What kind of talents are needed in the new era?
The standard of talents has never been fixed. In the Warring States period in the East and the chivalrous era in the West, the most important thing is invincible warriors and eloquent counselors; In China's imperial examination era, the champion was the easiest to get ahead by rote memorization and stereotyped writing. In the days when the western industrial revolution is surging, inventors who are good at changing the world with the power of machines and engineers who are proficient in their professions and work hard have become the best among all talents; Even in the 20th century, most enterprises' requirements for talents remained at the personal level of concentration, diligence, honesty and obedience. ...
But time flies, 2 1 century has quietly come to us. In today's world where opportunities are fleeting and the environment is changing rapidly, more people have the right to choose and make decisions, more people need to improve themselves through continuous learning and innovation, and more people have enough space to display their talents and ambitions ... Most people's work is no longer repetitive mechanical labor, nor is it a single-handed invention. People need more independent thinking and decision-making, and people also need to communicate and cooperate with others more closely.
In the 2 1 century, what modern enterprises need most is not only individual excellent talents, or talents with certain characteristics in a narrow sense, but talents who can fully meet the needs of competition in the 2 1 century and have sufficient potential and cultivation in personal quality, knowledge and experience, cooperation and communication, innovative decision-making and so on. If we make a simple comparison between the characteristics of talents needed by enterprises in the 20th century and the requirements of enterprises for talents in the 20th century 2 1, we can roughly get the following comparison table:
The most needed talents in the 20th century.
2/kloc-the most needed talents in 0/century
diligent and eager to learn knowledge
Have a thorough understanding of sth.
Focus on innovation
The combination of innovation and practice
professional knowledge
Interdisciplinary comprehensive talents
intelligence quotient
IQ+EQ+IQ
Personal ability
Ability of communication and cooperation
Choose hot jobs
Do what you like.
Discipline and caution
Positive and optimistic
This does not mean that the qualities of talents such as diligence and sureness, which were emphasized in the 20th century, are no longer important. In fact, the demand for talents in the 20th century will also be based on these basic personal qualities and codes of conduct. However, the demand for talents in 2 1 century is more comprehensive and abundant, and the perspective of inspecting talents has also changed from a single individual level to a three-dimensional perspective integrating individuals, teams, organizations, society and even the environment, covering learning, innovation, cooperation and practice.
1.
As early as thousands of years ago, students in China knew how to study hard and study hard. It is good to study hard, but many students mistakenly believe that the purpose of studying hard is nothing more than to get a specific diploma or excellent grades. Some schools and teachers have also spent a lot of energy on how to cultivate "examination machines". Some tutors even said to the students, "Try to memorize the knowledge points before the exam and forget them as soon as possible after the exam, otherwise you will not be able to cope with the heavy courses behind."
So, what is the real purpose of learning? In the book "Be the Best Oneself", I put forward four realms of learning:
1. Practice makes perfect: study under the guidance of teachers, master the contents of textbooks and know the answers to questions.
2. Draw inferences from others: Have thinking ability, master learning methods, be able to draw inferences from others and know why.
3. Self-study without a teacher: I have mastered the methods of self-study and self-study, and I can take the initiative to learn without the help of a teacher.
4. Mastery: Be able to flexibly apply what you have learned to your life and work practice, and know how to do things and be a person.
Mastery is the highest realm of learning. What is most needed in 2 1 century is talents who can master mastery in learning, cope with it freely in practice, and are good at thinking, reasoning and application.
A key point of mastery is clear and flexible thinking. Some software companies often use some seemingly bizarre "thinking challenges" when recruiting R&D personnel (for example, "Why is the cover of the sewer round?" "Please evaluate the man-machine interface of the elevator you just used." )。 These questions are not "intelligence tests" or "brain teasers" as many people think. Their real purpose is to test the logic and flexibility of candidates' independent thinking. If the applicant answers several answers, it proves that he is a positive person. If a person's answer is illogical, or he can't answer at all, or he insists on only one correct answer after answering, then even if he has achieved excellent results in the school exam, we will doubt whether he is a person who can only recite and take the exam, but is not good at mastering it flexibly.
2. Innovative practitioners
Modern society is inseparable from innovation, because innovation is the only competitive advantage that can last for a long time, no matter for a society or an enterprise. Fundamentally speaking, value comes from innovation. The value created by innovation and industrial and technological revolution caused by innovation is far greater than that created by repetitive labor. Because of this, almost all modern enterprises put innovation at the core of enterprise development, and most developing countries, including China, also regard independent innovation as the fundamental driving force for sustainable development.
