Hard Hitting Soft Skills

What are soft skills and why are they so important for the young adult to master at an early age? Soft skills are those qualities which enable a person to effectively interact with co-workers, managers, and customers.  Soft skills include:

• work ethic
• communication skills
• appropriate language (vocabulary)
• positive attitude
• etiquette
• personal habits
• problem solving
• personality traits
• work style
• ability to work collaboratively
• ability to accept and learn from criticism

The importance of soft skills was emphasized by Ken Hansen, Chief Technology Officer for Freescale Semiconductor when he addressed EE department heads from over 120 major universities at the 2012 ECEDHA conference.  He highlighted industry demand for future employees who have expanded skill-sets which include working collaboratively, and most important, knowing how to communicate effectively. Although Hansen was referring to the qualities engineers must develop to be effective leaders, those attributes will well-serve an individual in any occupation.  

This is further validated in a recent study published by Millennial Branding and American Express titled, "Gen Y Workplace Expectations”.  The study included a survey which revealed over 60% of managers and 65% of the young adults rank soft skills as the most important factor in workplace promotion.

Jason Nazar, founder of Docstoc and contributor to Forbes, has a hard-hitting and very practical list of "20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get" which includes critical soft skills. Heeding many of Mr. Nazar's observations, along with reading a chapter a day from the Book of Proverbs and applying its wisdom, will put the young adult in better position to flourish in a vocation. 

IDPlan provides young adults access to goal-setting and reminder applications which they can use to map out a strategy for honing valuable soft skills that will serve them for life.

Faces in the High School Crowd Yearn for Sound Counsel

Over 60 percent of young adults give high school guidance counselors a "fair" or "poor" rating in helping students think through career options, according to a report titled, "Can I Get a Little

Advice Here?" published by Public Agenda on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

The results of the study were not intended to cast high school guidance counselors in a bad light.  Counselors are stretched thin with a high student-counselor ratio and are tasked with clerical responsibilities which detract from their primary job. 

IDPlan is providing parents a highly personalized solution which guides their student through the process of proven assessments, professional advising, and sound decision-making.  The WorkStyle ID card serves as a readily-accessible reminder to the student that time and resources have been invested to help steer him or her on a personal pathway to success.

How to Be a Forty Percenter

A joint survey conducted in 2012 by Parade magazine and Yahoo! Finance revealed that 60% of the 26,000 participants would choose a different career if they had it to do all over again.  The poll could have proved quite valuable to young adults if two important follow-up questions had been included:

    1.  How did you choose your current career?

    2.  If you were able to do it all over again, what would you do differently to identify a career 
         that was a good fit?

Responses would have created a rich repository of anecdotal wisdom for helping young adults navigate options and make decisions that align with their life goals and passions. 

The good news is that much of the guesswork and subjective basis in choosing a career can be avoided through time-tested and professionally-validated evaluations which IDMyPlan employs in the Career Start Program.  These evaluations are essentially constructed on the wisdom and experience of hundreds of thousands of individuals who have participated in testing and assessments over the past eighty years.  

Combining  the results of assessments with professional advising, online goal- tracking tools, and accountability methods, Career Start gives young adults a greater level of confidence in taking ownership of their future.  IDMyPlan’s personalized WorkStyle ID Card further equips the student to objectively evaluate options, conduct informational interviews, and articulate personal strengths, values and work preferences.

Our goal for IDMyPlan students is for them to be the 40% who would not have done anything different if they had it to do over again.

Validating Career Direction, Valuing Dreams

In this scene from the classic Frank Capra movie and George S. Kaufman play, You Can’t Take it With You, the munitions magnate Anthony P. Kirby, Sr. is on the cusp of creating a monopoly with plans to make his son, Tony, the president of the corporation. The media and power brokers of the deal are all waiting anxiously in the upstairs boardroom for the Kirby's to make their entrance, when Tony approaches Kirby, Sr. in his private boardroom:

Tony: “I’m quitting…I just handed in my resignation.  I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. 
Kirby, Sr.: “so, you’re quitting. Well, what’re you going to do?” 
Tony: “I don’t know.  I..I think I’ll go away for a while, and try to get myself organized.  I..I was going to hang on to my job until this thing with Alice got all straightened out, but that’s all over, so there’s no use waiting around till that.  I..I don’t know. I..I thought maybe after I get back, I could start work on that grass---you remember that thing that Bob Smith and I fooled around with in college?”
(Kirby Sr. starts laughing) 
Tony: “Well Dad, if you think it’s funny, I’m sorry.  I came in here to say goodbye.” 
Kirby, Sr.: “Goodbye? Are you serious?” 
Tony: “Yes, I’m serious. I don’t want any part of this, Dad. I never did. 
Kirby, Sr.: “You can’t do this, after all the plans I made for you---“ 
Tony: “Dad, if I could just make you understand this.  I think this business is great. It’s good for you because you like it.  I don’t.  I never will.  Oh, I’ve tried to talk to you so many times about it but I just couldn’t get it out!  I used to be able to talk to you, Dad.  But lately…”

