EMPLOYABILITY
It is becoming more and more difficult to assert yourself in the job market. The competition is tough, the demands are growing. The focus and interest are growing on the concept of employability.
How do employees remain competitive, employable, and able to assert themselves on the job market over their entire professional life?
Employability is high after training or studies, but little attention is paid to it over the years. Changes in trends in the labor market have accelerated along with the intensive and increasingly common digitization in organizations. As a consequence, we observe that the “importance” of competences on the market is getting shorter. “Importance”, i.e. the time when the demand for a given skill in a company, in an industry, in a given region is the highest. Each of us can realistically increase our competitive advantage in the labor market by building our readiness to acquire new knowledge and experience, high adaptability to changing conditions, and an enthusiastic attitude to what is new.
Boost your employability
Some tips to improve your employability:
1. Additional courses and training
These are never enough. They are often organized by companies and universities, so it’s important not to miss the most interesting ones. Today, higher education is a necessary factor, but not enough to have a great job, so you should spend a lot of time on training. Employers look very favorably at this point in the CV.
2. Foreign Languages
Without them, functioning not only at work but also in life, in general, is practically impossible. More and more companies, especially corporations, cooperate with foreign countries and undoubtedly knowledge of at least one foreign language significantly increases our value in the eyes of superiors. Today, rare languages such as Scandinavian or even Oriental are welcome. It is worth educating as much as possible within them.
3. Be flexible
Adaptation to change is the key to “survival” in a dynamic, constantly changing labor market, so characteristic of our time. In the past you could work in one company all your life, nowadays it happens less and less often. The most important thing is to see these changes not as a threat but as an opportunity. Therefore, flexibility is a great advantage because it allows easier adaptation in the new environment and faster learning of new skills, which translates into an increase in our value in the changing labor market.
4. Take care of networking and your image
Investing in personal development is not enough if the world does not know about us. We should, apart from developing and gaining new knowledge and skills, focus on making our surroundings aware of what we are good at and what we can do. It is worth answering the question: who knows what about us? What do we associate with other people? Are we perceived as professionals in our profession? A good opportunity for networking and establishing long-term contacts are industry conferences and fairs. It is worth appearing on them not only because of the knowledge we can get but because of new acquaintances. Internet networking is another method of establishing professional relationships. Social networking sites give us the opportunity to speak, discuss, talk to specialists from the industry that interests us. On the one hand, we have a chance to show ourselves as people experienced in a given topic, and on the other, to meet people who may be looking for someone to cooperate with or will be looking for in the future. Relationships established in this way will definitely pay off.
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