Google has a reputation for being one of America’s best workplaces: great salary and benefits, flexible work environments, and lots of time and space for social interaction. As a matter of fact, CareerBliss — a website devoted to helping you find happiness in your job — rates Google in the top 10 from their list of “50 Happiest Companies in America for 2015.” Their employees report happiness with their work assignments, with relationships with their managers, and with the company’s innovative mission. You’ve been working hard on your education to get yourself a career in a happy place like this, but you’ve also heard that employers are looking for people with specific skills these days. How can you be sure that you are on the right track?
In an interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Lazlo Bock, the head of human resources at Google, said, “G.P.As are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless…We found they don’t predict anything.” Bock’s statement sums up the big changes that are going on in the job market. Having a transcript full of As from a big name school is no guarantee that you’ll end up in your happy place.
So, what is one of the 50 happiest companies in America looking for in new hires? “The No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not IQ,” said Bock. “It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.”
Bock shared that Google is looking for people who have developed the ability to do a type of dynamic learning combined with collaborative skills and commitment: “It’s a sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in to solve any problem, and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others.”
Bock is looking for people who have developed a self-directed learning style rarely used in school. Think about your high school classes. How many of them encouraged true self-direction? Were you ever given the opportunity to design your own learning? You might have been allowed to choose the content of a project, but not the process you would use. Your teachers probably supplied samples of projects that scored an A in the past. Your job on the project was to copy the sample to the best of your ability using the content you chose. That doesn’t exactly fit what Bock meant when he said that he was looking for people who have innovative thinking skills and the ability to solve new problems.
This skills gap could by why today’s 20-somethings have more degrees than past generations yet make up 40% of our unemployed population. Degrees alone are not getting college graduates jobs.
During her 2013 TED talk in Bergen, Norway, Jean Fan — Director of Community at Uncollege — said, “The No. 1 skill employers want is self-direction — the ability to take initiative, manage priorities, and succeed in a work environment.” And yet, she also admitted that “universities don’t encourage you to be self-directed.” She explained that universities are good at preparing you for more traditional school experiences, but not for using your learning in the real world.
So, here is where the benefit of a gap year comes in. Taking a year between your high school graduation and your freshman year of college can help you gain those real-world learning skills. In her TED talk, Fan explains how taking a gap year to explore your areas of interest will enable you to design your own learning experiences. She says, “The ability to make intentional decisions and to design your own education is incredibly important.”
Because the unemployment rate for new graduates is so high — and because those new graduates often come out of college with a load of student loan debt — Fan argues that it is important to know what you want from your college experience before going in. She says, “If we choose to go to university, we have to do it deliberately. We have to go to school knowing why we are there and what we hope to get out of it. We have to approach it as part of a larger educational journey.” That journey starts with the skills gained during your gap year.
Whether you choose to travel during your gap year or intern at a company that does interesting work, you’ll see how the things you learned in school relate to the workplace. The Uncollege website explains that you’ll “turn mental abilities into skills” by taking part in these different learning experiences. These skills include the ability to be a self-directed learner, and with these skills, you will position yourself to be a life-long learner.
Who knows? Your dream job may be one that doesn’t even exist yet. But, with the self-directed learning skills gained from your gap year combined with the academic preparation of your college experience, you’ll be ready to adapt yourself to fit that career. You’ll become the type of worker that happy workplaces like Google are looking for.
Listen to Jean Fan of Uncollege explain how a gap year can help you succeed in the world of work.