What is Life-long Learning?
The European Commission found that life-long learning has four objectives: personal fulfillment, active citizenship, social inclusion and employability. Considering that I am active in recruitment and that our community is work related, this article will be limited to employability.
Employability
Whenever you read a book or an article related to your career, “life-long learning” is often associated with self-employability. Self-employability in itself is therefore connected to self-awareness. Do you know what you really like and what you are good at? What do you need to develop and what do you want? Because, let us not forget that life-long learning is totally voluntary. You decide about your learning. What, when and how becomes your decision. Do you want to learn to know, learn to do or learn to be? Your pursuit of knowledge can be for personal or professional reasons. And why not for both? You can learn formally or informally. The choice is yours.
There are numerous options available for learning: classroom learning, e-learning, network-sharing, workshops, being part of a community on for example LinkedIn or Facebook.
Personally, I would suggest that you build on what you are good at, because you can become the best. Generally, you like doing what you are good at and this stimulates you and gives you confidence. One thing to remember: learn both hard and soft skills. Hard skills are easier because they are clear, tangible and measurable. Soft skills are more complex. However, remember the recruitment adage: “Recruit attitude, train competencies”. Organizations, both for profit and non-profit, look for people with the right attitude to fit their culture and with whom they can build a future.
The most in-demand hard and soft skills
So, on what should you concentrate if you still don’t know? This is difficult to answer in your place, but let me give you an idea of the hard skills that are in the highest demand: language skills, numeracy skills, IT skills and negotiation skills.
One of the most sought after skills is “verbal communication”. Some will see this as a hard skill, others as a soft skill. Other soft skills in demand: teamplayer, initiative, drive, commercial awareness, integrity and interpersonal skills.
As you can see, there is no shortage of skills to learn, as there is a high demand for many different skills. Do not worry about timing! You have a lifetime to improve and to know more!
Make sure to check out our current training programme on Axis Learning. In addition, our recruitment experts will be happy to advise you on your soft skills during an intake interview. Interested? Upload your CV.
Good luck learning!
