2 . My students frequently ask me how I planned out my career to become president of Fidelity Investments. I always tell them, “There was no grand plan; I backed into my career one step at a time.” In this tough economy and ever-changing world, it is more important than ever to smartly evaluate each step in your career. To prepare for whatever surprises lie ahead, try to make choices today that will maximize your options in the future.     1    

Gaining transferable (可转移的) knowledge begins with the choices you make at school. You want your education to provide you with the necessary skills and expertise to succeed in a wide variety of jobs.     2     I favor those that involve extensive writing, rigorous analysis, or quantitative skills.

Once you have finished your formal education, search for jobs that will allow you to further expand your transferable knowledge—to help you find your next job. Let’s say you take a job putting together airplane leases. Within a few years, you could become the world’s expert on the subject.     3     By contrast, if you take a job that will expand your computer programming skills, you can greatly boost your options for later steps in your career.

Remember gaining transferable knowledge is only one piece of the puzzle.     4     As a saying goes, “Organizations don’t hire people. People hire people.” The more people you know, the more people will think of you when a job pops open—even when it is not publicly advertised.

Of course, you can build your network to some degree without changing jobs.     5     But this sort of event-driven networking pales in comparison with the deep bonds you can develop with your colleagues by working, communicating, and traveling with them.

5 . Jobs that use both technical and creative thinking are among the fastest-growing and highest-paying ones, according to a new report from Burning Glass Technologies, a job market analytics (分析) company in Boston.

It studied millions of job postings to better understand the skills companies require. What they discovered was that many want workers with experience in such new abilities as big-data (数据) gathering and analytics, or design using digital technology.

Burning Glass came up with the term “hybrid jobs” to describe these kinds of positions, which require skills not normally found together. For example, these hybrid jobs might require people with skills in data science and advertising, or engineering and sales. “The jobs of the future don’t involve just one skill,” says Matt Sigelman, chief manager of Burning Glass.

The company expects general job growth of about 10% between 2018 and 2028, but the hybrid jobs by 21%. What’s more, hybrid jobs pay more than positions that call for a traditional set of skills. For example, a marketing manager mastering a database program gets paid 41% more than a traditional one, with an average yearly salary of $100, 000. Moreover, an engineer who improves her sales skills and becomes a consulting engineer for a software company can more than double her pay from $180, 000 to $400, 000.

While data shows that workers who fail to update their skills will be able to find fewer jobs, people in hybrid jobs are less likely to become out of date, with only 12% possibility of being replaced by machine, compared with 42% for general jobs, says Burning Glass. Hybrid jobs are mostly not beginner roles, so they mainly go to workers with years of experience and, most importantly, more training after leaving college. That means workers, bosses and educators will have to think about how to better prepare people for these roles.

6 . Why working from anywhere isn’t realistic

For most white-collar workers, it used to be very simple. Home was the place you left to go to work. The office was almost certainly where you were_________. Co-working spaces were for entrepreneurial people in T-shirts who wanted to hang out with other entrepreneurial people in T-shirts. You could stay at a hotel on a work trip, but it was not a place to get actual work done, which is why a hotel’s “business centre”_________all of business as using a printer.

The pandemic has thrown these neat_________up into the air. Most obviously, home is now also a place of work. According to a recent Gallup survey, three-quarters of American workers whose jobs can be performed_________expect to spend time doing just that in the future. And offices are increasingly where you go to put the company into company – through collaborative work and social activities.

_________, the boldest version of remote working extends well beyond these two locations. “Working from anywhere” imagines a completely_________existence, in which people can do their jobs in Alaska or Zanzibar. The idea sounds wonderful. Nevertheless, plenty of_________remain. Some are practical. The payroll and tax of working from different locations in a year are an administrative headache._________, working from anywhere is only feasible if your equipment functions reliably. If you spill suntan lotion on your laptop, the people on the hotel’s reception desk are more likely to offer you_________than a replacement computer.

Another set of obstacles is more__________. The carefree promise of working from anywhere is far easier to__________if you don’t have actual cares. Children of a certain age need to go to school; partners may not be able to work remotely and have careers of their own to manage.

The option to work from anywhere will be most attractive to people who have well-paid jobs and fewer__________: childless tech workers, say. For many other people, the “anywhere” in working from anywhere is a simple choice between their home and their office. That might be a recipe for__________within teams. Imagine dialing into a Zoom call covered in baby drool (口水), and hearing your colleague Greg saying how amazing Chamonix (法国城市夏蒙尼) is at this time of year.

Adding it to the menu of working options for sought-after employees__________. The working-from-anywhere policy will probably help employers attract better people. But for the foreseeable future, working from anywhere will be a bonus for a lucky few rather than a(n)__________for things to come.

9 . Is loyalty in the workplace dead?

Just recently, Lynda Gratton, a workplace expert, proclaimed that it was. In The Financial Times, she said that it had been “killed off through _________ contracts, outsourcing, automation and multiple careers.”

It’s sad if this good virtue is now out of place in the business world. But the situation may be more _________. Depending on how you _________ it, loyalty may not be dead, but is just playing out differently.

Fifty years ago, an employee could stay at the same company for decades, said Tammy Erickson, an author and work-force consultant. Many were _________ longtime employment along with health care and a pension.

Now many companies cannot or will not hold up their end of the bargain, so why should the employees hold up theirs? Given the opportunity, they’ll take their skills and their portable retirement accounts elsewhere. These days, Ms. Gratton writes, _________ is more important than loyalty: “Loyalty is about the future - trust is about the present.”

Ms. Erickson says that the quid pro quo (交换物，报酬) of modern employment is more likely to be: As long as I work for you, I promise to have the relevant skills and _________ fully in my work; in return you’ll pay me _________, but I don’t expect you to care for me when I’m 110.

For some baby boomers, this _________ has been hard to accept. Many started their careers _________ that they would be rewarded based on tenure (任职).

A longtime employee who is also productive and motivated is of enormous value, said Cathy Benko, chief talent officer at Deloitte. On the other hand, she said, “You can be with a company a long time and not be highly committed.”

Ms. Benko has seen her company shift its ____________ to employees’ level of engagement - or “the level at which people are motivated to deliver their best work” - rather than length of tenure.

Then there are the effects of the recent recession. Many people - if they haven’t been ____________- have stayed in jobs because they feel they have no choice. Employers may need to prepare for disruptions and turnover when the job market improves.

If the pendulum(摇摆不定的事态或局面) shifts, how will businesses persuade their best employees to stay? ____________ may do the trick, but not always. Especially with younger people, “you’re not going to buy extra loyalty with extra money,” Ms. Erickson said. ____________, employers need to make jobs more challenging and give workers more creative space, she said.

Loyalty may not be what it once was, but most companies will still be better off with at least a core of people who stay with them across decades.

If loyalty is seen as a ____________ to keep workers of all ages fulfilled, productive and involved, it can continue to be cultivated in the workplace - to the ____________ of both employer and employee.