Changing skill daunt Indians

Skill, re-skill and re-skill again! How to keep up with the future of work is a big question these days amongst Indian Professionals! In India the top three skills that are growing tremendously are robotic skills, automation and continuous integration.

According to a new report by the World Economic forum, one in four people reported a mismatch, the skills they had and the skills which were needed for the jobs were not upto the mark! The higher the speed at which jobs and skills are changing, in turn means there is a growing demand to update skills as well!

In today’s fast upgrading world, 62% of Indian professionals said in a survey by LinkedIn that they felt daunted by the rapid pace of change in skills that are in demand and 45 percent left the organisation because of lack of learning and development opportunities. The survey was conducted with about 5000 professionals in Australia, India, Japan and Singapore. This type of mismatch between labour skills and opportunity is expected to grow more in near future. A labour shortage of 12.3 million workers is also estimated by 2020 and 42 percent of the core skills needed for the job will change, LinkedIn stated.

Paying attention to skills is very important in recruitment; a previous job position may not necessarily equip the professional with the capability and adaptability required in this new style of working added Ruchee Anand, Head of Talent Solutions and Learning Solutions - India at LinkedIn. She also said “Certain skills are becoming less in-demand as different skills are needed to succeed, therefore up skilling talent is key for organisations to meet their business goals,” Hence with the ever changing market environment and technology there is a constant need for professional to be updated.

The industry today is going through a major change and with the robotics and process automation (RPA) becoming the talk of the town, it is only imperative that each and every professional understands what these technologies are. It is no longer possible for an accountant to say they know debits and credits and don’t care about how the computers work, the world is moving towards the era of FinTech (Finance and Technology), therefore everyone would need to try and possess a fair bit of knowledge. Another piece of tech that has taken over the industry today is Artificial Intelligence (AI), lot of banks and insurance companies use these technologies to assess credit worthiness, claim settlement, etc.

Obviously the world has a different perspective of these technologies, with even the great scientist like Stephen Hawkins being very sceptical about how these technologies will evolve and may even some day take over the human race. The job losses are already being spoken, with some putting the numbers as high as 50 percentages by the end of 2030.

In a nutshell, if the professionals today want to survive the huge churn that’s taking place in the job market, equipping themselves with the latest technology is the only way out!