Borders between countries being shut down, careers have become borderless. Global markets and employers are available online now, and this trend is only going to unfold.

The ReForum team has prepared a research on the job and education trends for the next 10 years.

We used the data from the following materials in this article:

• The 2019 annual report of a major international recruiting company Randstad; this study covered 200,000 people and 6,100 companies in 33 countries (CIS Organizer — Ancor)
• The study conducted by the international consulting agency PwC
• The future study conducted by the iconic magazine VICE that interrogated the generation Z representatives on their expectations of the 2030 world.

According to the Randstad study, the reason why about 40% of employees quit their jobs in 2019 was the incompliance of their personal values with their employer's values.

The new generation of future professionals is guided by such priorities as freedom and self-fulfillment, flexible working hours, healthy communications within a team and company's ethics when looking for a job.

The market of freelance professionals is growing: more and more specialists tend to prefer distant jobs and projects, the philosophy of which coincides with their own principles.

Every other respondent interrogated by VICE is convinced that work will become the most important measure of personal identity and self-fulfillment in the nearest 10 years.

If companies want to attract the best workforce, they need to really pay attention to their brand values. Today, this is what a loyal team is formed around. Financial performance directly depends on brand awareness and image. The ability to communicate ideas and values relevant to the team is an important trend of the future and the major challenge for HR specialists.

People are seeking new senses in work; they test employers for compliance with their own values and expectations in order to feel really demanded and satisfied with the quality of their life.

Preventative lifestyle is a gradually unfolding trend, while the industry of health is becoming a serious competitor to the industry of sickness. Being a person's priority, health predetermines their choices, including the choice of job, i.e. company and team.

New generation is cautious about their mental and physical health. More and more people are concerned with eco-friendliness and ethics of corporations, while many companies in their turn integrate health initiatives into their business models.

It's an important step for employers to be considerate of this trend. This isn't limited to VMI, gym memberships, sporting events, etc. People wish for humane and healthy relations within the team.

Two solutions worth being implemented today:

• Reduce the level of untruth in your team
• Develop Human Skills in yourself and your people

98% of respondents of the study conducted by VICE aging 18 to 24 claimed that they are disappointed with their education.

Third global trend is people's conscious choice to re-skill or get a brand new profession:

• Some people go for a completely different career and start from the beginning in a new sphere;
• Others build their new career on their basis of professional skills their already have to comply with the market demands.

According to the 2019 study conducted by PwC, 74% of respondents are ready to acquire new skills or to re-skill completely to be able to get a job in the future.

People are ready to change their career to something completely different and start all over again.

This is a new type of motivation — to be a flexible and demanded professional in the future. The number of people satisfied with the standard career progression is decreasing.

The flip side of the coin

Very soon, we are to face the new-generation professionals who are already attending online schools and acquiring practical knowledge by studying the real cases instead of 4 years of theory in standard bachelor's degree programs.

Is there an alternative to fundamental education?

For example, the University of the Future Minerva offers a new approach to education and internship. This university's campus is the whole world, there are no borders.

Minerva's key difference from traditional schools is that they don't teach specific disciplines; instead, they teach creative and critical thinking and communications. Therefore, all Minerva alumni know how to address any problem, to analyze it properly and to find the best solution to it.

Over the time students spent at this university, they get to live in 7 cities. In each city, they investigate into its residents' lives, study the cultural differences, identify the problems and try to solve them.

This school has no campus or regular staff. Instead, it offers a sophisticated system of online workshops and invites top specialists from all spheres from all over the globe. Students are exposed to the greatest variety of practical knowledge possible.

According to the study conducted by the consulting agency PwC in 2019, the volume of the freelance market in Russia is 14 million people. In 2014, this figure was 5.5 times smaller — only 2.5 MM people.

More and more 30-39 y.o. people (33% of respondents) give their preference to distant jobs, while 68% corporations are really ready to attract independent professionals.

The distant work market has changed significantly, and there are several reasons for that:

• The number of distant professions and new specialists is growing along with the market of online education and re-skilling. However, it's yet impossible to evaluate the qualification of such specialists;
• Middle- and top-level professionals who prefer freedom and self-fulfillment to sustainable development within one company become independent professionals. They are ready to risk and take the responsibility for major projects without a fixed income, if this enables them to choose the work setting, fulfill their potential and feel that what they are doing makes sense;
• 80% of employees* who couldn't image themselves outside an office before, now view flexible working hours and the possibility to work from home as an advantage.

*data from the Randstad's 2019 annual report

Probably, independent professionals will become one of the economy drivers in the next 10 years. However, these flexible recruitment tendencies cause new challenges, the major one of which is regulating the atypical forms of employment and new forms of entrepreneurship.

Annemarie Muntz, President of WEC (World Employment Confederation)* comments:

*WEC (World Employment Confederation) is the voice of the recruitment and employment industry at the global level. Confederation's goal is to make the labor market open, all-inclusive and sustainable.

In the nearest 10 years, companies will face a new challenge of integrating independent professionals into their corporate structure. Such phenomena as flexible recruitment and project-specific staff will stretch beyond just short-term projects and agencies.