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“I am a citizen of the world “,Diogenes of Sinope already stated around 400 B.C. He was the first person to use the word cosmopolitan (Citizen of the World). However, it would take more than 2,000 years until the term “cosmopolitan“ developed a tinge of adventure, pioneer spirit and sophistication.
In the last decades technological progress sped up globalisation and extended the range of human action around the entire globe. Distances which once took months, or even years, shrank to a few hours. The world became a village.
Accordingly, our environment and our living conditions changed; sped up especially by the internet. Accessibility to experience, knowledge and services of other people expanded explosively. Borders and cultures merged and enterprises used the advantages of globalisation for expansions around the entire world.
The labour market is no longer local, regional or national; it is global. The revolutionarily new thing is that three billion people flow into the global labour market as new competitors – maybe not all at once, but over the course of the next years and decades. These are tremendous dimensions, which have never before been observed on such a scale, in the entire world of economy.
This does not remain without consequences– neither on a personal nor occupational level.
Seventy percent of all enterprises today count on an increasing need for flexible and highly qualified employees in the next years and have built up the number of their foreign dispatches over the last several years (specifically in the Asian-Pacific arena, Europe and North America). Applicants with international knowledge are preferred in more than ninety cases out of one hundred.
You wonder why?
"Today’s world-economy requires managers who are 'one-world' people, who feel at home not just in their own country, but who are able to understand all markets, and that means the entire world", says Carl Hahn CEO of Volkswagen Inc. from 1982-1992, and never were his words more pertinent than now.
The requirements of businesses are higher than ever. Shortened product cycles, stronger competition from national and international competitors as well as a strong focus on turnover and yield result in high pressure for companies to increase performance, while cutting cost. Off-shoring, expansions abroad or simply the contact with customers and suppliers at an international level, demand that upper level management have a high level of intercultural competence.
Cosmopolitan thinking and acting became the decisive soft-skill of the 21st century.
That is why the global economy needs professional globetrotters and travelling workers. In modern management boundless mobility is an indispensable commodity and professional couch potatoes wind up getting stuck on the first rung of their career ladder. Today’s young professionals must be prepared to break new paths, becoming tomorrows pioneers. People who can move effortlessly in a multi-cultural world are in greater demand than ever before.
Modern cosmopolitans are masters of the art of adapting themselves to different cultures. They are intellectually flexible and borderless, combine frankness with tradition, love for their native country with an adventurous pioneer spirit.
The modern cosmopolitans are in such demand with businesses due to their ability to effectively hold many diverse positions.
They can move with ease on the international parquet. Negotiations with international partners are handled independently, competently and with focused goals. Their language skills make it possible to extract information from international networks, which gives them a competitive edge, not only in business, but in their personal lives as well. Their better understanding of international connections gives them greater flexibility, especially in times of crisis.
In Other Words: modern cosmopolitans have better chances on the national and international labour markets!
In the internationalStudentsClub we pick up on exactly these developments.
We guarantee clarity and a daily flow of information with respect to international labour market developments, branch trends and developments in the colleges worldwide.
We help with international job searches, give tips and information on study, on life and occupation, in the national and international sector. With our offers we support students, graduates and job seekers on their entire way, whether national or international.
"Individuals creating a cosmopolitain world. Be part of it !"
(c) internationalStudentsClub
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James Canton |
American futurologists |
„The new leaders of tomorrow must be ready to face a complex set of unknowns never faced before: competition for talent, managing rapid change and creating real-time agility.“
Will you be ready to face the future ?
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A new generation of Europeans has become a mobile labor force |
Multilingual, well-educated, and adventuresome |
"Europe's workers are on the move. In the past decade, the number of foreign-born workers in Western Europe has risen from 9.3 million to more than 13.2 million. Even Western Europeans are leaving home, as French, German, and British workers pick up stakes and join those from Poland, Bulgaria, and elsewhere.
A new generation views their world differently. Multilingual, well-educated, and adventuresome, today's young Western European workers are crossing borders to find jobs from Glasgow to Barcelona." (businessweek.com, August 2007)
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