EDUCATION
It’s complicated by the fact that as businesses change, the way our working lives pan out is likely to be similarly radically reshaped. One book, The 100-Year Life by academics Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, spells out the impact that longer lifespans will have on careers. There’ll be no more working for a couple of organisations, reaching your mid-to-late 60s and sashaying gracefully from daily commute to deadheading the roses. Instead, we’ll be spending up to four decades in later life embarking on at least one new career – and possibly several more. “This continual reinventing yourself, studying again, playing a musical instrument professionally or travelling or becoming involved in charity work, that portfolio career will become much more common,” says Dr Stiles. A major focus for discussion among experts in the field, not surprisingly, is who is best placed to take advantage of this bright and slightly terrifying sounding future. Specialists, while brilliant in their own field, can be outflanked by the rapid rise of
technology, sparking away in their own highly exclusive little silo and overtaken by everyone else. While many future jobs will be centred around data science, maths and physics, research suggests that other jobs – the ones that machines can’t touch – will require uniquely human qualities, says Dr Stiles. “They will be things like human interaction, work, customer service roles, intuitive roles requiring a kind of personalised interactive mode.” Ultimately, the people best placed to take advantage of this polarised workplace could be bright generalists whose education and training spans not only technological know-how but a lively interest in a broad range of other areas as well. According to Sarah Gleadell, head of Learning and Development at Cambridge Network, which was set up 22 years ago as a way of enabling tech businesses to collaborate together and now has 1,200 members, employers are increasingly looking not just at candidates’ technical brilliance, but soft skills like the ability to communicate effectively verbally or in writing so they
Freeing yourself from failure is essentially a process of trust"
can develop a rapport with customers and other members of their team. Creativity, rated by the World Economic Forum as one of the top three must-have skills identified by employers, is also in growing demand. Hard skills, while useful, have limitations. “They’re very useful but they’re useful for specific things,” says Dr Alex Carter, who has developed the Undergraduate Diploma in Creativity Theory, History and Philosophy at the Institute for Continuing Education, jointly with playwright Abigail Docherty. Creativity, on the other hand, is transferable, almost a ‘get out of jail free card’ that can equip people for different careers because it enables them “to move between spaces”, says Dr Carter. The course he has developed comes as close to embracing life, the universe and everything as it gets; linking ideas,
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