Change is a constant. In fact, you’ve probably heard some variation on “if you don’t evolve, you die” for most of your professional life. The main issue today is the rate of that change.
Because we receive instant updates from around the world, circumstances change within an instant. Over the past year, we’ve seen over and over that what was true yesterday is not true today. Those changes have made careers obsolete overnight while catapulting others to the top of the hierarchy.
Start Futureproofing Today
With change happening every day, you need to start taking steps to protect your career right away. Below, we’ll walk through a few small updates you can make in your routine and hiring practices to ensure your career, company, and industry are protected for the future.
Center Your Resume around Skills
As more and more positions value skills over experience, you can build a resume around skills instead of job descriptions. Start with the skill (collaboration, team leadership, quantifiable growth, etc.) and attach the examples from your various roles.
LinkedIn is a great place to use this new style of resume: you can list out the standard resume details to demonstrate the years of experience, but then utilize that skills section to its full capabilities. That way, you still fit into a job search algorithm, but a manager can clearly see your skills when visiting your profile.
Hiring for Skills over Specific Experience
In the HR department or as a department manager, you may be accustomed to looking for certain features on a resume, but it’s time to change that.
As we’ve learned from The Great Resignation: people will stick around with companies that value everything they have to contribute, not just the skills listed in their job description. With clear communication and objectives, you can give your team members new responsibility and opportunities for growth that utilizes their creativity over their hard skills.
Study Your Industry
At SWAYworkplace, we always talk about being lifelong learners. When you’re futureproofing your career, you can’t escape the need to learn continuously. As you study your industry, look for these things specifically:
How will A/I impact my role? Is my job mostly monotonous, replaceable tasks?
Is there a new initiative or technology piece that I can apply to my role today?
How is the field changing and growing? What areas are most interesting to me?
The FUN part about future-proofing is discovering new elements of your industry that might be more exciting to you. You can take the basics you already know, apply them to a recent innovation, and build a unique career.
Future Proof Your Mindset: Building Resilience & Flexibility
Resiliency and flexibility go hand in hand. Flexibility implies that you are not attached to the old process and methods of doing things. You remain open-minded to better tools and opportunities for growth. When change comes, your productivity and good work aren’t shattered. You can sway towards a new, possibly improved, way of working
Reaction vs. Thoughtful Response
Resilience shows up in your reaction or responses to change and unexpected events. Instead of a frantic, chaotic reaction to change, you are able to take a breath and calmly see a potential course of action. Without the panic blocking your view, you can take a moment and choose the best tool for the job, assign the right people to do research, and chart a clear course for action.
You see change and surprises as puzzles to solve rather than a mountain towering over you (unless you’re someone who enjoys mountain climbing!). And when the team around you is reacting to a situation, you can stand apart as the leader with solutions.
Optimism: Embracing Change
A key characteristic of resilient people is their optimism. Not that they’re blindly ignorant of struggle, but that they embrace change, seeing it as a learning opportunity rather than a threat.
When new technology is introduced that completely changes your role, don’t be the first to complain: be the first to embrace. You’ll always stay ahead of the problem by embracing new challenges instead of clinging to old methods.
Take Ownership
Realizing that your mindset controls how a problem changes your life means you’ve taken ownership of your circumstances and ultimately your career. With a positive outlook and excitement for future possibilities, stressful situations become less overwhelming.
The Future of Work: Accepting Reinvention
Knowing that the world is changing and a sometimes startling speed, you want to stay at the forefront of innovation, looking for the positives in new initiatives and finding ways to use the skills you’ve developed in new ways.
If you’re trying to drive a spirit of reinvention in your department, consider discussing these topics at your next one-on-one:
How can we hire differently to find great people even if they don’t have our typical experience requirements?
What changes do you see in the future for our industry?
How can I communicate better or demonstrate better leadership skills on the team?