Always Be One Step Ahead: 7 Competencies You Must Have for Future Jobs

The concept of the future no longer sounds as far away as it used to. Advances in technology that excite us today will be available to all of us in a few years. While the change is so fast, the competencies required for the business world are also different. A job position can come to a completely different point in the last five years, different competencies may be required from the candidates sought for this position.

Do you think you are talented for the professions of the future? If your answer is yes, let’s keep up with this change and take a look at the competencies you need to have.

1) Complex Problem Solving

The future will bring problems you’ve never seen before in a world you’ve never experienced before. In order to offer the right solutions to these problems, you need to be able to think outside the box and have the mental flexibility to gain different perspectives by constantly arranging the parts that make up the problem. This skill is highly developable and takes a lot of practice. The more problems you solve, the more flexible your brain becomes!

2) Critical Thinking

At the point where technology has come, most of the work that is continuous is automated. But robots and machines cannot think critically about the development of these automated jobs. At this point, good minds that have developed critical thinking skills will be needed. To achieve a successful level of critical thinking, you need to constantly analyze various situations, consider multiple solutions, and make instant decisions through logic and reasoning.

3) Interdisciplinary Knowledge

Your future career will require you to gain knowledge in and from many different fields to come up with creative solutions to future problems. It is not as difficult a skill to acquire as one might think. Start by reading as much as possible about anything and everything that interests you.

4) High Adaptability

We live in a complex and uncertain world. So it’s important to be able to adapt and redefine one’s strategy. Richard Paul & Dillion Beach “Critical Thinking: How to Prepare Students for a Fast-Changing World” In their book, they describe how our education and work mindset has traditionally been designed for a routine and fixed procedure: “We learned how to do something once, and we did it again and again. Learning meant making something a habit. But what is learning to constantly relearn? Being comfortable with constant relearning?” This is called “Adaptation”. We need to be agile and highly adaptable individuals against the changing world.

5) Creativity

Although it is controversial, the discussions that robots will take our place are increasing day by day. Here’s a fact to mention: the more creative you are, the less likely you are to lose your job to a robot! While robots are better at calculating and diagnosing problems than you are, they aren’t very good at creating original content, thinking outside the box, or being abstract. Nor will they be well for a very long time.

6) STEM & SMAC

Be in close contact with the concepts of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) according to the field you want to specialize in. Although STEM may seem like today’s topics, it will form the basis of the future. SMAC, on the other hand, contains the foundations that make the digital world a digital world. Have these skills, develop them and strive to become an expert in one of the sub-branches.

7) Curiosity and Imagination

Curiosity is the driving force of new knowledge and innovation. Being constantly curious as a child is the most enjoyable and productive way of acquiring new knowledge. Curiosity triggers knowledge, knowledge triggers insights. Anticipating breakthroughs in your business and executing processes that make sense with the steps taken also require a strong imagination. Albert Einstein’s quote comes to mind here: “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.

In the light of all these narratives, curiosity and imagination will be indispensable for those who build the future. Those who can imagine the future will create!