With employers looking for people who are job ready, it is necessary for the aspirants to arm themselves with five skill sets, says lokesh Mehra
With the advent of the fourth Industrial Revolution — artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, Internet of Things (IoT) — all drivers of disruptive change — the industry is ideally wanting people trained on these in demand skill sets. By 2030, India’s GDP is expected to be $10 trillion and growing between eight per cent-10 per cent a year and there is an immense need for a lot more trained people in the workforce to be deployed and those who can manage machines or design better ones. Skilled people are required to raise the productivity of agriculture, manufacturing, and services.
Our education system needs a revamp where the focus moves from rote learning (Information memorisation and brute-force recall) to application orientation — curiosity, and innovation. The onus will still reside with students to hone their collaboration (team work)/communication skills and critical thinking (out of the box solutions) and become problem solvers rather than information assimilators.
Besides technological insight, there are some other traits that need to be kept in mind.
Develop ability to communicate in brief: Avoiding buzzwords and keeping it simple does wonders in the corporate world and keeps everybody on the same page. You don’t want people to wade through your message to find the information they are seeking. Corporate executives (CxOs) and top management love it when there is a clear ask in written, e-mail or verbal communication. Not only does it convey subtlety in the message but also builds confidence that the submitter has understood the core issue and is succinct.
Have the power of storytelling: Stories build the umbical cord for humans to emotionally connect and relate to experiences. The conventional methodology lies in using a presentation outlining key challenges, data to validate market, competition and biz size and what strategy to use, to win this market. Given that people are not inspired to act by reason alone and may have their own biases and perception, a story is a better bet to arouse your listener’s emotions and energy and make it memorable. People forget facts, but they never forget a great story.
Network like crazy: Possibly it’s our cultural upbringing but compared to our western counterparts we are quite diffident in approaching unknown people in social gatherings, unless someone introduces us or is connected to an acquaintance. Attend forums, events, social dos and make new connections via social media or face-to-face — you never know when you will need to associate with them.
learn, then unlearn and re-learn: This may sound like a paradox for the millennial Gen which believes that the professional degree earned would assist in being compensated all the time. Effective growth happens only when you can learn about new domains and these could be through peer collaboration and Massive Online Open Courses. Relearning also makes you appear more human, modest and reflects that you are open to adapt to new things.
Business plans aren’t linear: Corporate folks are taught to create well-crafted business plans. However, in the Indian scenario, with a yo-yo economy and a — Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity — environment, all perfectly laid out plans and presentations can be tossed out of the window in a minute. Data can only support you to a point, post which real life situations demand your intuition and gut feel.
There is no harm to have trials and errors enabling your plan to become a living dynamic document — conversely the ability to creatively solve problems as they arise and be flexible to adapt to changes, as you tread the journey is the only path to success. Roll your sleeves up, get your hands dirty and finally get your expectations calibrated to reality — that’s when you earn your credentials in this new world order.
The writer is director of e-learning portal Millionlights