Why the jobs of the future are already here, and how you can get one

I’m not here to tell you a robot will one day take your job.

Or that you need to learn how to code a washing machine to stay relevant in today’s jobs market. Rather, the jobs of the future are ones you may have already seen advertised.

RMIT Online CEO Helen Souness says many jobs of the future have one thing in common: Technology.

"Automation and augmentation are one of the big technological trends," Souness tells Together In Business. "They're slightly scary words — people see drones or cyborgs working beside us — but actually automation is our friend. It takes away boring, repetitive tasks.

"Digital is only going to help humans thrive. As people change their perception from this scary world of cyborgs, to tools to help us be better, people's mindsets can also change and get more excited about the possibilities of tech."

For current jobseekers, she said the coronavirus pandemic has opened up the opportunity for Australians to upskill and step into new roles.

"Our borders are closed. We've relied on importing skills quite heavily in Australia from all around the world. We need to train those skills now more than ever."

Outplacement Australia Director Gillian Kelly tells Get Hired Australia soft skills will complement this focus on technology.

"A lot of the future-of-work trends we've been talking about coming on the horizon have suddenly all been fast tracked into this year as we've grappled with Covid-19," she says.

"What a time it's been, and the need for resilience and problem solving and innovation, and all of those soft skills have really come into the now."

Kelly agrees automation is coming, and says jobseekers don’t necessarily need to focus on being the coder who writes the automation code, but rather the person possessing the ‘human skills’ to go with it.

“We know we’re going to see more automation. We know tech is coming. We know particular areas of our roles are going to be replaced by automation. But it will be the routine grunt work that is automated.

"You need to ask yourself: What are the skills being replaced in the area you work and what are the complementary skills you can bring? What are the things that automation can’t do? 

“It’s creativity, empathy. Those areas are skills of the future.”

Watch the full interview with Souness, Kelly and Drakes Supermarkets' John-Paul Drake here.

LinkedIn has launched free access to learning paths for in-demand jobs. Here’s the learning path to become a sales representative starting with this course by Dean Karrel.

We’ll share a free LinkedIn Learning course each week. Be sure to sign up by hitting the ‘subscribe’ button up the top right.

Australia’s workers are starting to become slightly more optimistic, according to LinkedIn’s 11th Workforce Confidence Index. But those feelings aren’t evenly shared. Overall, respondents scored +22 (on a scale from -100 to +100) on the index — but at +16, female workers are clearly feeling less confident than their male counterparts, who scored +27. Some 61% of female respondents also said they felt increased stress/anxiety due to the pandemic, compared with 46% of men. Read more here.

Feel like your plans are falling apart? Try out "temporal distancing," which lets us zoom out so we're thinking beyond days and weeks to years and decades, writes Cindy Lamothe in The New York Times. Asking ourselves how we'd like to think back on these times — what truly mattered and how we responded — can give us perspective that may ease our worries about day-to-day stumbles. Read more here.

When it comes to redundancy, Andrew Hadiwidjaja writes:

"The sense of the unknown for me, was, at times overwhelming. However, I was lucky in that I got the opportunity to spend time at home with my kids while they were off school, and also had the opportunity to volunteer on a regular basis. Those opportunities allowed me to think outside of the unemployment situation I was in and focus on other things whilst searching for work."

Next week on #GetHiredAustralia, career coaches will share how the coronavirus pandemic will likely improve workplace flexibility and foster a greater understanding of the realities of being a working parent.

Missed last week's #GetHiredAustralia? Here's why your supermarket staffer may be a superstar in another field.