careernav.

By Anne Parker

Learn to earn

In the 21st century, few people will have one occupation or job for life. In this fast changing world you will need to keep learning to keep pace and remain employable. You’ve already acquired many skills at school that can be transferred to the workplace; the trick is to identify them. The Jobguide found at www.jobguide.deewr.gov.au  lists 8 employability skills and you have a degree of them all already. You’ll be better at some than others but that’s true of everyone no matter what stage of their career.

Transferable Skills and Personal Attributes. And they would be?

• Communication skills: a class presentation, writing for the school magazine, discussing issues in English, debating –everything you do in English is a form of communication.
• Teamwork skills: working cooperatively with class mates on a project demonstrates teamwork as does being a member of any team sporting or otherwise
• Problem-solving: think of all those Math problems that were thrown at you, coming up with ideas to fix the world, analyzing an IT problem
• Initiative and enterprise skills: starting a club or activity, coming up with a new fundraising idea, being inventive not destructive on “muck up”day
• Planning and organizing: following through an initiative requires planning and organization, successfully completing assignments requires planning and organization too
• Self-management: allocating time appropriately between school or work and your personal time
• Learning skills: your ability to absorb lots of new information, remember it and recall it demonstrates learning and school is all about that
• Technology skills: your computer skills, use of any equipment and machinery such as a lathe, welding equipment, video camera, kitchen equipment or sewing machine apply here.

Personal attributes that are valued by employers are things like enthusiasm, honesty, a sense of humour, loyalty, personal presentation, the ability to deal with pressure, commonsense and adaptability. These too can be demonstrated using school situations and both skills and attributes can be improved on. The higher the level and the more skills and attributes that you have the better your chances of getting and staying employed.

Get skilled up

Start with an honest assessment of your skills and personal attributes, your career toolkit and match them to your career plan. Most organizations have a process of formal review and this can be a really positive thing. Identify what you need to get better at to keep up in your job or to get ahead? It could be a higher qualification, a short course, some counselling to improve a personal attribute or something you can work on yourself?

Having identified a skill to update how do you find out where to go to develop it? Many employers provide professional development (PD) so that’s easy. Your professional association or union may run courses or recommend something suitable. Adult Learning Centres run lots of courses (ACES) and you can always Google! Just check that’s it’s a reputable institution.

What types of work are out there?

You don’t have to stick to the same type of work. Whilst having to keep up to date or change jobs can be stressful it can also be an opportunity to try something different and that can be very exciting.
Knowing what type of work you would like and be good at is not always obvious. Have a look at the categories below and rate yourself: 1 being dislike to 5 being like a lot.

• Analytic or scientific
• Creative or artistic
• Helping or advising
• Practical or mechanical
• Nature or recreation
• Organizing or clerical
• Persuading or service

Have you got a career plan?

Most school-based careers teachers ask you to do one. It’s about setting some short, medium and long term goals and what you have to do to get there. It’s helpful as it gives you some direction, a plan to work to but you’re not locked in. It should be reviewed frequently. It may be as simple as this:

Skill up or join the dole queue

Do you enjoy learning? For your sake I hope so. There’s a close link between unemployment and level of education. According to the Australian Government publication “ Australian Jobs 2008” if you have completed year 10 you have a 7.8% chance of being unemployed but if you have year 12 it drops to 4.9% and a Bachelor degree brings it down to 2%. Having a TAFE certificate is also a good thing; with a Certificate 3 or 4 the unemployed figure was 2.4%. It’s a pretty strong argument for getting some qualifications!

Continuous or lifelong learning is a fact of life so turn it to your advantage and make it work to better and further your career. As you age, some of your knowledge and skills can require refreshing. Continuous learning well into your adult life in your chosen field will not only keep you at the leading edge for longer, but it is likely to earn you more money as your skill set will be in more demand.

Pearls of wisdom

• Take control of your learning it’s more fun and motivating than having it imposed on you as it mostly is at school
• Find out what sort of learner you are as you’ll learn more effectively. Visual learners prefer pictures, visual displays and body language. Auditory learners prefer listening to talks and lectures while kinaesthetics learn by doing, moving and touching.