What children need to be competitive in the workforce

If you are anything like me, you spend time worrying about whether your children will be independent and autonomous adults who won’t be living under your roof well into their 20s.

You may even have sleepless nights worrying about whether you are doing enough, pushing your children enough, providing enough enrichment opportunities, ensuring they complete all their work so they can achieve results that reflect their potential, and so on.

Being a parent essentially means a lifetime of worry and guilt as you contemplate all the things you could be doing more or better.  

However, a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald provides some reassurance on two fronts for you as parents.

The first is that you have made the right choice in sending your child to HVGS! The fact that we are an IB World School and have a strategy that includes a strong focus on Excellence in Holistic Education and Inclusion and Belonging, means we are setting up your children for success. We are giving them the edge they need to be competitive in the workforce. 

The second, less overt message I take from this article, is that we don’t need to do more as parents. We just need to be more present and cultivate the attitudes and mindsets that help our young people be curious, self-aware, vulnerable and open to diverse perspectives and experiences. Grades are important, but they will only get you so far in a competitive job market. A key differentiator is “the openness to be curious and therefore the want to problem-solve” (SMH Article). 

The article focuses on the four big consulting firms: Deloitte, Ernest and Young (EY), KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Below is what recruiters from these firms say they are looking for in graduates: 

In schools, we often talk about collaboration and distinguish this from collegiality. Collegiality is the positive rapport one might develop with their colleagues, and it is a necessary ingredient for authentic, deep collaboration.

However, the latter involves a real willingness to listen to perspectives different to one’s own, to hold space for these perspectives, and learn from them to create a better, more informed solution.

This quote from the article is particularly powerful:

“Your ability to work as part of a team, it’s not about you being that individual standout. It’s actually about how you work with others. Humility, respect, inclusion. It is not about you.”

This means we need to explicitly teach our students/children to actively listen, be comfortable with different ways of seeing and experiencing the world, and to be respectful.

Students need to learn how to be humble and not have their voice be the loudest in the room all the time. As the saying goes, “there is no I in team!” 

At HVGS, we explicitly teach students how to collaborate and provide them with opportunities to practice these skills. Through our work on building a restorative culture and developing the intercultural competencies of staff, we are creating the conditions under which students develop the competencies for deep, authentic collaboration in diverse workplaces.

As parents, modelling humility and active listening in your conversations with your children is a simple thing you can do every day to help your children be ready for the workplace. 

Likewise, being curious as a parent and demonstrating a learning mindset creates a culture in your home that values these skill sets.

In all IB Programmes, asking big, thorny questions and cultivating a sense of curiosity is central to work across the subject disciplines. It is seen as integral to helping young people be change agents who can create a better and more peaceful world for all.

This curiosity and love of learning extend to embracing mistakes and challenges and demonstrating a willingness to learn from them. At home simply apologising to your child for getting cranky or impatient with them and then talking about why you might be more cranky than usual (tired, busy at work or at home, difficult day) is great role modelling for your children.

Some of the best conversations we have at home are after I’ve had the courage to apologise and own the consequences of my behaviour!

At a time when the rates of anxiety and perfection are on the rise, we want to show our children that failure is a reality in life and an opportunity. We want them to be able to practice compassion for themselves and others. 

Our children watch us all the time so rather than worrying about whether you are doing enough for your child, just sitting with them and being present helps them learn the skills they need to be autonomous, employable adults. As stated in the article:  

“We’re really looking for that pattern of how have they learned, particularly how have they learned from setbacks? How have they learned from mistakes? How have they learned from disappointments?” 

Doing this also helps build self-awareness in our children and the confidence to own what they don’t know. Employers are not looking for people who see themselves as the expert in the room but people who embrace the opportunity to learn from others. 

“Diverse life experiences” is the last of the qualities listed above and the complexity of contemporary workplaces are summarised well below: 

“One day you could be working with a Big Four bank, the next day you could be in the public sector, you could be out on one of the mines where you’re working with blue-collar workers,” says Tina McCreery, Chief Human Resources Officer at Deloitte Australia. 

“You have to have that ability to shift and change and work with… a huge range of diverse clients and people.” 

At HVGS, we have a strong focus on building the qualities of citizenship.

We want our students to be active and informed citizens of Australia and the world. Our Endeavour Trip programme in Years 10 and 11 provides experiences within Australia and overseas where students are challenged to navigate complex situations, interact with a diverse range of people and push themselves out of their comfort zones.

Our curriculum programmes explicitly connect to global issues and concepts. Here we build our students' capacity to think globally and act locally. Learning languages is integral to cultivating the understanding that the values and ways of seeing the world can differ across cultural groups.

When learning a language, you are not simply learning the words of another language, but also how those words are put together to create meaning in a different cultural context.

Language is a gateway to seeing the world through another’s eyes.

Languages at HVGS are compulsory until the end of Year 10 because we know it is an important way in which students can learn about different perspectives and build their capacity to “shift and change and work with a huge range of diverse clients and people”. 

As parents, we often focus on doing more for our children. We keep them busy day and night and often run ourselves ragged in the process.

All these opportunities are incredible for our children. 

However, as we consider the competencies they need for the future, it might be that we need to talk, do less and listen more.

Our children learn how to be inclusive, self-aware, curious and confident through the interactions they have with each other and adults.

We need to model thinking beyond the transcript – the numbers – to focus on building the skills to be compassionate, open-minded and inclusive human beings so that our students are ready for life beyond school.