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Employability in the 21st Century: Complex (Interactive)
Problem Solving and Other Essential Skills
Filip De Fruyt, Bart Wille and Oliver P. John
Industrial and Organizational Psychology / Volume 8 / Issue 02 / June 2015, pp 276 - 281
DOI: 10.1017/iop.2015.33, Published online: 28 July 2015
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1754942615000334
How to cite this article:
Filip De Fruyt, Bart Wille and Oliver P. John (2015). Employability in the 21st Century: Complex
(Interactive) Problem Solving and Other Essential Skills. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8,
pp 276-281 doi:10.1017/iop.2015.33
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276 .
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Employability in the 21st Century: Complex
(Interactive) Problem Solving and Other Essential
Skills
Filip De Fruyt and Bart Wille
Ghent University
Oliver P. John
University of California, Berkeley
Neubert, Mainert, Kretzschmar, and Grei (2015) plea to integrate the 21st
century skills of complex problem solving (CPS) and collaborative problem
solving (ColPS) in the assessment and development suite of industrial and
organizational (I-O) psychologists, given the expected increase in nonrou-
tine and interactive tasks in the new workplace. At the same time, they pro-
motenewwaysofassessingtheseskillsusingcomputer-basedmicroworlds,
enabling the systematic variation of problem features in assessment. Neubert
and colleagues’ (2015) suggestions are a valuable step in connecting dieren-
Filip De Fruyt and Bart Wille, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psy-
chology, Ghent University; Oliver P. John, Department of Psychology and Institute of Social
and Personality Research, University of California, Berkeley.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Filip De Fruyt, Depart-
ment of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology, Ghent University, H. Dunantlaan
2, B-9000 Gent, Belgium. E-mail: lip.defruyt@ugent.be
21 277
tial psychologists’ models of human dierences and functioning with human
resources professionals’ interest in understanding and predicting behavior at
work. We concur that CPS and ColPS are important transversal skills, use-
ful for I-O psychologists, but these are only two babies of a single family,
and the domain of 21st century skills includes other families of a dierent
kind that are also with utility for I-O psychologists. The current contribu-
tion is meant to broaden this interesting discussion in two important ways.
We clarify that CPS and ColPS need to be considered in the context of a
wider set of 21st century skills with an origin in the education domain, and
we highlight a number of crucial steps that still need to be taken before “get-
ting started” (Neubert et al., 2015,p.lastpageofthediscussion)withthis
taxonomic framework. But rst, we feel the need to slightly reframe the rel-
evance of considering 21st century skills in I-O psychology by shifting the
attention from narrow task-related skills to the broader domain of career
management competencies.
Nonroutine and Interactive Tasks Versus Employability
Neubertetal.(2015) started from the assumption that future jobs will
increasingly involve interactive and nonroutine tasks. Although educational
frameworks of 21st century skills usually claim to aect a broad range
of criteria, including quality of life, healthy behavior, civic engagement,
and environmental sustainability, demonstrating labor market tness and
employability are among the key anticipated outcomes. The movement of
21st century skills is further particularly concerned about the skills of those
growing up in dicult circumstances, who have lower education levels or
disabilities or who are at risk of structural unemployment. In addition to
advocating two skills related to task characteristics of more complex jobs,
an alternative could be to introduce 21st century skills into I-O psychology,
starting from an analysis of what employability means anno 2015, and to
identifythoseskillsthatpeoplewillneedtoaccessandnavigateexiblyon
the labor market.
Broadly speaking, employability can be dened as an individual’s labor
market tness and ability to be in charge of his/her own career. Considered
at an operational level, employability can be minimally understood in terms
of ve characteristics. Hogan, Chamorro-Premuzic, and Kaiser (2013)de-
ne employability as a person’s propensity to (a) show task engagement and
goal setting, (b) interact with other people (“getting along” or “being reward-
ing to deal with”), and (c) adapt to/t in an organizational structure or have
the capacity to deploy such structure (for those pursuing self-employment).
