Be employable… a matter of making the difference?

We almost finishing another school year and almost 200 EPATV students are now wishing for a place in the job market after many years of investment in their training. At this time, we can turn ourselves to our students and ask them: what can you do to be “employable”?

The current society has undergone intense changes in its configuration in recent decades. Economies have internationalized, political debates have moved beyond the limits of our frontiers, information has been circulating at a speed unthinkable in other times. Problems that once preoccupied man were left aside and human relations became increasingly mediated through social networks and other digital platforms.

The understanding of the model of society in which we live today runs through levels of complexity we have never seen, altering our way of being and acting and also that of institutions. It is therefore fundamental to think about what we want to build our world today, but also – and above all – the world we want for tomorrow and where you will live and work for many years.

Antonio Gedeão said in his poem “Pedra Filosofal/ Philosophical Stone” that dream commands life / and whenever a man dreams / the world jumps and advances (…).

In parallel to all these transformations, people are increasingly demanding everything around us – and the labour market is a precursor to this strategy, such as greater responsibility, willingness to take risks, constant innovation, flexibility in the face of new ways of living and facing life, resistance to discouragement and frustration, and an enormous capacity to foresee and prepare the future through its present.

Therefore, society has changed and changes permanently, and people have to follow these changes, which are characterized by considering much more the values ​​described above and less technical skills. One of the new demands of society, as a consequence of these changes we have been talking about, is that of becoming a employable person. What is this? The labour market now demands that mechanistic workers, who repeat their tasks without reflection of action, are replaced by “thinking beings”, subjects capable of acting actively on their action.

The changes in the contemporary world imply significant transformations in the labour market, visibly perceived in the new labour design, in the relations of employment, in the requirements of the workers, in the disappearance and appearance of professions and in the density of knowledge that each particular area demands.

The labour market demands more. Thus, the constant qualification changes from an option to be a primary necessity to transit in this “new world” and to be able to guarantee employability. If you are reading this and you have just finished your VET course or will soon finish, do not forget: your training does not stop here! If you are still studying, please note: it takes a new worker profile, requalified and who knows how to position themselves before a more complex and dynamic world, which does not forgive the comfort and the inoperative. Qualification becomes a watchword, and “possessing qualification” becomes the essential condition for all those who wish to be employable.

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