What skills do individuals need to become effective lifelong learners?
Today’s employees need to take responsibility for their own careers and take on a mindset that the job they’re in may not last so they have to continue to upgrade their knowledge. At its most basic level, it’s essential to at least understand where your industry is going. Improving technology skills is essential, but it’s also important to learn transferable skills like planning, critical thinking and creativity. It’s hard to teach a course on those things, but you can build those skills by going through a formal education process. Just the act of continually educating yourself gives you these skills. Try branching out into an unfamiliar area with the idea of increasing the breadth of your knowledge, not the depth. Employees should keep in mind that communication is the number one requested skill by employers, so anything they can do to improve their ability to speak and write effectively is also a plus. JIM BRODZINSKI, Ph.D., SPHR is a professor and chair of the Department of Business