We propose two additional criteria—that is, (d) demonstrating the ability
and exibility to learn on the job and prepare for future challenges and (e)
beingabletomanageandswitchbetweenshort-andlong-termperspec-
tives. These two extensions of Hogan et al.’s (2013)frameworkareimportant,
278 .
giventheexpectationthatpeoplewillhavetoworklongerinamorevolatile
and quickly changing labor market. Moreover, employees will be required to
focus on their current job but, at the same time, will also have to reect on
and invest in future employability. Put dierently, employees minimally need
to (a) be willing to work and do the job (task engagement and goal setting),
(b)beabletoworkwith/amongothers,(c)tinandendorsethevaluesof
an organization, (d) show an eagerness to learn and demonstrate exibility
and adaptability, and (e) be able to envisage and invest in current and future
career paths (within or outside the organization).
These ve characteristics dene minimal requirements set by the current
21st century labor market across jobs varying in social prestige and job com-
plexity. These employability indices tap into all basic personality dimensions
dened by the ve-factor model of personality (John & Srivastava, 1999),
with task engagement and goal setting related to Conscientiousness, inter-
personal skills related to emotion regulation (Emotional Stability) and the
core dimensions of the interpersonal circumplex (Extraversion and Agree-
ableness), and “tting in,” “learning and adapting,” and “time perspective”
related to Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness. For jobs with
higher complexity on the labor market, CPS and ColPS are denitely useful
extensions, because they tap into more hybrid constructs at the intersection
of social-emotional and cognitive skills.
Models in the Real World Versus Models From Academic Psychology
Although less elaborately discussed by Neubert et al. (2015), it is impor-
tant to clarify that the concept of 21st century skills actually refers to a
broader set of characteristics, of which CPS and ColPS are only two—be they
important—examples. For example, AssessmentandTeachingof21stCen-
tury Skills (Grin, Care, & McGaw, 2012) summarized 21st century skills
under the acronym KSAVE (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, and ethics)
and grouped them into four broad categories: “ways of thinking,” “tools of
working,” “ways of working,” and “ways of living” in the world (Grin et
al., 2012). Trilling and Fadel (2009) listed over one hundred 21st century
skills, grouped into the categories “learning and innovation skills,” “digital
literacy,” and “life and career skills.” Reviewing the content of these cate-
gories and lists shows an amalgam of constructs, with a rst group referring
to cognitive skills, a second cluster that is best described as social-emotional
skills, and nally, a group of more hybrid constructs building on cognitive
resources but also tapping into social-emotional skill content. CPS is a skill
that is conceptually chiey situated in the cognitive domain, whereas ColPS
is probably best conceived as a hybrid construct related to, though distinct
from, cognitive and social-emotional skills.
In line with Neubert and colleagues (2015), we agree that both skills
have key importance for I-O psychologists but advocate at the same time
21 279
that the cluster of social-emotional skills should also be brought to the at-
tention of I-O psychologists. Social-emotional skills represent a large cluster
in the 21st century skill domain, and they are crucial in evaluating individ-
uals’ suitability to work in a range of jobs with varying degrees of complex-
ity. Social-emotional skills can be best dened as individual characteristics
that (a) originate in the reciprocal interaction between biological predispo-
sitions and environmental factors; (b) are manifested in consistent patterns
of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; (c) continue to develop through formal
and informal learning experiences; and (d) inuence important socioeco-
nomic outcomes throughout the individual’s life.
Although each of the specic constructs in the above mentioned clusters
(Grin et al., 2012;Trilling&Fadel,2009)hasitsownmeritsandimpor-
tance, to move this eld further, it is necessary to empirically structure this
variability to better deal with overlap and represent the observed common-
ality into a taxonomy. Such taxonomy should then form the starting point to
constructacomprehensivethoughmanageableassessmenttoolthatcanbe
used in 21st century skill research, monitoring, and follow up.