However, there is often a tendency to "innovate for the sake of innovation" in scientific research and industry. Many R&D achievements only unilaterally pursue "leading technology" or "unique ideas", and many researchers only pursue publishing papers, regardless of whether innovative achievements can solve practical problems well and be accepted by most users.
For example, from 65438 to 0996, I led a research and development team in SGI company to develop a very cool and great 3D browser and won many awards. But at that time, we just buried ourselves in the creation and didn't do a good job in market analysis and investigation to see if such a cool and great browser could be accepted by ordinary users in the market. The result is that there is no market for this product, and this innovation can't create any value for the company. Our product is equal to nothing. We have to sell the department and dissolve more than 100 employees in the department. This can be said to be one of the most unforgettable things in my life and the biggest failure I have ever experienced.
The lesson of this painful experience is that innovation must serve practice, and it is meaningless to "innovate for innovation's sake". When I was interviewing at MIT, someone asked me how to motivate MIT students in one sentence. I had just experienced the failure of SGI at that time. The first sentence that comes to my mind is: "What matters is not innovation, but useful innovation". We should not do something just because it is "new", but to see whether it has practical value, whether it can solve practical problems and whether it can be accepted by users.
On the contrary, in the process of practice, we should not be limited to repetitive work, but should always remember innovation, promote practice with innovation, and guide practice with innovation. Only by not forgetting innovation can our practical work be full of vitality and passion, and we can continuously develop excellent products.
Sergey brin and Larry Page, two founders of Google, are very innovative in practice. At that time, when the two magical figures of Stanford University combined the innovative webpage ranking algorithm and the emerging online search practice into an excellent Google search engine, the two complementary words of innovation and practice took root in Google. Even after intense work, the two founders will never forget to invent some "novel" gadgets to add some fun to their work. Once, Larry Page personally installed a laptop with his own test program on a toy car that can be remotely controlled, and then squatted on the ground and directed his test car to run around the company-the purpose was to test the performance of the company's internal wireless network.
Innovation guides practice, and practice supports innovation. Practice and innovation are indispensable, just like those who only know the mechanics principle and those who only know how to lay bricks and tiles, it is impossible to build skyscrapers independently. Similarly, in the new century, only those who are good at combining innovation with practice can achieve the greatest success.
3. Interdisciplinary integrator
When many students enter the university, they always think that "major is a profession, and learning well is a golden rice bowl". They think that those who study chemistry will become chemists and those who study history will become historians. This view is wrong. 2 1 century is a century of mutual integration and promotion of various disciplines and industries. In 2 1 century, the demand for talents has also changed from traditional professionals to interdisciplinary comprehensive talents. In other words, modern society and modern enterprises not only require us to have deep attainments in a particular major, but also require us to know and even be familiar with the knowledge of related majors and fields, and be good at combining skills from two, three or even more fields and comprehensively applying them to specific problems.
In fact, interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary are also the inherent needs of social development. After the full development of modern society in various professional fields, it is bound to put forward higher requirements for cooperation and integration of different majors and fields. For example, if people create 65,438+0,000 kinds of knowledge in the traditional subject classification system, and combine these 65,438+0,000 kinds of knowledge into two combinations, we can get 65,438+0,000,000 kinds of potential possibilities, and each combination may create a brand-new academic field and trigger a technological or productivity change. If we consider the integration of the three knowledge categories, the possibility will increase to10000000000-what great opportunities and challenges it contains!
Specifically, taking computer science as an example, people combine computer science with psychology, linguistics, economics, biology, architectural and civil engineering, drama, machinery and automation, and create a large number of dynamic emerging disciplines such as user interface design and computational linguistics (as shown in the following table):
computer science
statistics
data mining
probability theory
machine learning
psychology
User interface design
linguistics
computational linguistics
economics
econometrics
biology
Gene analysis
Architecture and civil engineering
Computer aided design
drama
Digital entertainment
Machinery and automation
Robotics
……
……
EDS research institute even boldly predicted: "The CIO of the future is no longer the chief information officer, but the chief integration officer."
