🔍From Degrees to Skills: 🧭Navigating the Future of Employment👨‍💼[Podcast]

Episode Description

We explore the shift from traditional degrees to skill-based hiring, the rise of online learning platforms, and the increasing importance of continuous learning.

We’ll discuss the limitations of formal education and how to overcome them, the evolving job roles due to technology, and the rise of the gig economy. Tune in to discover strategies for thriving in this ever-evolving job market and hear inspiring success stories of those who have navigated this new landscape successfully. Get ready for an exciting journey towards a successful and fulfilling career

Episode Transcript

So in today’s topic of podcast, we are going to discuss about from degrees to skills, navigating future of employment. How exactly future of employment is becoming more focused towards skills rather than degree. And whether degree acquired through traditional education process is becoming obsolete.

So we’ll try to discuss various aspects associated with that. So if you try to understand employment landscape is rapidly changing and it is definitely shifting from traditional degree to the acquisition of essential skills.

So 90% of the companies are definitely facing skilled gap. Specifically, if you consider right now latest tools, technologies which are coming in the market related to open AI, various tools which are helping organizations to automate various activities and new technologies which are coming up in the market.

But education system is lagging behind in terms of preparing the students so that they can acquire the skills which are essential in the corporate world. So if you try and understand what are the limitations of formal degree education.

So degree education has got narrow focus because it also follows predefined curriculum that is designed to cover a broader range of subject with a specific discipline. So degree education can provide foundational knowledge associated with some of the basic concepts, but it can limit the depth and breadth of the skills required.

So as a student, you need to learn those skills on your own through online medium or enrolling for one or more practical oriented courses or having discussion with your peers and doing some projects in a group. So if you want to eliminate that narrow focus associated with education degree, you need to follow those things.

Apart from that, I think education degree also lack real world application. So traditional degree program often prioritize theoretical knowledge over practical application. So if you are doing say engineering, you might be having various examples where you need to write long theory answers.

So and it is being awarded more weightage compared to practical knowledge. So that is definitely not a good sign where education should focus more on practical oriented knowledge. It should test students practical ability rather than testing the writing skill or theory oriented examination process.

Employers are increasingly seeking candidates who can immediately contribute to their organization. And this emphasizes on practical skills that can put degree holders at a disadvantage.

Apart from that, education degrees are at a slow pace of change. Typically, syllabuses are changed after two years, three years or five years down the line. It is not that dynamic. So it definitely provides disadvantage because whatever being taught to the student is not according essentially required in the corporate world. Which can help them to make employable And obviously,

cost and time investment is also high in case of traditional degree education where you need to invest at least three to five years after completion of your basic education of 12th standard. So it is time consuming and there is no guarantee associated with success or getting the job oriented or job ready after completion of that education aspect.

So if you want to eliminate those degree education limitation, then I think what exactly you need to do. You need to follow certain strategies where you need to highlight relevant experience or you can acquire particular skills or you can learn from various projects.

And you need to focus those things in your profile itself. You can gain industry certifications, which focuses on practical knowledge. So industry certifications are rated highly by corporate world. So those can also help. Apart from that, you need to network with the establishement to establish your own credibility, your own brand that can certainly help.

And one more thing is if you want to make your brand popular, then you need to ensure that you are present on social media. Platforms like LinkedIn will certainly help you if you are posting regularly about your domain knowledge, about your courses that you are doing, then your employability chances will definitely get increased. There is a shift happening in hiring trends where your job roles are getting evolved with the help due to changes in the technology as well as changing business needs.

So definitely you need to adopt those things in a latest survey. Hiring managers have mentioned that 75 percent mentioned that skills are more important than degree while evaluating the candidate. So whenever corporates are going to evaluate, they are definitely not going to do too much weightage to the degree, but they will always focus on practicality associated with the knowledge.

So as an individual, you need to focus on acquiring those knowledge, practical knowledge, practical or you need to enroll for various practical oriented courses. You need to improve on your soft skills as well. And education system should also adapt to those changing hiring trends where they need to make the syllabus more flexible and they should include latest technology trends.

So syllabus should be revised or syllabus should be reviewed after every duration of six months to one year time period so that students will get to know the latest things that are happening in the corporate world. So those are some of the things which are happening in today’s world where practical knowledge is having more importance compared to traditional degree education.

So if you are going to have a dilemma whether I should enroll for post-graduation course or I should acquire practical knowledge, then I think the message is very clear. Keep learning new things with the practical knowledge is available on the Internet where you can enroll for various short term courses or you can enroll for courses on Coursera, Udemy.

Even in case of YouTube, there are a lot of free videos available to learn. You can learn everything and it will certainly help you to become employable and corporate will definitely value your practical knowledge rather than degree.