The Four Job Skills Students Will Need Post-COVID
The world used to change relatively slowly. However, over the last few years the rate of change has increased dramatically. As we look ahead to what the post-COVID world may look like, it has become even more clear just how rapidly the world can change.
What are the essential skills that we will need to arm our students with to be successful in the future, whatever that may look like? What kind of skills do they not only need for the workforce but to also navigate the world they will be living in?
Before the pandemic, students already faced a growing mismatch between the skills they were learning in school and those needed for employment. While we don’t know what the post-COVID world will hold, it is extremely unlikely that things will go back to exactly the way they were before, so our students will need to have these 4 important skills in order to be successful.
Flexibility
Being flexible is definitely something we have all had to get used to over the last few months, especially our students. Many of us have had to work from home, and some of us have had to balance that with assisting our children’s online learning as well (yikes!). On top of changes in their personal lives including cancelled special events and limited contact with friends and extended family, students have also had to fearlessly move into the world of online learning and blended learning.
Flexibility is likely to be a highly desirable skill from employers as we enter a post-COVID world, and our students have already started building this skill. We will need to continue to nurture this flexibility as we move forward.
Tech Skills
Even before the pandemic it was clear that tech skills would be needed for the jobs of the future, and the need for these skills has only increased now! These tech skills will be needed for all careers, not just STEM focused careers.
Businesses have had to increase their online presence or move online entirely to adapt to COVID. Employers need people with high technological literacy for their new business models work. In the future, nearly all companies will be digitally based in some way. Having tech skills will be key to success regardless of what industry students find themselves in.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking will be one of the most important skills we can arm students with in order to prepare them for the future, both for their personal life and future careers. With this goes the ever-important media literacy!
We have certainly seen an increase in “fake news” recently and in order to be successful in their future our students need to understand how to sort through all of the information out there. Especially when some of the information is not so good.
If students can learn the “facts” in the blink of an eye from their phone, then we need to move beyond teaching students to recall information and focus on critical thinking (which they cannot as easily learn themselves) and this will benefit them as they move on to be the future leaders of our world.
Knowing how to Learn
Knowing how to learn is actually very closely related to the importance of tech skills because new technology will continue to develop at an ever increasing rate. What our students really need to know is how to learn, the “what” isn’t nearly as important.
You may learn to code in one language today, and it may be obsolete in the next 10 years!
This does not mean it is not worthwhile to learn how to code, quite the opposite, the point is that we shouldn’t get too caught up in specifics. Instead we should focus on the general concepts and ways of thinking that we can learn through the process of learning to code! The skills needed in the workforce right now are not the same as the skills that will be needed 50 years from now, or even 10 years from now, so learning how to learn (and being really good at it!) will be what sets people apart from the crowd.
As we eventually move into a post-COVID world, it is clear that STEM skills in the future will be your key to success, even if you aren’t actually working in a STEM related job. This is because STEM teaches you flexibility, tech skills, critical thinking, and how to learn!
Before you go…
We are STEM Minds, a STEM education company helping our students to discover their passions and explore the everything the wonderful world of STEM has to offer. Follow us on our mission to empower the next generation of problem solvers, game changers, and fearless leaders.
