Recruiters are passing over college degrees for this essential soft skill.
Even though a college degree used to be the gold standard for hiring, a curious mindset may carry more weight in the current hiring market. Great skills will always be critical, but a learning mindset will show that you are willing to keep your capabilities fresh and up to date.
A learning orientation—and curiosity—are the desires to seek new information, inquire, explore and discover novel possibilities and experiences. According to the same study, LinkedIn posts mentioning curiosity are up 71% and job postings mentioning the need for curiosity are up 90% in the last couple years.
You can build your skills and make yourself more attractive. Learning new things can help you feel more self-confident and build on you abilities. Managers want people who can collaborate and communicated. Oxford University found that people in formal studies tended to boost their likeability which is helpful to forming positive relationships in a team.
Let your employer know of your desire to grow. Many companies will pay for studies that are allied to the business. Learners tend to be more ambitious and are willing to commit to the company. Employers understand that a learning orientation proves a commitment to continuous improvement. Learning new information helps you to be more resilient and deal with changes and shifts in how things are done. Curiosity and learning help you stay more flexible.
Merely having the desire to learn needs to be coupled with an ability to go deep and broad. Some topics will require extra effort to master, and a broad view will assist in tying all that you are learning together. A broad interest in a variety of things is an indication of creativity.
Find others who are like you and want to expand their knowledge. Seek out those kinds of relationships who have common interests and some that have different competencies and skills. You can learn new prospectives and discuss with people who have diverse viewpoints.
Learning can drive a curiosity habit to ask more questions and seek answers to even the more mundane things in life such as weather and how our food gets to us. You might be surprised at what you’ll uncover. Classes at local colleges or on-line will help uncover new things to feed your desire to learn, question and explore.
(from an article by Tracy Brower a sociologist working at Steelcase in the April 2022 edition of FastCompany.)
Note: an earlier Blog suggested that you take the Clifton Strengths (rebranded from Clifton Strengths Finder) assessment to see 34 measures of your strengths spread among four domains (Learning, Executing, Creating, Analyzing, etc.). Probably best to focus on your top five or ten rather that some lower ranked one that would be difficult to improve.
See: https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/strengthsfinder.aspx
If you are not swimming upstream, then you are going backwards!