Sumeet Anand & SM Nafay Kumail
Gone are the days when only a decent relevant
education from a reputed institution resulted in life-long employment bliss.
Despite a decent academic background, at every juncture in the career, one has
to prove that one has skills for the next larger role
Changes in the economy have completely
transformed the job market in the last couple of decades. India too is
struggling to adjust to this reality. In India even today, people with long
experience in the traditional sector are thoroughly surprised when they come
across an IT professional with a background in sociology or anthropology. Gone
are the days when only a decent relevant education from a reputed institution
resulted in life-long employment bliss. Today, education alone doesn’t lead to
a good employment opportunity. Even if a decently qualified person gets called
for an interview, it might not lead to a gainful employment but a much less
educated candidate who can convince the interviewer of the relevant skills for
the job-on-offer could make it. Even if someone with good educational
qualifications gets hired, it may not always lead to a successful career.
Despite a decent academic background, at every juncture in the career, one has
to prove that one has skills for the next larger role.
In this rather welcome situation, both
people who want to get hired and those who want to hire will have to come to
terms with the reality and focus on the right skills. Right from preparing
resumes to working towards higher goals in professional life, people need to
demonstrate that they have the right skills to be able to execute jobs, learn
on-the-job to get better at what they do, and remain on the continuous journey
of acquiring the skills for future. These skills are different from the
certified knowledge coming from the degrees of the courses completed (however
relevant these may be to an industry). This is more so for the job aspirants because
the unconditional advantage of having a professional degree is fast withering
away. Candidates appearing for a job not just face competition from many
equally qualified people but also from less qualified people from no-so-famous
colleges who are demonstrably much more skilled at doing things and taking up
challenges.
Employers are also increasingly
realising that what they need are people who can take up the challenge by using
and continuously honing their skills and not only the folks with degrees with
higher grades and people coming out of institutes with higher ratings.
Both experienced
professionals and candidates entering the job market have to specially focus on
showing their skills to people who are involved in performance assessment and
to potential employers. With social computing becoming handy tools for people
of all hues, working professionals and going-to-be-working professionals can do
great deal of self-branding to show how they have acquired and honed relevant
skills to solve problems. Blogs, wikis, online presentations, and answering
questions to help solve unique business problems on wider social networks are
just a few ways of doing it. Resumes have to also start looking different. In a
less than 10-minutes video on YouTube, you can show that you can communicate
verbally well but can also demonstrate how well you organise your thoughts and
what are the key areas of knowledge and skills you highlight. The first hurdle
of being able to communicate is crossed. Now you can easily move on to other
better social computing tools that help you in expression and organisation of
your portfolio of knowledge, skills and works for prospective employers to
explore even before they meet you face to face for a formal interview.
