A new year begins and with it comes new job skills to acquire or improve. In addition to perfecting the moonwalk or wowing on Instagram with your incredible japanese cotton cheesecake, we are going to discover what skills you should acquire this year to climb the tallest mountain and feel like you are on top of the world.
Whatever our work, it is difficult to escape the changes that are already revolutionizing the world of work. The fourth Industrial Revolution, added to the globalized environment in which any organization is involved, as well as the incorporation of new generations into the world of work, means that the professional skills of employees must also evolve. We must all be agile and prepare for changes that move at a speed never experienced before.
Out-of-the-Box Thinking:
2018 will be a competitive year, especially for companies looking for growth and expansion. These companies need smart and creative employees. Those who are looking for work or want to update themselves to survive must generate innovative ideas and design creative systems to achieve their goals.
According to Margaret Boden in her book The Creative Mind, creativity is the ability to come up with ideas or artifacts that are new and valuable. Ideas, in a broader sense, include concepts, poems , musical compositions, scientific theories, cooking recipes or even jokes, while artifacts are objects such as paintings, sculptures, machinery and ceramics. Considering the lack of engineering solutions to overcome this problem, it seems unlikely that occupations that require a high degree of creative intelligence will be automated in the coming decades.
The skills and techniques of innovative thinking are not only essential for the company, they also help us to resolve conflicts, to develop in new situations and to think about how to adapt to different circumstances.
Organizational Skills:
Organizational skills are a set of competencies that help us plan, implement procedures and achieve the goals set by our organization. They are critical to effectively driving multiple HR initiatives. In addition, these skills also help us to realize the weaknesses of the company and to suggest areas for improvement that can help a better organizational development.
Communication:
Communication skills are key to the success of any human team. This applies from the job interview to managing the daily responsibilities in our position.
When we talk about communication skills, we talk about developing both written and verbal skills to communicate better with our bosses, our colleagues and our clients.
Learnability:
We all face more or less complex problems on a daily basis. Many of them are new and the challenge is to overcome frustration or fear of the unknown, facing situations as a learning opportunity.
The ability to resolve various situations efficiently is vital to the competitiveness of any organization, whether large or small, public or private.
Planning and active listening will help make the learning and problem solving process more likely to be successful. As indicated in this report of Manpower Group constant renewal and learning become crucial for the generation of job opportunities.
Strategic knowledge:
It is the long-term vision of the future of the organization and the plans that are going to be carried out to support that strategy. All employees should know the mission and objectives of the organization, therefore it is extremely important to have communication channels and systems that allow us to transfer information to align the strengths of each employee with the corporate strategy.
Social intelligence:
Another of our competitive advantages with machines are the skills related to intelligence to manage interpersonal relationships, our own emotions and those of others. Human social intelligence is important in a wide range of work tasks, such as those related to negotiation, pursuasion or the ability to care for other people.
Ethics:
The ability to work according to certain moral values is essential, especially in departments in which very sensitive situations can be handled. The professionals in these departments must inspire confidence in all members of the organization and, by extension, in the client (increasingly demanding and connected).
Change management:
Not only adapting will be important, people who are able to lead and manage change by analyzing their environment and making small adjustments all the time will be highly sought after. Does the so-called "Intrapreneurs" sound familiar to you? The most effective professionals must manage any type of change to adapt to it successfully. Sometimes the changes will be promoted by the environment in which our company develops its activity and in others the change will flourish from withintward, such as changes in policies, procedures, or the use of new systems digital.
Cloud Computing, Big Data & Artificial Intelligence:
Companies -of whatever type- are promoting the use of cloud computing and storage, causing an increase in experts in all technologies related to hard & soft systems necessary for cloud services. Digital transformation is progressing at a dizzying pace and those who work in the technology sector know that they have to work hard and sharpen their learning skills to keep up.
On the other hand, Alistair Cox, CEO of the recruitment company Hays, points out that jobs related to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence will not only increase their need for software developers or other STEM professionals (science, technology, engineering & mathematics), but will also lead to a incessant demand for associated soft skills to these technological disciplines such as adaptability, creativity and collaboration, business leadership and other human skills.
Mandarin:
Believe it or not, Mandarin, the dominant language in China, appears in the top 5 searches. The rise of Mandarin as a job search term illustrates the impact the world's second-largest economy is having on the tech industry.
Meditation:
Meditation is like a spinner for a Gen Z kid, it's the panacea for those juggling time and task management while maintaining work-life balance. staff.
Meditation - rest, reading time, leisure, let's call it X - will help us stay focused and calm and thus help us work efficiently by avoiding procrastination. These practices also help our brain to continue nourishing itself to fuel our creativity.
We must not forget that little by little we are going to face (or adapt to!) the robotization of employment which, according to Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne in their study , one of the most influential in this field, predicts that up to a quarter of current jobs will not be done by humans by the year 2025. Although this does not mean that we will be left without work, but rather, as we already reflected here, employees and their companies they will need to adapt to a rapidly changing employment environment, occupying several different positions in their career or their skills will carry over into newly created jobs that we will discover.
Whatever your sector or your job position, we should never stop cultivating ourselves in the humanities. Philosophy, philology, history help us deal more effectively with the challenges of society and technology and give us the necessary skills to think critically. Isn't there a change.org that claims that the lyrics are too over the top?