Have you ever wondered what challenges your young children will be facing when they enter the workforce? A recent talk given to parents and teachers at Tenby International School helped to open their eyes to these challenges and offered some tips on how to deal with them.
Dr Camille Koppen is passionate about helping young people to bring their value to the world. Camille brings together a wealth of experience and expertise from academia, education and her corporate career, to create an effective set of courses and modules to help students to be happy and successful in their lives and careers.
Camille has a strong academic background. She achieved a 1st class and DPhil in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford, with six published papers. She was awarded several scholarships, including the Marlborough College Academic Exhibition (1995-2000), Modern Old Marlburian Exhibition (2001-2003) and the Oxford University Experimental Psychology Studentship (2004-2007).
Throughout her academic and corporate career, she has taught and tutored a range of students. She has taught secondary school students, she has tutored second year Oxford undergraduate Experimental Psychology students, and she delivered corporate training to Accenture new joiners. She has taught a wide range of topics from public speaking coaching, Experimental Psychology tutorials, to visual basic programming, project management and career building skills.
Camille developed her public speaking skills during her time as a member of the Oxford Speakers Club (Toastmasters International), where she won various awards and speech competitions, and the Oxford Isis Speakers Club, which she co-founded.
Over the past decade, Camille has worked as a Management Consultant. She gained valuable experience at Accenture and Navigant Consulting before forming Hapuna Consulting, where her key clients were large-scale financial services institutions. Through her experience across a broad range of strategic and large-scale business transformation programmes, working with senior stakeholders and large global teams, she has developed a strong understanding of what organisations are looking for in their people and how young people can position themselves to succeed.
In talking about the future, Camille shared that by the time her daughter, who is two, graduates, it will be 2038. Research shows that 60% of the jobs that will exist then will be completely new and our children should focus on the skills that matter regardless of Industry and on jobs that will help solve the problems of the future.
There will be increased competition as organisations have raised the bar on what they expect of new joiners. They want them to arrive job-ready with plenty of experience. She warned that many jobs are expected to give way to automation within the next decade or so which means that we and our children need to be aware of the industry trends – when we start to move towards a particular career. Something that may have been good 10 years ago may be a dying trade in 10 years’ time.
Soft skills like creativity, social intelligence and the ability to collaborate across cultures are not only nice-to-have skills but essential skills.
She stressed on the importance of employability skills that make your children attractive to an employer. These skills like Business Awareness, Communication & Public Speaking, Creativity, Initiative, Leadership, Planning, Self-Management and Teamwork, are not currently taught in the traditional educational systems today.
Camille, who has done a lot of research in this field, says that young people are anxious and worried about the future because they don’t know what it looks like and don’t know what they want to do and hence get angry and frustrated when pushed by elders.
A 7-day course Teen Leadership Course for 14-18 year olds in August to be held in the Meru Valley Resort, in Ipoh, will help them to understand themselves and their personal values, give them skills they need to be successful in their life and careers and get them to start an action plan to help them reach their goals.
During this action packed and fun-filled week, attendees will understand what success means to them individually, learn the importance of mental health and the need to break the taboo around depression and anxiety which is rising throughout the world. Children and parents need to be aware of it, be able to recognise it as a real illness and not just an attitude, in themselves and others, and if it is recognised, then they can get help.
Parents can do their bit to help their children prepare for their future by helping them to be themselves, understand their values, understand themselves, where they may add value in the world and help them to develop the skills, mindset and action plan for their future.
Registering them in the 7-day course is a step forward.
