What employers in 2011 really want:
More than 2 million people apply for jobs through Reed each month. Improve your chances of making the cut
with the graduate employment secret of 2011: mindset trumps skill-set any day!
A recent survey carried out by James Reed, the Chairman of Reed, and Paul Stolt - the CEO of PEAK
Learning, showed that 96% of employers will pick the person with the right mindset over the person
with the right skills any day. These are hugely significant findings that seriously challenge the long
known 'truth' that better skills equals better jobs, as Reed and Stolt outline in their new book
Put Your Mindset to Work.
Following these results Gradvert went out to the market to determine what makes up the 'winning mindset',
from an employer's perspective. Here's what we learnt:
The winning mindset - 10 elements:
- Global.
Today's graduates need to make decisions that reflect global considerations.
This mean demonstrating how far you see, how you define everyday problems and how scalable your solutions
are. Today's graduates must not only be open to but must actively seek new experiences,
new connections, new ideas, new technologies etc. They must be culturally agile and in touch with
the expanding world of influences and resources. Today's graduates must have no boundaries.
- Innovative.
Today's graduates must be uniquely curious and relentlessly inventive in their exploration of new markets,
new opportunities, new trends and new solutions.
Ignorance is power as it drives innovation. Today's graduates should not therefore be afraid
to ask the daft questions and try their own way of doing things.
- True.
Despite the huge surge in online activity, real business is still personal: people still work with people they know, like and trust.
Today's graduates must therefore be dependable, caring, good, honest, realistic, trustworthy, reliable
and 100% committed to doing the right thing for customers, the business and the planet.
- Adaptable.
Being adaptable makes a business more efficient, more transformational. Therefore, today's graduates need
flexibility and adaptability over expertise and skill-set to move with the fast pace of the changing,
global market. Skills can be bought; they expire. Adaptability lasts forever.
- Determined.
Grit shatters the entitlement myth - if you want it and you're prepared to go after it you can have,
do and be anything you want. Today's graduates need to be growth orientated, resilient, intense and tenacious.
They need to pursue their goals in the face of adversity, doubt, risk and set-backs.
- Commercial.
Today's business world is hugely competitive. Time and geography are no longer barriers to having what you
want when you want it. Technology has made purchasing a-click-of-the-button-phenomenon and customers are
more demanding than ever. Today's graduates need to understand how to define a customer's true need and build
propositions that satisfy those needs. They need to know how to sell, how to keep costs low, how to capitalise on trends and
ultimately how to add true and immediate value.
- Collaborative.
Today is more about co-opetition, than competition - working with people to get things done. The Chinese walls
have come shattering down as businesses combine their knowledge, their technologies, their IP and their
reach to bring new solutions to new geographies. Today's graduates need to understand when to share, when to
collaborate and how to forge a win-win working arrangement. No company want wants a maverick entrepreneur out for
personal glory; they want an innovative thinker who can rally the troops and take people on the journey.
- Performance focussed.
Performance equals potential minus interference (P=Po-I). Today's graduates need to understand what is expected
of them, what is good vs. what is outstanding and what it takes to exceed expectations. They need to
seek criticism not praise and they need to take full accountability for their own performance and personal development.
- Courage.
Failure is the only thing guaranteed on the road to success. Therefore, instead of waiting for the perfect 'safe'
scenario, today's graduates need to be brave and set out now - the right people, learning, tools and skills
will find you on the way. This means accepting set-backs, failure and 'lessons learned' as part of today's rapid
work movement and pushing on in spite of the risks, picking yourself up without delay.
- Connected.
Growth in business today comes from knowing the right people, playing in the right markets and knowing who best
to leverage knowledge and skill from. Today's graduates need to be plugged into the right business, social and
technological networks. It's not about knowing it all yourself, it's about being able to source and
extract the right knowledge at the right time and applying it in the right way, managing expectations as you go.
In a complex, chaotic, demanding, fast and difficult world, having the winning mindset has to be an everyday
endeavour. Keeping pace with rising expectations and believing you're the one for the job is the way to win.
Consider this: what would you rather have in life - what you want or the reasons why you don't have it?
Challenge: rate yourself 1-10 on each of the items above and commit to actions to close gaps on your bottom
three scores.
Has this inspired you? Drop me an email or give me a call to discuss your mindset:
lisa.bean@gradvert.com | 07969 075633 | www.gradvert.com
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