Competences are a key factor of competitiveness and employability. In fact, structural changes such as globalization and technological progress require higher- level skills, increasingly relevant to the demands of the labor market. Such skills are necessary to guarantee productivity growth and the availability of quality jobs. The relationship between education and employability has always been intertwined with a country’s social structure, but this becomes even more significant in periods of crisis, such as the one we currently face.
The datas collected by the International Labor Organization (ILO) reveals that, during the first half of 2020, real unemployment surged to an average of 6.6%, generating an estimated loss of working hours equivalent to 495 million jobs in the second quarter of 2020. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) expects the unemployment rate to double by the end of the year.
For these and many other reasons, it is becoming increasingly important to focus on competences that are directly linked to the demands of the employment market and to invest in higher-level and specialized training. In fact, in today’s context of crisis, with the quest for the “job of the future” and technological innovation, postgraduate education definitely plays a key role in defining young professionals’ employability level.
Furthermore, it is worth highlighting that the global economic context, inevitably shaped by the uncertain post-Covid scenarios, has been radically modified on a worldwide scale, both in terms of employability levels and the characteristics of the employment market. The Covid-19 health emergency has greatly accelerated the future of work. Millions of workers have experienced profound changes and transformations in their lives, including aspects such as welfare and productivity.
This context evidenciate the following points:
What type of training is in the highest demand in an environment of lifelong learning?
Competences are a key factor of competitiveness and employability. In fact, structural changes such as globalization and technological progress require higher- level skills, increasingly relevant to the demands of the labor market. Such skills are necessary to guarantee productivity growth and the availability of quality jobs. The relationship between education and employability has always been intertwined with a country’s social structure and this becomes even more significant in periods of crisis, such as the one that we are currently facing.
The Key Features of Modern Education
Many people and communities have fallen behind or, in most cases, have not been able to seize the opportunities offered by the globalization. They highlight the huge, persistent digital gap that is creating increasingly pronounced socioeconomic inequalities in the new generations. In Italy, one of the main problems is the education format, which is still poorly connected to the professional world. Moreover, other issues include a high school dropout rate, low education quality and level, insufficient focus on STEM subjects and inadequate investments.
Therefore in the future, it is essential to focus on three features of modern education:
Basic Education
Investing in basic education means focusing on all the aspects that foster the growth of a mature personality, able to learn continuously and see the study process as a permanent part of their professional life. In this context, employers and, consequently, headhunters must not only think of the short-term characteristics of a specific candidate but, more importantly, what choices, competence, know-how, and human capital will enable survival in the medium to long term.
Infinite Education
Companies must think of education not as an expense to limit or sustain only because “required by law”, but as a more important line of strategical investment, designed to increment competetivity in the working environment. This education must be continuous and permanent. In this sense is fundamental to not only focus on university education, but also on further opportunities, like postgraduate degrees, master or refresher classes, coaching and mentorship activities. In the modern concept of “education of the future” it is necessary to rethink the very concept of learning, identifying it as a permanent element to accompany a person in every phase of his or her life.
Team Multidisciplinarity and the T-Model
Multidisciplinarity is not a case of “knowing a little bit of everything”, but rather this concept should underpin the achievement of excellence through a combination of strong, complementary competences in multifaceted teams, resilient and well equipped to tackle any kind of professional challenge effectively. To achieve this, we must build T-shaped educational paths or, in other words, models based on an in-depth, solid vertical line that defines the person’s professionalism (e.g., IT Engineer, Orthopedic Specialist, Enologist, Web Designer, etc.), and another upper horizontal line that allows the person to interact with a variety of experts coming from other cultures bearing new knowledge and, therefore, facilitating further competence development.
In this way, the T-model combines two fundamental concepts: multidisciplinarity and multiculturalism, both essential in the context of globalization. A key factor in this horizontal line is soft skills, the apparently non-core comptences that are nonetheless.
If you are curious about this year’s trends, the 2022 employment report is out.