Although the screenplay is a romantic comedy, it brings into sharp focus the tension of working in environments  and occupations which are clearly outside an individual’s calling. This scene between Tony Kirby (played by the venerable Jimmy Stewart) and his father, Anthony P. Kirby, Sr. (played by Edward Arnold) also highlights how relationships are strained by the powerful sense of obligation to fulfill another family member’s well-intentioned plans.

Tony is breaking with the family business and reveals his interest in possibly pursuing his own dream.  We learn in an earlier scene that he and his friend from college were intrigued with researching how to develop technology that replicates the ability of plants to convert solar energy (keep in mind this play was written in the 1930’s, before the invention of the integrated circuit).

It is easy for young adults to identify with Tony and languish for years without career tests and assessments to reveal clear direction and purpose.  They may not have been shown how to take stock of their personal strengths, interests and energizing work style preferences,  and may not have been advised on how to set and work towards realistic, measurable goals. As a result, young adults are prone to waste valuable time and resources pursuing college majors or careers that are not a fit.

So how can a young man or woman find direction? Is it possible to validate that he or she is headed for the right goal? How can the young adult avoid the same quickly-diffused triumph a disoriented athlete experiences after making a 3-point shot or scoring a touchdown and discovering it was the wrong end of the court or field?

Tony needed a mentor, someone who would truly listen to him, understand his interests, and encourage him to pursue his dreams. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his father.  Sometimes it takes someone outside the immediate family, maybe even a respected stranger, to listen and provide objective, unbiased guidance.

If you haven’t seen it, you will have to watch the movie to see who provided those answers to Tony. For the young adults in your life, there’s IDMyPlan.

Ivy League without the Poi$on

Alternatives to traditional, brick-and-mortar institutions of higher learning continue to multiply and present fresh, lower cost college education opportunities for young adults who have identified their plan and are disciplined to follow through.

Entities such as Udacity, CollegePlus, edX, Coursera, Alison, and Pearson have partnered with dozens of major and top-tier universities to offer free MOOCs (massive open online courses).  Some MOOC providers even offer certificates to prove to employers the student has successfully completed the coursework.

Could the MOOC route be the best option to get your child or grandchild career-ready and independent? Help them first identify their plan with IDMyPlan.com

To learn more about MOOCs, see The Economist article, “The attack of the MOOCs” (July 20, 2013).

Getting Your Student/Young Adult Child Career-Ready

Sobering data from the American Association of Community Colleges reveals over 70% of students who begin community college are not even achieving an associates degree after six years.  A recent study released by National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) discovered that the high non-completion rate is rooted in student's lack of understanding of basic middle school arithmetic, ratio, proportion, expressions and simple equations, concepts which are prevalent in first year college math courses. The NCEE report concluded that "a very large fraction of high school graduates does not meet the very low expectations (mathematics, reading, and writing) that community colleges currently have of them." 

The results of non-completion can sandbag young adults with unforgivable debt and no degree, leaving them floundering in low-skill jobs and still dependent on aging parents.

But there is a positive alternative to the "one-size-fits-all" approach to education and the notion that everyone should go to college. According to Tom Pauken, former chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, there is a significant demand for those skilled in the conventional and emerging trades, vocations which do not even require a two year degree and cannot be easily outsourced overseas. In his book, Bringing America Home, Pauken cites Charles Murray, author of Real Education,

"Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason-the list goes on-is difficult, and it is a seller's market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsman can make six figures. They have work even in a soft economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman's job provides wonderful intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results.  How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?"

According to Don Tracy, Director of Operations and Marketing for Continuing Education at Austin Community College, the workforce demand in the "middle-skill" trades and occupations dwarfs the demand for workers in the low-skill and high-skill markets. Certification programs for a large number of those middle-skill trades can be completed in two years or less, providing the young adult with a marketable, employable skill which can serve as a launch-pad for continuing education and further career success.

IDMyPlan empowers young men and women to take those first steps in assessing their personal strengths, interests, preferences and work styles in order to make better decisions about their work, training and education opportunities.

The Great Career-Planning Divide

US Department of Education reports that the ratio of public high school students to guidance counselors is 284 to 1 and only 17% of public high school counselors are able to spend more than 20% of their time on occupational choice and career planning.