HOW TO FUTURE-PROOF YOUR CAREER IN THE DIGITAL AGE By Nick Robinson
Nick Robinson has worked in ELT publishing since 2004, as an author, marketer, trainer and conference speaker. His particular area of content expertise is ESP. In 2012, he founded the world’s first ELT author representation agency. He is the Co-founder of the IATEFL Materials Writing Special Interest Group (MaWSIG).
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ducation is intended to prepare students for the world of work, but as we enter the fourth industrial revolution, the world is changing so rapidly that many of today’s teenagers will end up doing jobs that don’t yet exist.1 In the face of such uncertainty, how can we equip students with the tools they’ll need for their futures? Could focusing on life competencies, as opposed to academic success, be the answer?
collar or clerical jobs. The McKinsey Global Institute Report predicts that between 400 million and 800 million individuals could be displaced by automation and will need to find new jobs by 2030. Anything that’s algorithmic at its core, which involves calculations or building statistical models, is at risk. When it comes to jobs in accounting or financial services, a computer will always be faster and more accurate than humans.
THE FUTURE JOB MARKET
AI OR IA: FLEXIBILITY AND ADAPTABILITY
There’s no way of knowing what the job market will look like in a decade, especially taking into account the fact that a staggering 50% of the work that people are paid to do globally could theoretically be automated using technologies that already exist. Very few jobs or areas in life are unaffected by technology. An example is the hiring process for short-term construction workers. Just a few years ago, people would stand around on street corners waiting to be picked up by a construction crew – and there’s now an app that connects construction workers to construction projects that need help.
However, that’s not something to fear. People think of artificial intelligence as a threat, but a lot of technology can be categorised not as AI but as IA – intelligence augmentation. The goal of this technology is not to replace humans, but to enhance our capabilities. For example, with interactive whiteboards in the classroom, the goal is not to have the whiteboard teaching the class, but to augment the capabilities of the teacher by allowing her to bring in different resources, to play videos and interactive games. When you frame technological advances in this way, it doesn’t sound as scary. But what is crucial in this scenario is that the teacher is able to learn to use the whiteboard and adapt her lessons and her teaching techniques to make full use of this new tool.
There are some things that we can predict, based on current trends. Manual industries were the first to be automated. Car factories, for example, are staffed by robots with human overseers. And more recently there’s been a clear shift towards automation of white-
1 https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/jobs-lost-jobs-gained-what-the-future-of-work-will-mean-for-jobs-skills-and-wages
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