Required job skills today and ten years from now, expectations of employers, adult students, and educators

The purpose of this study was to discover the impressions various educational and non-educational groups have of workplace changes as they are currently taking place and their potential importance ten years from now regarding career and educational planning. The sample was comprised of 640 respondents which included 106 adult ESL students and 274 regular adult students at the Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies, 29 teachers at the Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies, 42 secondary guidance counsellors in Scarborough, 28 human resource professionals from a wide range of industries in Ontario, 115 job seekers on welfare taking a job search courses located in all of the other Toronto boroughs, and 46 participants at the 1997 National Consultation on Career Development conference held in Ottawa. Surveys were administered during the fall of 1996 and first month of 1997. The results were analyzed using SPSSPL Version 6.0 and included descriptive statistics for group comparative purposes. The results reveal that the group differences acted as means of highlighting areas in need of further research clarification and identified possible areas of concern. Strategic interventions such as stressing the importance of thinking of career opportunities in terms of skill dimensions and skill transferability would seem to be validated by the results which showed agreement in these areas across all groups. In addition, the use of career scenario planning as a career stretegy is recommended because of the significant differences with respect to career areas most likely affected by a variety of change foactors and the relatie impression differences regarding the importance or influence of various employment-related criteria. The prospect of graduating students having six careers which might include running their own businesses before retiring also would support a scenario planning approach that builds in a developmental perspective. Moreover, the fact that all the professional groups felt that a significant percentage of the workforce would not be able to acquire the skills required over the next ten years clearly suggests a need for contingency planning and appropriate educational and counselling interventions. That the majority of respondents did not feel well prepared for the anticipated changes over the next ten years suggests that much work remains to be done if adult students are to develop the motivation and sense of self-efficacy needed to prosper amidst the many anticipated changes. The study concludes with a series of recommendations. One recommendation involves helping students address the need for a more robust sense of self-efficacy to take on the prospect of six careers or self-employment by focusing on people, idea, and technology skill transferability. Given the undefined nature of these future events a broad career strategy7 that keeps options open would seem indicated. A second recommendation concerns the need to regard career indecision as a natural outcome of trying to take choices in an environment that is undergoing significant and unpredictable changes. Strategic indecision or an openness to change would involve constantly monitoring the changing environment for emerging opportunities of interest and constantly evaluating options accordingly. A third recommendation concerns the need for additional research to further clarify the reasons behind how the various groups responded to the survey questions where there were significant differences of opinion. This would also help evaluate the initial study's on going relevance insofar as changes have taken place since the original survey's administration.