Students of all high schools and universities plan to study well and to build a good, successful career. But still, they often do not pay attention to various general abilities needed for professional growth. Davos World Economic Forum experts named the key skills required for a successful job in 2020.
Main Skills of 2015 and 2020
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2015 |
2020 |
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1. Complexed problem solving; |
1. Complexed problem solving; |
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2. Interaction with people; |
2. Critical thinking; |
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3. Ability to rule the team; |
3. Creativity; |
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4. Critical thinking; |
4. Ability to rule the team; |
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5. Negotiation skills; |
5. Interaction with people; |
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6. Quality control |
6. Emotional Intelligence |
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7. Customer focus; |
7. Ability to state one’s mind and make decisions; |
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8. Ability to state one’s mind and make decisions; |
8. Customer focus; |
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9. Ability to listen to people and to ask them; |
9. Negotiation skills; |
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10. Creativity; |
10. Mind flexibility (ability to switch from one thought to another). |
What Do that Skills Mean?
If you are a creative student able to think in “out-of-the-box” way, prepare to conquer the world. Modern employers look for those who can think without patterns more and more often. They do not need just executors, they need creators. The employee of the future has to see things “through time” and to promote ideas nobody did before.
Of course, you should not forget about technological skills and emotional intelligence. You need EI not only to understand emotions, intentions and motivation of other people, but to be able to lead them where needed.
One of top skills of 2020 is cognitive flexibility (or “mind flexibility”): the skill of thinking over a few things simultaneously. It is an interesting fact, that this point was not that important in 2015.
5 of 10 skills in the list refer to communication with people, ability to rule, understand and negotiate. Four more skills are connected to brain features: ability to make decisions, to generate ideas and to be creative. The future is the period when your brain, emotions and development would become the main value. If you do not know what to do during your leisure time, investigate people’s characters and needs, and enrich your intelligence. That is what can bring you huge dividends in 2020 career.
The Future Belongs to Subjects
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says, that giant companies will have to spend huge costs to re-educate their employees till 2020. At the same time, in fields of science, architecture, engineering, mathematics and technology there will happen a real fight for talents.
As a result, this will lead to the highest competition in these fields. For those students who didn’t choose their profession yet, experts recommend orienting on the subject field united by STEM acronym (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).
Digital Revolution: Turning Point for Labor Market
Technologies are about to “eat” more and more job positions from year to year. A part of office clerks will obligatory be replaced by robots. Digital revolution will cause a fundamental shift on the labor market.
Though any job will have a digital component in it in near future, this does not mean everyone has to know computer science excellently. Technologies will be helpful when you’ll gain and improve skills required for your 2020 career.
“This revolution will divide people into winners and losers. Our task is to lower the quantity of those who lost”, - Paul Kagame, the President of Ruanda. He says, technology was the reason why a small republic in Eastern Africa could start its development in 10 latest years. Similar processes happen in all developing countries.
If to speak about technologies, there is a “Star Wars” setting analogy here. You know how you can use “Force”. If you do good – you are one of Jedi’s. If you’re evil – you are on the Dark Side with the Empire. The choice is yours.