Podcast: How to get a job in the post-COVID world

New podcast: how to leverage your skills and education to get the best job you can in the post-COVID recovery.

Employment and Skills Minister Michaelia Cash.

Traditional high level university qualifications are not going away but skills learnt in vocational education are increasingly important and will help people be ready for the post-COVID recovery, says federal Employment and Skills Minister Michaelia Cash.

In a new podcast from The Australian, Ms Cash says that vocational education “gives you that on the job training that ensures you are adding value for your employer from day one”.

In a new podcast from The Australian, Ms Cash says that vocational education “gives you that on the job training that ensures you are adding value for your employer from day one”.

“One of the things people don’t know is that 31 out of the top 50 earning occupations require a vocational education and training (VET) pathway,” she says.

She names construction managers, research and development managers, ICT managers, financial investment advisers, train and tram drivers, policy and planning managers, financial brokers, human resource managers, and air transport professionals, as among the jobs earning a substantial salary for which the necessary skills can be learnt in a VET course.

“Parents need to understand this,” Ms Cash says.

The federal government has set up online resources for job seekers at yourcareer.gov.au.

“It will tell you what jobs match the skills you had in a previous job, and it will actually identify the bridging courses you need to do to go and get those new jobs,” she says.

Rob Hillard, Asia Pacific chief transformation officer at Deloitte, says in the podcast that jobseekers can use VET courses to add a secondary skill to their portfolio which will make them stand out to employers.

“A lot of people have got, for instance, an engineering type qualification, but they can add in a particular qualification around data or they can add in a qualification around customer service,” he says.

Mr Hillard says the two biggest things employers are looking for are customer service and digital literacy, and the latter are highly sought after because people who can use one type of digital platform can easily shift to using another.

“We know that technical skills matter — having digital literacy,” he says. “We know that maths matters. The ability to be able to navigate numbers matters in the jobs of the future.”

Rob Hillard, Asia Pacific chief transformation officer at Deloitte

Ms Cash agrees that the top skills in demand can be split into technical skills and employability skills.

The latter are particularly important to employers, she says. Skills such as “reliability, getting out of bed in the morning and going to work at the right time, work ethic and motivation, social and people skills, teamwork, communication, and customer service”.

“It’s very important for people or who are looking to upskill or re-skill, who have lost their jobs as a result of COVID, and for young people, to understand that these are the types of skills that employers are looking for,” she says.

While vocational education is important, Mr Hillard says that the traditional university is needed for many professional jobs.

“But we also know that for every one of those jobs there are way more jobs that are a portfolio of skills that are emerging and changing and evolving, and those skills don’t neatly fit into one university course,” he said.