Skip to main content

Which Came First

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Common philosophical question to ponder and depending on your scientific perspective you may say egg or chicken, but this post is not to ponder where our chickens came from. Instead, I want to look at the egg in our land of workforce development.
 
If you think about an egg, the white area is large and surrounds the core, the yoke.  People are much like eggs. They have hard skills and soft skills.  These hard skills and soft skills are what cause people to get and keep jobs.
 
In our land of workforce development, we teach people how to get jobs. We also provide hard skill training, but what happens after the people leave our nest. Do they retain jobs? If you are a seasoned professional, you probably have examples in your head of those who cannot keep a job. You also have memories of people that found their dream job and are still happily employed.
The difference is the where the hard and soft skills are.
 
Using the egg analogy, one may assume that soft skills are in the core because they travel from one situation to another. Work ethic, communication, ability to follow directions, personal attention, and getting along with others are just some of the base line things you need in any job. One theory may put these skills in your core and the hard skills surround it, but just like the ever changing world where roles are reversed, I believe so are the makeup of people.
 
This world is changing so fast. Technology changes faster than people can change. The rules of the world as a result have changed. Social customs are evolving. In the land of constant change, mobile lifestyle, and the blur between work and personal, it is nearly impossible for any person to stay completely current. The only way for people to compensate is with their soft skills.  The flexible soft skill keeps the world of work moving. It is the difference between us and robots. Our soft skills are what we send out into the world about ourselves. They surround us like an aura. This is why I believe soft skills are like egg whites.
 
We can always learn a new skill. Like riding a bicycle, those skills are buried deep inside of ourselves. They are in our core. Once learned, we can go back and retrieve that information. This is why it is so hard to unlearn something. Rather than unlearning, we learn something new to add to it, making our inner yolk bigger.
 
 
This debate can go either way. I am sure there are many people in reader land that will disagree with my perspective on the egg debate. I would love to hear your comments. Feel free to post below.
~Karen Cirincione
Twitter: @kcirincione

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mastering the Grilled Cheese Sandwich Project

An engaging book club discussion about email, how we work, and also just how we as people manage our lives. The more we talked the more I started to realize that essentially project management is essentially a life skill everyone needs to master to be successful. If we simplify Project Management down to the easiest way of explain it and applying, we can define it as taking a big end goal and break it down to smaller goals, figuring out the tasks with each smaller goal, and then allocating lots of resources along the way. Ultimately at the core of project management is planning and organizing, but communication is really at the heart of it all. A project may be big, like building a bridge, creating and implementing software, or it can be as small as figuring out what to make for dinner. Along the way to said goal, every step needs to be clear and everyone needs to communicate about all the said steps along the way. Sounds easy, but apparently it is not so simple. One would think ev...
Post a Comment
Read more

A WIOA Fairy Tale

I thought it was time to have a little fun with WIOA and write a fairy tale. My last fairy tale was published in June of 2014 and was before WIOA legislation. To read the first workforce development fairy tale, check out the archives. Once upon a time in a far off land called Weeoha, lived a community of residents. Many of these residents had jobs and careers, but some found themselves in need of services and assistance to get jobs. Some were reliant on the government for assistance with basic needs because they could not find jobs. Three of these residents, Jack Butcher, John Baker, and Josie Candlemaker, found themselves not satisfied with their lack of opportunity and decided to go on a pilgrimage to find the legendary Cup of Career Success.   According to urban legend, whomever drank from this cup was promised eternal employment and self-sufficient wages as long as they desired. Jack, John, and Josie set out on foot to find the legendary cup. Their first stop was to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How do you Birthday?

Another year in my life has passed. It’s time for another birthday. Each year as the day approaches, I take the time to reflect on my past year, my accomplishments, and my goals for the year. My birthday is like my personal New Years’ celebration with another opportunity to have the best year ever.   I am not afraid of a birthday. Age is just a number, but each year is what you make of it. Each year I have seen the sun rise, the rain fall, and the snow melt, I have been given a gift from the universe. Many people do not get to see another birthday. I owe myself the opportunity to set goals and feel proud as I work towards achieving them. Sometimes these goals have been born from unhappy feelings and bad situations, but growth brings wisdom.   In my working life, and especially as a workforce professional, I know some of my growth must be professionally. Having experience working with job seekers looking for jobs, I understand how crucial professional growth is...
Post a Comment
Read more