Standing out during an interview isn't easy in the highly competitive marketplace. Photo/123RF.
Standing out during an interview isn't easy in the highly competitive marketplace. Photo/123RF.
Forget the three "Rs" of reading, writing and arithmetic, if you want to find and keep a job in the brave new world of the digital economy you'll have to master the four "Cs".
They are the essential qualities everyone will increasingly need to thrive in their careers, employment experts have said. And if you want to almost guarantee you'll always have a job, healthcare could be the sector to aim for.
An event in Perth organised by think tank the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) brought together specialists from education and business to examine how to build a future-proofed workforce.
Amid fears technology will decimate the workplace, sometimes called "robot anxiety", Julie Hobbs, the chief executive officer of FutureNow — the Western Australian Creative and Leisure Industries Training Council — was less pessimistic.
"I like to reframe it from 'the future of work' to 'the work of the future', and there's going to be plenty of it," Hobbs told the event last month.
"What's really happening is jobs are changing, the routine parts changed by automation, and that's allowed for greater efficiency."
The Four Cs
Hobbs used the example of accountancy, a sector that is seen as ripe for a digital takeover: "All of the stuff that gets done by cloud-based programmes means the accountant or bookkeepers can provide more of an analytical and advisory role, and we're seeing that across a whole range of industries."
The more a job could be fashioned to be "human-centric" the more likely it was to survive.
Annie Fogarty, the executive chairperson of the Fogarty Foundation, an organisation that invests in innovative education projects, said the education system wasn't keeping up with what employers were looking for in staff. And that's where the four Cs come in.
"Employers are looking for people who are adaptive, who can keep on learning and taking on new skills and these require interpersonal attributes," Fogarty said.
"We're calling these 'competencies'. There's lots of discussion about what competencies young people will need and the OECD have distilled this down to the four Cs," she said.
Collaboration is integral to success in the modern workplace. Photo/123RF.
The first was creativity: "This is not just new ideas but how present ideas can be used in different contexts and how we take these ideas and make things happen."
The second C was critical thinking and problem solving; the third collaboration: "Problems are only going to become more complex, therefore solutions will need much more multidisciplinary working with people across sectors."
The final, and probably most key C, was communication: "This means employees will have to effectively articulate ideas and describe how they are going to take them from screen to the real world."
'The change is phenomenal'
"Universities are looking past the ATAR scores to see other competencies and other activities that younger people have done to see if that makes them suitable for their courses," Fogarty said.
"While employers are looking past having a degree and instead at the whole portfolio of all the different things (a potential employer) can bring to a job."
Forgarty said a new "education ecosystem" was needed that would bring together school, universities, TAFE colleges and businesses to see how each could support the other to ensure graduates were prepared for the changing world of work.
A good customer experience remains integral. Photo/123RF.
It was a premise supported by Rio Tinto human resources vice president Nicky Firth.
"The rate of change is just phenomenal. We're grappling with how do we retune our intake, what are the skills we need, things like data science mechatronics rather than just traditional disciplines?" Firth said.
"(We are also looking for) graduates that are learning in environments that are mimicking the workplace, so working alongside technology and data to get work done in a complex, fast environment."
