Things have changed so much since our parents’ and grandparents’ time, especially when it comes to jobs and careers. When our parents were starting to find work, the     1     of staying in the same     2     for your entire life was very common. Nowadays, that idea would be considered really unusual!

There will be new     3     21^st century skills that we will have to have. For example, a university degree is still useful, but technology developments mean that many skills we have now are unlikely     4     in the future.     5     is one thing, but if we really want to succeed in our careers we have to be     6     thinking of new and exciting ways to do things. It won’t be enough to have only a general understanding of our area of work but we should keep learning until we become     7    . And given that people will not stay in the same career for long, we can expect that we will have to go back to education and training at some stage     8     to work in another field. In fact, we might have to do that     9    !

Jobs change at an amazing     10     these days, and if we can keep up, we can have really exciting and rewarding future careers.

I recently spoke to Ms Xue about the skills we will need in years to come and the future     1     for jobs and careers. According to Ms Xue, in the future a lot of     2     office and factory jobs will disappear. We need to have many skills which we can start developing now. One of the most important is     3    , which is the ability to analyse and evaluate information.     4     which is the ability to use our reason well, will be highly useful in the workplace, as it will help us use our knowledge     5     others.     6     will be highly valued and companies will always appreciate a     7     person who they can trust to do their job. Even outside the workplace, there are important skills we will need. For example, good     8     will benefit us greatly when we start earning money and have financial responsibilities.