In 2016, the World Economic Forum released its report about the top 10 skills that a person needs to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution. One of the skills in that list is critical thinking. In the age of artificial intelligence and information overload, the skill to analyze facts and form a judgment is crucial. Especially in your company. That’s why you should hire a critical thinker.
The Reasons You Should Hire a Critical Thinker
You need it for certain professions
Critical thinking is essential for certain positions. Scientists, lawyers, analysts, doctors, and engineers are only a few of them. Leadership positions also need this skill. If you don’t hire a critical thinker, then there’s an added risk of your employee not performing, and eventually, will only leave.
Remember that the key to hiring success is job matching. And for certain positions, one of the factors that will determine if they’re fit for the job is critical thinking.
Improve decision-making
How many decisions do the people in your organization make in a day? From small, simple ones to complex, organization-changing decisions, it could be hundreds. When you make these many decisions a day, you must choose the right options.
This is why you should hire a critical thinker. Since critical thinkers analyze facts first before forming a judgment, they can make better decisions. Especially when emotions are at a high. Usually, for big problems, emotions can hinder judgments. Critical thinkers tend to find out all there is needed for a situation first before coming to a resolution. This means that they’re more likely to not let their feelings affect their decisions and allows them to choose the best course of action.
Better workplace relationships
Critical thinkers don’t only apply their skills to their work. They also apply them to their relationships. This means that they can better analyze situations during conflicts and remain level-headed, allowing them to effectively manage it. Critical thinking also helps these people understand the perspective of others better. These applications help improve relationships in the workplace.
Promotes independence at work
While you need to guide your employees, it can be difficult if you have to lead them every step of the way. This situation deviates your focus from other priorities. It also decreases the trust you have with your employees, making your tendencies to micromanage higher.
This is where the benefit of hiring a critical thinker comes in. Critical thinkers know how to examine the situation and do the best course of action based on their analysis. This means that they can be more independent at work. In case they do make mistakes, they know how to learn from it so that they don’t make the same error.
A more creative workforce
In the list of top 10 skills needed to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution by the World Economic Forum, creativity is listed, too, along with critical thinking. But did you know that creativity and critical thinking can be seen as in a symbiotic relationship with each other?
In a blog by William Bryant in GettingSmart, he explains the relationship between creativity and critical thinking. According to his article, “Creativity benefits from our recognizing the role of critical thinking in ensuring the value of novel ideas. In turn, critical thinking comes into clearer focus when we recognize it as a creative act that enriches understanding by giving rise to something that wasn’t there before.”
Therefore, hiring critical thinkers helps you have a more creative workforce. A creative workforce that also knows how to examine which ideas are plausible and can be used, and which are not.
Critical thinking is important in the workplace. That’s the main reason why you should hire a critical thinker. And we, at People Dynamics Inc., helps you look for critical thinkers using the Profiles Critical Thinking Assessment (CTA), an assessment that measures evaluative, analytic and inferential, deductive and inductive reasoning, logical reasoning, and written comprehension. For more information about this assessment, email us at solutions@peopledynamics.ph, contact us via our website, or call us through the following numbers: (+632) 8 635 0016 / 8 637 8770.
