How can university graduates achieve success in the future of work?

How can universities better equip our graduates with the latest knowledge, skills and abilities that are needed by companies in this fourth industrial revolution?

This was the main topic recently explored during a panel discussion at the Graduation Management Admission Council (GMAC) Asia-Pacific conference in Singapore.

As the moderator, I had the wonderful opportunity to probe and challenge my fellow panelists of highly experienced industry professionals for their insightful views on this future of learning issue.

The panel speakers included Brandon Coate Head of Human Resources at HSBC Singapore, Caleb Yam Talent Acquisition Lead Southeast Asia at Mondelez International and Marcus Lim, Director, Education Asia-Pacific at Cisco Systems.

Let me share with you my three key learnings and takeaways from the panel discussion:

Companies outside the tech industry, such as financial services, FMCG and retail, are facing challenges in attracting the current pool of the brightest and best talent.

To remain competitive in their war for talent, these traditional firms utilise their employer brand (corporate citizenship, career growth and well-being) as a key differentiator to effectively attract their prospective graduates.

Universities must equip graduates with the right set of soft skills that will make them more effective and productive working in teams.

They include problem-solving, teamwork, socialisation and collaboration. This is because organisations are increasingly structured by teams (project, self-managed, virtual and operational).

One critical skill employers look for in prospective graduates is learning agility.

As half-life skills increasingly shrink due to the relentless pace of change, the ability to be agile thinkers by leveraging past learnings becomes critical.

So, universities must not only provide their graduates with technical skills but also learning competencies.

I like to make the following suggestions to universities in producing more future work-ready graduates:

1.    Graduate experience – In this experience economy, universities must begin to map and measure experiences of their graduates at critical touch-points throughout their study (e.g. orientation, internships, projects and exchange programs) and post-graduation (e.g. 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and 1st job) journeys.

The systematic collection and analysis of data will help universities better understand how to close their experience and learning gaps. 

As we increasingly interact with companies as consumers and employee digitally, students and graduates also expect the same convenient and engaging experience interacting with their universities.

Rather than communicating to graduates via emails, universities must provide and maintain an online portal and mobile app to continuously engage with their alumni community globally.

2.    University ranking – We must stop ranking universities on short-term metrics like how fast their graduates were able to secure their first jobs and what their starting salaries were.

Instead, we need to evaluate universities by their graduates’ continuing learning agility, skill upgrades and lifelong employability say over 10-15 years post graduation.

Universities must rethink how they can better understand the challenges faced by their graduates throughout their key career stages - exploration, early, mid, new, senior and late.

This calls for universities to form strategic partnerships with recruitment agencies, executive search firms, career transition and outplacement agencies, human resource consultancies and industry training centres to exchange data, knowledge and experience.

3.    Industry engagement – Universities must create a university-industry partnership ecosystem that engages key employers, industry bodies and governments through student internships, professorial externships (e.g. job shadowing to understand a day in the life of a CEO) and alumni mentorships.

With skills becoming the currency of the workplace in the future, universities must work with companies’ internal talent acquisition and development teams on closing learning gaps by co-designing teaching curriculum, business simulation and immersive programs.