Google's success is actually "cross-domain synthesis". Many people may think that Google must have mastered advanced technology and made a major breakthrough in information retrieval (that is, "search"). But in fact, more than 20 years before Google was founded, there was a world-leading information retrieval company Lexis-Nexis. Lexis-Nexis can be said to be the pioneer and leader of information retrieval industry. More than 20 years ago, it developed world-leading products in searching large-scale texts and databases. However, Lexis-Nexis missed the Internet revolution because of its excessive focus on the information retrieval industry itself, and they did not see the huge opportunity of using huge parallel computing to retrieve the massive information on the Internet. On the contrary, Google relies on the cross-complementarity and comprehensive application of multi-disciplinary and multi-domain knowledge in technology, but it comes from behind. If analyzed deeply, the seemingly simple Google web search technology is actually composed of information retrieval (how to find the best information matching), network (how to meet the needs of users with the latest network technology), user interface (how to make users get information more conveniently with the best experience), information collection (how to collect information resources scattered in all corners of the network), hardware (how to provide hardware support for complex computing tasks) and parallel processing (how to quickly handle large-scale processing).
In a word, the future work needs interdisciplinary knowledge and practice, the ability to quickly enter and master new fields, and the interdisciplinary comprehensive talents. Of course, this does not mean that we no longer need to study a certain professional knowledge seriously-but if we are too persistent in it, we may lose the opportunity of innovation and practice. Combining the latest ideas of different majors and doing something creative and practical may be the most promising growth opportunity. 2 1 century needs comprehensive talents who can not only have a deep understanding of a certain professional field, but also take into account the development of related fields and be good at cooperating with other fields. If you are studying a major you don't like, you don't have to worry too much about it, but you can spend time looking for "cross-disciplinary" opportunities in your major and your hobbies.
4. People with high three quotients (IQ+EQ+IQ)
Many students think that the standard of selecting talents for famous enterprises is "achievement determines everything". Whether you can enter a first-class company depends only on what school you came from and where you rank. Of course, generally speaking, famous schools or students with good grades may have a greater chance of success in job hunting, but not necessarily. Many excellent employees I have contacted are ordinary students who graduated from unknown schools. According to the statistics of the book Millionaire Next Door, the average college score of American millionaires is only 2.9 (3 is equivalent to B and 2 is equivalent to C), which is not very outstanding.
In fact, whether a person can succeed depends not only on his academic performance or IQ, but also on his balanced development in IQ, EQ and spiritual IQ. In other words, talents in the 2 1 century need to be balanced in the following three aspects to meet the demand of modern enterprises for talents:
1. High IQ): High IQ not only represents intelligence, but also represents creativity, and is good at independent thinking and problem solving. The above integration, innovative time and interdisciplinary thinking are all representatives of "2 1 century" high IQ.
2. Emotional quotient (EQ): EQ is a general term for personal abilities related to self-awareness, emotional control, self-motivation, interpersonal relationship and teamwork. Among senior managers, EQ is nine times as important as IQ.
3.SQ, spiritual intelligence quotient): The representatives of SQ have correct values. Can they tell right from wrong and distinguish truth from falsehood? Those who can't tell right from wrong without the guidance of correct values, the stronger their ability in other aspects, the greater the harm to others.
I once discussed the relationship between schools and talents with a vice president of China University on a CCTV talk show. He believes that the duty of the school is to cultivate talents with high intelligence, and I think that in addition to wisdom, the school should also cultivate talents with good character and team spirit. Good character is "spiritual IQ" and team spirit is "emotional intelligence". Because four years in college is not only the most malleable four years for students, but also the most misleading four years for students. If we only pay attention to the cultivation of IQ, those who leave school are likely to become "deformed" talents who cannot meet the requirements of modern society. Yale University's latest Rainbow Project also proves that it is twice as good to predict students' future performance with EQ test as with SAT. In the Rainbow Project, scholars from Yale University tested students' interpersonal skills, such as "How do you make new friends when you come to cocktail parties?" Or "You need to move, how can you persuade your friends to help you?" And the ability to recognize people's feelings, feelings, emotions, etc.
Therefore, I suggest that students at school make full use of student associations, project cooperation, summer internships and other opportunities to cultivate their potential in emotional intelligence, sports quotient and spiritual IQ and prepare for their future.
