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San Mateo Middle College High School

April 24, 2001

Job Basics in the 21st Century
By David D. Thornburg, Ph.D.

Last month I suggested, among other things, that it would be productive for us, as a nation, to engage in a dialog about the foundational skills that our students will need in the workplace once they leave school, and to use this list as the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of our educational institutions. We could also then devise performance-based assessments to measure the skills that students need to acquire.
In thinking about how best to identify some of these skills, it was suggested that I go to one of the job clearinghouse Web sites and take a look at what today's employers are seeking.
One day I downloaded about 250 job descriptions at random covering a wide range of jobs in many different employment sectors — service, manufacturing, medical, high tech. My only criteria were that the jobs paid well and had room for future growth and development. Furthermore, I restricted my view to Illinois, a state in America's heartland, rather than look at one of the even higher-tech states like California.
The benefit of looking at actual job descriptions rather than just relying on interviews with hiring managers or corporate leaders is that each description is tailored by the potential employer to define the minimum requisite skills needed for an actual (as opposed to hypothetical) job. Applicants who demonstrate these skills are given consideration for employment, and those who don't are not.
What did I find?
While there was a lot of variation among the different jobs, there were several areas where the descriptions across all jobs and sectors of the economy were remarkably similar. These became the core skills that, in my opinion, should be included in any school's curriculum if it is anticipated that students will one day leave school and go to work for a living.
First on the list (82%) was what I call technological fluency, a deep understanding of how to use networked computers to find, analyze, and create information in a variety of formats. While some job descriptions made reference to specific skills (e.g., knowing how to write programs in Java, or how to create spreadsheets), this specific knowledge was only called for in jobs for which this knowledge was the basis of the work. For all the other jobs, it was just assumed that the applicants would be comfortable using computers as informational, analytic and creative tools.
The number two item on the list was communication skills (77%). These skills include not just being able to write and speak clearly, but to give concise and dynamic presentations as a part of the job. You can be the brightest person on the planet, but unless you can communicate your ideas clearly to others, your effectiveness is severely limited.
Third was the need for people who work well in teams (mentioned specifically in 36% of the job descriptions). This capacity cut a wide swath across all job categories.
The fourth skill fell under the category of leadership, the capacity to work well with others and to effectively lead teams through uncharted waters. This skill was mentioned in 35% of the job descriptions.
Fifth on the list was creativity, the capacity to innovate, solve problems, "think outside the box," and generally come up with creative solutions to problems on the fly. While this skill was explicitly mentioned in 25% of the job descriptions, it was clearly implied in many others.
Sixth on the list was problem-solving, showing up in about 20% of the descriptions.
There were some other skills mentioned, but this list comprises the bulk of those required by the jobs I explored.
I was amazed to see how similar the skill requirements were across a wide variety of jobs and industries: restaurants, software companies, banks, heavy equipment manufacturing, insurance, medical equipment, real estate — basically the kinds of companies you see one after the other as you drive or walk through almost any good-sized town.
What about the so-called basic skills of reading, writing, and numeracy? Those were not explicitly mentioned because they were assumed to be present in every applicant. While this assumption forms an important part of the required overall skill base, the additional skills I've described clearly point to the need to move our dialog about education beyond the three "R's."
Even with this modest survey, the list of skills students need is different from one that might have been created twenty years ago. And, it seems to me that the skills required by many of the companies I surveyed will be in even more demand in the future.
Of course, some might argue that it is not the job of schools to develop these "workforce" skills, that this task should fall to the employers themselves. I believe that these skills should be nurtured by our schools for two reasons. First these skills need to be developed over a long period of time, and schools are the primary institutions we have created to provide this type of extended learning. Second, these skills cut across all categories of work. They are not dependent on specific industries, and they are as likely to be needed fifty years from now as they are today. Because the six skills I gleaned from actual job openings fall into the category of lifelong skills, I believe they are logical elements in the domain of our educational institutions to provide.
While our list of skills is by no means complete (and I will continue my analysis of job descriptions to further refine this list), it does provide the basis for an interesting dialog among parents, students, teachers, principals and school superintendents.
Starting next month, I'll explore the nature of these skills in more detail. For now, I'd like to suggest a project for the young people with whom you work: Have your children go themselves to one of the online job clearinghouses, look at a variety of jobs they think might interest them, and then have them download some job descriptions with the task of identifying the kinds of basic skills they will need in order to get one of these jobs when they leave school.
If you are having a class full of students do this project, have them create a table using a spreadsheet so they can keep track of the frequency with which certain skills appear. (By the way, I'd love to see the results of this study!)
Once they've made their list of skills, and have measured the percentage of jobs that require those skills, you can then engage the students in a dialog on where (in school) they will be acquiring these skills. This analysis will likely be of great interest to them, and will help your class understand the importance of studying certain subjects in certain ways so they can be prepared for the world outside of school. If you find that some skills aren't being addressed adequately in your school, then please introduce this topic for productive conversation between the faculty and the administration of your school.
As always, let me know what you find!
Copyright, © 2001, Thornburg Center. All Rights Reserved.
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