Skilling for the future The landscape of the future job market may be hard to predict. However, you can help your child prepare by encouraging them to arm themselves with these scarce skills. By Lisa Witepski
T
omorrow’s workplace looks very different to that of today, says Eloise Nolte of College SA. Just one look at the pile of products that have become redundant – Walkmans, floppy discs, Blackberry phones – confirms this. And if products and industries are becoming redundant, that means certain skills are becoming redundant too, as new ones come to the fore. Technology is the obvious byword here, as its influence in every sphere of our lives becomes increasingly prevalent. That is why Nolte is looking to specialist services related to the IT industry as a significant job provider in the years to come: “We see how IT departments of companies are growing alongside their reliance on websites, apps and systems. So they require more IT technicians, network specialists and administrators to manage technology and equipment for staff.” New challenges call for new types of skills. Cyberattacks, for example, leave companies exposed, putting them at risk of losing revenue, and so they need a contingent of workers with the
32
Career Guidance.indd 32
ELOISE NOLTE
know-how to protect them. Server hosting and management is also an extremely specialised field with companies requiring more and more storage space to host their services online and ensure stability in times of high demand or service interruptions. Companies will continue to invest more in these fields in the future. Then there are the social media specialists who lead companies’ interactions across the platforms they increasingly engage on, as well as the legal and ethical experts who guide these interactions.
HELPING YOUR CHILD MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICES Wondering how you can nudge your child in the right direction? “Start by helping your child understand all the options,” advises Eloise Nolte of SA College. “You can do this by researching different industries and the different types of skills required for a type of work. “Then, let them attend career days, see what study options are available for these skills and then bring it back to subject selection. A great gift to a child is to also send them for psychometric testing, as this often gives some clarity in terms of interests.”
MORE THAN JUST DIGITAL SKILLS Dean McCoubrey of My Social Life believes that the accent shouldn’t simply be on helping learners acquire digital skills, but also on developing the skills that form the foundation of good digital citizenship – in other words, life skills that will help them navigate an online world. These relate not only to understanding technology, but also how to self-regulate while online, how to find the balance
The South African Schools Collection 2021 2017
2021/04/16 10:20 AM