Communicate with partners
Thomas l. friedman pointed out: "Countries in19th century can't survive without learning to communicate, enterprises in 20th century can't survive without learning to communicate, and young people in 2 1 century can't survive without learning to communicate." Cooperation between countries is diplomacy, cooperation between companies is commercial agreement, and cooperation between people may be cross-border, cross-disciplinary and cross-company. Therefore, to become a talented person in the 2 1 century, we must learn to communicate and cooperate with others.
Paul, CEO of Wipro, a famous Indian enterprise, once said: "I may cooperate with an American in the morning to better compete with an Indian company, place an order with an China at noon, sign a contract with a Frenchman in the afternoon, and sell the products to the British at night. We can transfer any job to any country. Today's talents not only need to adapt to the cooperation and competition in this international industrial chain, but also need to have the ability to be conscious, motivated and communicate. "
The ability of communication and cooperation is the basic requirement for talents in the new century. The "EQ" discussed in the last section actually includes the ability of communication and cooperation. 2 1 century, we need "communication partners with high emotional intelligence", because almost no project can be completed by one person. Because there will be more and more cross-disciplinary projects, everyone must cooperate with people in other fields. Because the company will become more and more decentralized, everyone should actively cooperate with others instead of waiting for the boss to assign work. If a person is a genius, but he is withdrawn and arrogant, unable to actively communicate with others, and unable to cooperate harmoniously with others, then his value will be greatly reduced.
Efficient communicators are good at understanding their audience, can communicate with the audience in the most efficient way, and can express complex information in a simple way. Today, when information is readily available, what matters is not how much information you have, but whether you can properly express this information in an easy-to-understand way and gain a good impression by telling stories. For example, in the computer field, I know many friends who are "enterprise architects". This well-paid position is actually a "glib engineer". An architect said: "There are many people who can become engineers, but it is difficult to find such an engineer-he can explain a new technology to a customer who doesn't know technology and explain what benefits this technology has for the customer. Therefore, we are so popular in the workplace. "
High-performance collaborators are good at finding their proper position in the team, can quickly distinguish their responsibilities and cooperation with other team members, and actively help others or share their work experience with others in their work.
In the global competition, everyone should give full play to his own specialty. Only in this way can talents and their teams show their unique values that are different from their competitors. The best way to develop your specialty is to find what you like. Doing what you love will not only make you more engaged and happier, but also get the best results because of your engagement and happiness.
Unfortunately, when choosing a job, most students today will choose the most popular or profitable job, regardless of whether they really like it or not. Everyone needs money. Everyone wants to have more money. It's not a bad thing to hope for money, but the potential of a person who works only for money is very limited, because he always thinks about "how to make more money". Such people may also make wrong decisions because of lack of motivation or impure motives.
What I recognize more are those students who are truly conscious and confident. They will choose their jobs according to their hobbies-because only by doing the work they love can they really devote themselves to it and be full of passion and laughter at work every day. I think the latter is the happiest person, and it is the easiest to achieve the greatest success in career. An American friend translated Confucius's "If you find a job you love, you won't have to work for a day in your life". This sentence tells the true meaning of "doing what you love".
A while ago, an excellent manager from China came to apply for a senior position. Although he is strong in technology and management, we turned him down. The following is my summary of him according to all the interviewers' comments: "He really wants to leave his present company, but he doesn't have any ideals and passions. He doesn't care about what projects he will do in the future, but he keeps asking about salary, position and power. If he just wants to be a professional manager and goes home with a heavy salary package every month, then he is definitely not suitable for working in our company. "
Sergey brin, the founder of Google, and Larry Page had a conversation when they were PhD students at Stanford. The purpose is to discuss why the performance of doctoral students and postdoctoral students in Stanford is quite different.
Larry: "Our postdoctoral fellows also graduated from famous universities, but why are their performances always worse than those of doctors?"
Sergey: "Yes, and almost all the famous research is done by doctors and published papers. It is rare to see what breakthrough work postdoctoral fellows do. "
Larry: "Is it because you read a doctor that you become stupid? Then we will not read it. "
Sergei: "I see. Our doctors can choose their own topics of interest and follow their favorite teachers after entering Stanford. "
Larry: "Yes, professors have to hire postdocs to do projects that have funds but no doctoral students are willing to do."
So this is another example of "knowing is not as good as being good, and being good is not as good as being happy".
