Excerpt from the Washington Post — May 2017
Nearly a third of business leaders and technology analysts express “no confidence” that education and job training in the United States will evolve rapidly enough to match the next decade’s labor market demands, a new report from the Pew Research Center finds.
About 30 percent of the executives, hiring managers, college professors and automation researchers who responded to the Pew survey felt future prospects looked bleak, anticipating that firms would encounter more trouble finding workers with their desired skill sets over the next decade…
“The skills necessary at the higher echelons will include especially the ability to efficiently network, manage public relations, display intercultural sensitivity… and just enough creativity to think outside the box,” wrote Simon Gottschalk, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Frank Elavsky, a data and policy analyst at Acumen LLC, an analytic tool developer, said people can hone those skills in this digital age by remembering to interact with other people.
“The most important skills to have in life are gained through interpersonal experiences,” he wrote. “Human bodies in close proximity to other human bodies stimulate real compassion, empathy, vulnerability and social-emotional intelligence.”…