changing in nature – so much so that close to half of them believe that almost by the time you’re finished a degree course, your instruction is already becoming obsolete.
Of course, it depends on what industry you’re working in and what educational course you’re pursuing. If you’re a baker, nothing much is likely to change for the next century but if you’re working in IT (as more and more people seem to be these days), then you’re always be likely to be learning while you work or working while you learn.
Core skills
With the myriad courses available now and with so many colleges turned squarely towards industrial trends rather than enrichment of grey matter, it’s worth considering what are the core skills that employers are looking for. What are the main things that you need to learn to get on in life and to help you find a good job, no matter what the latest trends?
It may surprise many to learn that, in general companies place a lesser value on management skills, engagement skills and technology skills and even ethics than on the more valued skills such as cognition, self-efficacy and working with others.
The top five core skills as valued by industry are (in order of merit from one to five):
- Analytical thinking.
- Creative thinking.
- Resilience/flexibility/agility.
- Motivation/self-awareness.
- Curiosity/lifelong learning.
Technological literacy comes next in the charts.
If you do have an idea of where you’d like to work, hone in on the skills most relevant to those areas and the ones most valued in your chosen sector.
In the media entertainment and sports sectors, for example, employers value the skills of empathy, active listening, dependability and attention to detail at half the global rate – a trend which is reversed non-governmental organisations. Environmental stewardship skills are highly valued in agriculture, forestry and fishery and in the chemical and advanced materials industry. And, in an era where processes in the work- place are becoming increasingly automated, there is a growing value on creative thinking.
Creative vs analytical
In fact, when asked what skills will become more important in the future, companies showed clear preference for creative thinking over analytical thinking. After all, if the future looks as though the analytical thinking is going to be done by robots and artificial intelligence, then the emphasis for success and staying ahead of the game is surely going to rely more and more on the uniquely human quality of creativity.
The waters are a little muddy however because according to the most recent report by the WEF, in terms of upskilling right now, industry still believes that the most important area to invest in is in analytical thinking, followed closely by creative thinking.
On the up
However, the fastest-growing areas that an increasing number of employers see as vital for the future are those of AI and big data as well as leadership and social influence. Big data analytics describes the process of uncovering trends, patterns, and correlations in large amounts of raw data to help make data-informed decisions.
After creative thinking and analytical thinking, therefore, these two areas are the ones in which one should be interested if hoping to become more employable in the future.
The best approach to keeping oneself relevant to employers is by closing the gap between the high-speed evolution going on in the workplace and the catch-up game being played by traditional educational establishments.
For this, online learning platforms are usually very effective. In fact, a traditional solid arts-degree-type of education coupled with some up-to-date skills learned online can often prove a strong combination.
By doing so, one can have the kinds of core skills that are so valued by employers in virtually all fields, while at the same time keeping oneself at the forefront of a fast-evolving workplace.
AI appears to have the greatest potential to shift and re-shape workplace demands. In the future, the capacity to be ready for and willing to change are the strongest attributes one can hope for and imaginative skills combined with an ability to keep up to date are, broadly speaking, the key attributes of any employee.