If a student only considers how much salary he can get in the future, his success is limited. If he can find a direction that suits his ideals and interests, and is good at learning and accumulating, then his future will be immeasurable. If you want to find your passion, I suggest you find your ideal first, set your goals in life and at all stages, make a serious plan for your future, and have achievable, measurable and measurable wishes. Then, find your own interests and stimulate your passion. Love your job and do what you like. If you are not sure about your interest, keep a curious heart and try more.
7. Positive optimists
Silence is not necessarily golden, and caution is not necessarily the way to experience life. In the fleeting 2 1 century, if you can't take an optimistic attitude and take the initiative to seize opportunities, or even create opportunities, opportunities may never come to you again. If you can't actively let others know about your abilities and talents, you may never get the job you like.
2 1 century is a century in which information is fully enjoyed and personal abilities are fully released. For thousands of years, people rarely have so many choices as they do today, and they rarely have complete control of their own destiny as they do today. In such an era, what we need more is to be proactive and take the initiative to choose, rather than being silent and cautious and passively accepting.
In the fifth letter to students in China, I put forward three importance of initiative and various elements of cultivating initiative:
1. Be responsible for everything and master your own destiny: realize that not solving is also solving, and not making a decision is also making a decision.
2. Silence is not golden: if you want to seize fleeting opportunities, you must learn to persuade others, sell yourself to others and express your views.
Don't wait for opportunities, but be fully prepared: don't wait for opportunities, because that is a negative approach. In other words, before the opportunity comes, you should do everything with your heart and do your best. When the opportunity has not yet appeared, in addition to always preparing, we should also take the initiative to create opportunities for ourselves, instead of waiting for the opportunity to come.
Proactive people always have endless creativity. When Google decided to set up Google Camp(Google Club) in domestic universities, the staff in charge of this matter came to discuss with me related matters and how to start it. I was deeply impressed by some very active classmates I met during my lecture tour in more than 20 universities across the country. I immediately remembered that a student of Beihang University sent me an email, hoping that Google would be a club in Beihang University. I also remember that an active community in Zhejiang University once presided over my speech, and they did a very good job. I still remember that four students who designed and launched the "six-dimensional space" in Nantah came to me. So I told my colleagues that you should go directly to these students, because they are the most active and in line with the spirit of Google, and they will certainly put forward many ideas and become the backbone of our Google camp. A few months later, these students not only put forward good opinions on Google Camp, but also worked as interns at Google, and made plans to promote Google Camp to more than 20 colleges and universities, and may even become employees of Google. Their initiative makes them stand out and gives them a good opportunity to exercise.
Perhaps the biggest worry about being proactive is "What if I fail". Here, I would like to remind all students: "Whether a glass of water is half full or half empty depends mainly on whether you are pouring water into the cup or pouring water out of it." I hope every student is an optimist who keeps pouring water into the cup. Because, everyone's life will always encounter big and small failures and setbacks. 2 1 century, environmental factors change all the time, further increasing the probability and risk of failure. People who are afraid of failure will fall down in the face of failure and completely lose the courage to continue trying. However, optimistic people can always regard failure as their motivation. They are good at learning from failure and regard failure as the best opportunity to improve themselves. Obviously, optimistic people are more likely to adapt to the competitive environment in the 2 1 century, and they are more likely to succeed in the process of constantly improving themselves. Recently, it was suggested to add an "AQ" to the above "3Q". AQ stands for adversity quotient, which is the ability to face difficulties. In this 2 1 century full of opportunities and challenges, we really need talents with high AQ.
When Mr. Zhang Zhongmou, Chairman of TSMC, wrote an inscription for a friend, he wrote "Think more". It means that nine times out of ten, you should think more about the remaining one or two things. In other words, we should cherish the rare success and keep a grateful heart and an optimistic attitude.
As for those "nine times out of ten" failures and setbacks, don't care too much, don't be pessimistic and disappointed, but summon up courage, learn from them and improve yourself. For myself, there are many examples of failure in my work experience. As mentioned earlier, the products I met in SGI company had no users, and the R&D team was dissolved. But it was because of that tragic failure that I really realized the importance of combining innovation with practice. Since then, I have been reminding myself and my team that whether in Microsoft Research Asia or when leading the R&D team of Google China, we should not only keep the spirit of innovation in practice, but also keep close contact with practice and meet the needs of users. It should be said that I have learned much more from failure than from successful experience. From these experiences, I come to the conclusion that failure should not be regarded as a punishment, but an opportunity to learn.