When facing choices about your future career or a job change, the current discussions around automation and the rapid change to industries can feel overwhelming. The positive counter-narrative is that we will be able to adapt and new roles will emerge. However, that can be quite a vague reassurance.
A report by the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) provides a fresh perspective.
FYA have identified that when a person trains or works in 1 job, they acquire skills for 13 other jobs.
The authors state that job switches will still often require additional technical or subject matter knowledge, however, some job switches only require a few new skills.
The 7 job clusters are the:
·      Coordinators
·      Generators
·      Artisans
·      Designers
·      Technologists
·      Carers
·      Informers.
The image below provides and overview of the 7 job clusters and the full report is available at https://cica.org.au/wp-content/uploads/The-New-Work-Mindset-FYA-November-2016.pdf.
Understanding job clusters can be incredibly useful if I you have a general idea of one or more clusters you are most interested in, but are not sure of an exact pathway.
So how would this be useful in practice?
The authors provide the example of Isabelle who has finished school but is not sure what to do next. Isabelle:
·      is interested in ‘The Carer’ cluster
·      enrols in a general health sciences course
·      takes a part-time job at the local dental surgery
·      gains skills in communication, customer service, teamwork, clinical hygiene, team work and time management.
While Isabelle doesn’t choose to stay and progress in dentistry she uses the skills she has gained, and her references, to train and move into speech pathology.
#portableskills #jobclusters #careercounselling
Related Posts
