Meta skills will be needed if you want a job, your degree is not enough

Yatish Rajawat: You talk about meta skills and you say they are more important than a college degree. Most of these skills like better social and leadership skills, creativity and complex problem-solving skills cannot be taught from a book or are very difficult to teach. Where should people go to learn these meta skills?  Ravi Venkatesan:  The education system is catering to a world that no longer exists. A world that was stable, where there were more reasonably abundant jobs for those who were educated, a world in which information was scarce. That has changed. And so I say, there are three or four meta skills or super skills that will really matter. One is learning agility, the ability to adapt to a situation you've never encountered before. The second is an entrepreneurial mindset. Not everybody is going to be an entrepreneur, but everybody needs the capacity to see opportunities, seize them, to be tenacious, creative problem-solvers. And then, the third meta skill is life skills. Almost every problem requires collaboration within an organization, across organizations or even across sectors. So, social skills like creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, communication will become hugely important.  None of these skills can be learned in a classroom and certainly not online. The only way to learn is through real-world experiences, particularly what I call Crucible Experiences, which is take on challenges which are outside your comfort zone and in the process of figuring it out, you develop all these skills. So I look back at my life and ask: What were the Crucible Experiences? For instance, going to IIT was a Crucible Experience. I’d always lived at home; living in a hostel and competing with some really smart people was quite tough. Going to the US and with almost no money, finding a job, rapidly climbing my way up was a Crucible Experience. Everybody can learn these skills. We run a huge programme in Delhi government schools called entrepreneurship mindset curriculum, and we’ve seen million-two million kids going through the programme and learning it experientially. So it’s very doable.   Yatish Rajawat: I want to quote from your book, “to retire at 60 and spend the next 30 years vacationing will be boring and unhealthy.” Even if people at that age want to work, it’s not very easy for them to find work. That is one class. And there’s a second type, essentially a younger generation whose basic needs are already met and lack ambition. What is your advice for these two types of people?  Ravi Venkatesan: I think just focusing on the income part of the work trivialises it. Somebody asked me, ‘Who are you?’ I’m a journalist. I’m a writer, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a scientist. So identity is something that comes from your work. You find your community through work, you learn new things, you get the experience and satisfaction of accomplishing things