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Career Skills for the 21st Century

What are these - Personality traits? Attitudes? Or behaviours and habits that can be learned? How can you develop them?

According to Arthur, Claman, & DeFillippi (1995) on “intelligent careers” like those of the future workplace require 3 competencies:

Know-Why: Your identification with the organisation, its culture and values
Know-How: Your skills and knowledge that you bring to the organisation
Knowing-Whom: The networks that you bring with you that can put the organisation at a greater advantage.

While you can work on the above set of competencies and prepare yourself prior to a job, the EPL Career Development approach emphasises 4 career skills/behaviours for successful careers in the future workplace. They are:

Boundaryless mindset
Adaptability
Self-directedness
Proactive career behaviours

While some of these skills may be dependent on your personality traits, you can also learn these skills and behaviours to support you in your career decisions.

Boundaryless Mindset

A boundaryless mindset is about being open to exploring career alternatives to advance your career.
Such a mindset allows one to move across the boundaries of separate organisations and employers (Arthur & Rousseau, 2006).
It also means that you will be ready to make a career shift, take a different path, move to a different organisation, and be willing to work in short-term project groups.
Think of careers as “boundaryless”, i.e., careers that straddle industry, organisations, professions and country boundaries.
You might face a need to switch your career in the future where a diverse set of skills and knowledge are required.
Having a “boundaryless” career mindset can help you be better prepared for career changes or transitions.
High EPLs have such a mindset and you can potentially develop this mindset when you acquire more broad skills associated with the E and L dimensions.

Adaptability (Career Adaptibility)

Career adaptability is about being flexible and ready to cope with challenges and changes in one’s career.
It involves not only some personality traits but also behaviours, attitudes and beliefs that can be changed so you can be more adaptable career-wise.
How career adaptable are you? Are you:

Concerned about your own future career?
Able to control what you can do about your future career?
Curious to explore possibilities with regard to your future career?
Confident in pursuing your career aspirations?

Based on the work by Savickas (2012), you are “career adaptable” when you answer “YES” to the 4 questions above.

The EPL approach to career development encourages you to plan ahead and be adaptable for career changes or transitions. Having more than one career dimension helps you to overcome the career challenges in the future workplace.

Proactive Career Behaviours

Career-adaptable behaviours include taking anticipatory and intentional actions to influence a desired outcome (e.g., a career aspiration or goal). It includes thinking about your future career, gaining knowledge and developing skills important to your future career, getting advice from superiors and building a network of contacts who can tell you what to expect from your future career.
These career-adaptable behaviours are said to also predict entrepreneurial and career success.
Based on the work by Strauss et al. (2012) on proactive career behaviours, here are some statements that you can use to gauge how proactive you are in terms of your career planning.

I think ahead and plan what I need to do for my career.
I develop knowledge and skills in tasks critical to my future work life.
I talk to others (supervisors, professors etc.) about my training and work assignments that need to develop for my career.
I build a network of contacts/friends to learn more about what I can expect in my future career.

Embarking on a career journey with EPL means you will develop proactive career behaviours for career success.

Self-Directedness (in career development)

Self-directedness is about being driven by one’s own values (as opposed to organizational values) to guide one’s career.
It means designing your career the way you want it, based on your desired future career (i.e., your career vision).
The EPL career development approach helps you to design your own career and plan ahead based on your career motivations and perceived efficacies in the E, P & L career spaces.

References
Arthur, M. B., Claman, P. H., & DeFillippi, R. J. (1995). Intelligent enterprise, intelligent careers. The Academy of Management Executive, 9(4), 7-20.
Barnett, B. (2015). The Strategic Career: Let Business Principles Guide You. Stanford University Press.
Beckwith, M. B. (2008). Life Visioning. Sounds True.
Briscoe, J. P., Hall, D. T., & DeMuth, R. L. F. (2006). Protean and boundaryless careers: An empirical exploration. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69(1), 30-47.
Chan, K. Y., Uy, M. A., Ho, M. H. R., Sam, Y. L., Chernyshenko, O. S., & Yu, K. Y. T. (2015). Comparing two career adaptability measures for career construction theory: Relations with boundaryless mindset and protean career attitudes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87, 22-31.
Gianakos, I. (1999). Patterns of career choice and career decision-making self-efficacy. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 54(2), 244-258.
Rousseau, D. M., & Arthur, M. B. (1999). The boundaryless human resource function: Building agency and community in the new economic era. Organizational Dynamics, 27(4), 7-18.
Savickas, M. L. (1997). Career adaptability: An integrative construct for life‐span, life‐space theory. The Career Development Quarterly, 45(3), 247-259.
Savickas, M. L., & Porfeli, E. J. (2012). Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3), 661-673.
Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York, NY: Fireside.
Strauss, K., Griffin, M. A., & Parker, S. K. (2012). Future work selves: how salient hoped-for identities motivate proactive career behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(3), 580.