IT industries need to upgrade their workforce to cope with the technology

As digital technology is rapidly advancing in all the streams, the skills that are useful today, may not be useful tomorrow. Where many are losing jobs in traditional IT, on the other hand, jobs are also being created with the advent of new technologies. The chances are high that the future is going to take new forms of skill sets driven by AI, ML, IoT, AR, and VR.

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), 65 percent of the children entering middle school today are going to get into jobs that do not exist today at all. So is the impact of digital transformation. The WEF after conducting an extensive survey identified two jobs that are going to be high in demand in the future as well, that are data analysts and specialized sales representatives. Many researchers and experts are still conducting several predictions regarding disruptions in a skill that AI can create shortly.

Due to such predictions, there is an intense need for upskilling of the workforce but this is not an easy thing to do. This can challenge both the industry as well as academia. People between 25 to 40years are required to upskill themselves to sustain the digital transformation. The estimated workforce of the IT sector in India is about 4.36million, they are mostly deployed in software development, software testing, software management, business process management, and IT consulting.

Most of the processes are to be replaced by Robotic Process Automation (RPA) that is driven by AI which could result in huge job losses. But new domains such as AI, ML, IoT, AV, and VR are also expected to create many jobs with great skills since they are interlinked to each other.

Now the question comes in which area to upskill in the IT sector? There are three main streams to upskill the workforce.

1 Comprehending business objectives: Business understanding in organizations is a must since it helps people to ask the right questions and reach targets. For companies such as IT, this can be of great help to demonstrate expertise.

2 Equipping with new technologies: With the trend, it is also important to boost technical skills to last longer in the market.

3 Knowledge of AI and ML algorithms: Along with sectoral knowledge, a brief understanding of AI can also be an added asset for the IT industry. AI and cloud are a good combination with high demand in the future.

Today's industries are looking for people who can solve problems effectively with a grip over the business, technology, and algorithms. Knowledge of algorithms is important to generate correct insights. It is expected that future employees should possess abilities to generate end-to-end solutions using at least one cloud platform. Automation is also another deep learning area that is best for upskilling employees.

According to the MIT Sloan Management Review, high-performing companies are analytically smooth whereas the low performing is not so. To remain high the workforce needs to be upskilled as soon as possible.