Employers want good communicators and good thinkers - official

Here’s an interesting couple of lists.

Randy Olson’s film, ‘Talking Science’, includes the results of the 1999 Job Outlook survey asking employers what they were looking for in candidates.  (This is published in the US by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.)

The top five wants are:

 

1.         Communication skills

2.         Work experience

3.         Motivation/initiative

4.         Teamwork skills

5.         Leadership skills

 

(Academic qualifications came next, followed lastly by technical skills.)

Now, the 2010 results – which are flagged up on a recent press release from the NACE.

 

1.         Communication skills

2.         Analytical skills

3.         Teamwork skills

4.         Technical skills

5.         Strong work ethic

 

The shift in emphasis, it seems to me, is extremely interesting. 

Experience, perhaps, counts for less in a rapidly changing world.  What is now required is ‘analytical skills’: the ability to understand complexity as it becomes ever more complex.  ‘Leadership’ seems to have disappeared, or morphed into something else; teamwork remains critically important.  ‘Motivation’ has become a ‘strong work ethic’: it sounds much the same but has a slightly more sinister, puritanical ring about it.

Communication remains at the top of the list.  Intelligence at work is now indicated, not so much by experience, as by the ability to think well, and to share that thinking creatively and clearly.