Today's workplace is a world of commerce. People used to trade goods and services within local communities; but trade today can easily extend across international borders. Offices in Europe and Australia outsource office work to people in Asia; and retailers anywhere can be competing with online stores anywhere in the world. The things that are sold are different too, and with every new scientific change or technological development; become even more different.
Knowledge, networking and brain power have never been so important to career or business success; but it is wrong to assume this is the same as gaining lots of qualifications.
Some of the most successful people in the world are people who dropped out of college or university courses before completing them; while some of the most highly qualified people are relatively unsuccessful; and under employed.
The world is changing, jobs come and go, industries hit dead ends, people outlive their usefulness in certain jobs. Be sure to build a career that always keeps long term opportunities open to you
Work today is a continual journey, it is not the end result of an interview - as it may have been (to an extent) in the past.
People start on one path that leads to another and to another. As a result most people have a number of different careers in their working life. For example you may train in massage therapy, work in that for a few years, then become interested in kinesiology and you choose to incorporate that into your massage therapy business. This leads you to consider the effects of nutrition on the human body so you decide to also study nutrition - you may continue and become a dietician. Later in life you have developed a great reputation for helping others in a range of professional capacities and you are offered teaching work. When you are teaching you see a gap in the texts available in your area of expertise and this leads you to writing a book. Your career has developed and changed and adapted as your knowledge and experience and opportunities have changed. Your work life has become a journey rather than just a job.
What is less changeable?
As we have already discussed - the world is changing so fast that jobs which will exist in a few years from now have probably not even been conceived yet. There are a lot of “general” areas of employment that do not change though.
For example:
- People always have gardens and homes and need people to help create, maintain and repair their properties. The exact jobs that are involved here may change though. In the past we didn’t need a cable guy to connect cable TV or Internet. Maybe in the future we won’t need a cable guy either; but we will still live in a home and be connecting to the outside world.
- People will always have health conditions that require treating. Treatments may change over time (for example from western to more alternative medicines), but there will always be need for health practitioners.
- People will always need to eat, so there will always be employment in food production and distribution.
- People always need leisure time pursuits
People always need to develop and manage relationships with other people
What can change?
- An industry can become centralised or relocated to another region.
- A new way of providing certain goods or services can change, reducing the demand for, or the type of employees. For example the advent of self-service checkouts at supermarkets may increase the jobs for “technical support”, and production of machines, but reduce the number of jobs for checkout workers.
- A service or product may go out of fashion and the quantity of opportunities in that industry may diminish.
- The raw materials or expertise may be lost, and an industry may fade.
- Alternative goods or services may replace old ones, reducing the demand.
- Ways of doing business changes, affecting industries. For example with the advent of the internet people started corresponding via email, rather than posting letters, reducing the need for postal services; however, with the increase in online shopping there are more parcels being posted (increase to postal service/courier services for packages), and less retail shopping.
- Demands may change. For example as the “baby boomers” age, new growth markets such as health care are emerging.
The changeable nature of work doesn't need to be a bad thing. As demand for one product or service decreases, a new opportunity will emerge. There is extensive scope for success for people who see an opportunity and capitalise on it.
Change is a Two Edged Sword
On one hand, people can feel insecure when things change; but on the other hand, change can be exciting.
Change can get the adrenalin going and present new challenges that motivate us into action and give us purpose in life. Without change, we never have an opportunity to improve.
What To Study
The best way to be prepared for new and unpredictable challenges in a rapidly changing world, is to choose courses that give you a solid and broad foundation in a discipline; and develop broad skills that can be applied to any job in any industry.
Our courses are developed to meet exactly these goals!
When you look for a course; look for something that will not only teach you the fundamentals of the subject, but also something that will challenge you to develop your links with the real world, follow your passions, build your problem solving and communication skills, and retain a very flexible outlook on your future possibilities. Courses that are "experiential" in nature (which ours are), will do this. Courses that tend to steer you into one particular career path may risk limiting your options when the world changes around you.
Do not under rate the value and importance of learning. This is critical. Don't over emphasise the qualification though. If you look at research, there are plenty of examples that show most people who study tertiary courses, end up working in things outside of the discipline which they studied; and many others work in industries which they have done little formal education in.