Recently, Primi, Santos, John, and De Fruyt (2015) examined the un-
derlying structure of eight instruments that are frequently used to assess
social-emotional skills in childhood and adolescence in Brazil. They found
a structure that showed strong parallels, but was not isomorphic, with the
dimensions of the ve-factor model of personality—that is, Extraversion,
Agreeableness, Emotional Stability (Neuroticism), Openness to Experience,
and Conscientiousness, supplemented with a sixth dimension referring to
Negative Valence. These dimensions are well familiar to both cross-cultural
and I-O psychologists (De Fruyt & Wille, 2013; Schmitt, 2014). Although
Neubert and colleagues (2015)arguedthatconstructsrepresentingoverar-
ching transversal characteristics, such as intelligence and personality, would
be of little value in concrete situations, the ndings by Primi et al. (2015)
showed the opposite for social-emotional skills, although these are dierent
constructs than CPS and ColPS. Moreover, this empirical study showed that
the ve-factor model taxonomy was the most comprehensive of the eight
measures that were examined, suggesting that this framework provided a
good starting point to develop a new assessment tool for a large group of
21st century skills.
Developmental Paths, Malleability, and Predictive Validity
The eld of 21st century skills is relatively young, and so far, eorts mainly
concentrated on listing and conceptually grouping skills and especially cre-
ating awareness for their importance. Groups taking the lead in this policy
and research endeavor also started working on developing new methodolo-
gies to assess these skills (e.g., CPS and ColPS). Whether this broad range
280 .
of skills can be reliably and validly assessed will be a key factor for their
implementation and integration success into I-O psychology. In an attempt
to work with more application-oriented constructs, human resources and
I-O psychology professionals are already working with the concept of com-
petencies (Hoekstra & Van Sluijs, 2003), considered more helpful in con-
crete situations or to understand behavior at work. The assessment of these
competencies in professional practice, however, turned out to be often dif-
cult and sometimes even problematic. Pervasive problems associated with
competency measurement include, among others, lack of evidence for con-
struct and divergent validity. Moreover, competencies are often assessed in
professional practice using assessment exercises with only one or two raters,
with insucient information on the reliability of the ratings. In order not to
oversell, we strongly recommend that considerable attention be given to the
assessment of the proposed 21st century skill constructs; otherwise, there
is no argument to replace competency constructs with 21st century skills.
Given time constraints to assess qualities in job applicants, I-O psychologists
will not embrace over 100 dierent constructs, so taxonomic work will have
to guide the assessment development program. To achieve this goal, models
from dierential psychology will be certainly helpful to structure and assess
the cognitive and the social-emotional skill areas, but we agree that designing
assessment tools for skills from the hybrid cluster will be most challenging.
I-O researchers and practitioners will be also curious about the develop-
mental paths of 21st century skills and the factors that inuence their track.
At present, not that much is known on how 21st century skills develop and
how malleable and coachable these are, in light of developmental constraints,
environmental contingencies, and individuals’ genetic makeup. With respect
to Neubert et al.’s (2015) plea for integrating CPS and ColPS in I-O psychol-
ogy, key questions are, for example, how do CPS and ColPS skills develop, in
what contexts are these skills eective, and to what extent are they malleable
and coachable?
The ultimate criterion to judge on the importance of a construct is
whether it predicts something meaningful. Researchers and practitioners in
the elds of 21st century skills and human resources share an interest in pre-
diction. Educationalists want to monitor learning achievements and predict
development of social-emotional skills at school and academic performance,
culminating into students’ employability when they enter the employment
market. From that stage onward, I-O psychologists assess their potential
and t for lling up job vacancies and predicting future work performance.
Whether I-O psychologists will embrace these 21st century assessment con-
cepts and assessment tools will thus be highly dependent on these skills’ va-
lidity to predict I-O outcomes and to do this better and more incrementally
than currently existing selection assessment methodology.
281
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Incorporating “Soft Skills” Into the Collaborative
Problem-Solving Equation
Ronald E. Riggio and Karan Saggi
Claremont McKenna College
Inonlyaveryfewplaces,Neubert,Mainert,Kretzschmar,&Grei(2015)
mention the role of communication and coordination among team mem-
bers in collaborative problem solving. Although complex and collaborative
problem solving is indeed an imperative for team and organizational success
in the 21st century, it is easier said than done. Collaborative problem solving
is critically dependent on the communication and interaction skills of the
Ronald E. Riggio and Karan Saggi, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna Col-
lege.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ronald E. Riggio, Kravis
Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College, 850 Columbia Avenue, Claremont, CA
91711. E-mail: ronald.riggio@claremontmckenna.edu
