New job roles for best career development

India is the youngest nation in the world, with at least half of the country's 1.28 billion population comprised of people under the age of 26. According to the India Skills Report 2019, over 12 million youth between 15 and 29 years will enter India's labour force every year over the next two decades.

However, the skills the demographic dividend has become outdated due to rapid pace of technology and as a result many jobs and skills have become obsolete. Only some organizations that thrive to volatile labour market are encouraging continuous learning, improve individual mobility, and foster a growth mindset in every employee.

At present, the youth are not looking for a stable career but taking up opportunities that excite them, regardless of the organization. Now the companies in the changing scenario have designing the new job profiles that utilize the talent and strength of their employees without focusing on their tenure. Often, newly hired employees possess skills that are not found in even experienced hires.

Technical roles and hybrid jobs

The technical roles where skills are scarce are holding immense potential. Instead of technical jobs, now the companies are focusing to recruit the employees for ' hybrid jobs', that create whole new categories with mix of two to three disciplines.

These jobs requires technical expertise in one or more domains with expertise in design, project management, or client and customer interaction and these jobs now emerged and gaining traction in almost all industries and now they were designated as data scientist, machine learning engineer, experience architect, Internet of Things (IoT) engineer, digital marketing specialist, security consultant or user experience designer.

However, these new are emerging hybrid roles all combine technical skills with systems expertise in the chosen domain.

E-commerce and IOT jobs

E-Commerce is thriving in India and with establishment of Amazon, flipcart, Uber, Ola and other companies, the job profiles have been changed and these companies are looking forward for candidates possess skills of internet, IoT and new technologies.

The new job profiles such as information broker, leisure consultant, bionic electronic technician, computational linguist, fibre optic technician, fusion engineer, image consultant, relocation counselor, retirement counselor, robot technician are gaining traction in India.

It means the emerging careers are growing in every sector such as IT, services, BFSI, Healthcare & Life sciences or manufacturing sector.

Gig economy is a growing trend

Many undergraduates and diploma holders are now looking at gig economy for their career opportunities.

According to India Skill report estimates that 13 lakh Indians joined the gig economy in the last half of 2018-19, registering a 30% growth compared to the first half of the fiscal year. It also estimates that of the 21 lakh jobs that will be created in the metros in 2019-20, 14 lakh will be in the gig economy.

Food and e-commerce delivery will account for 8 lakh positions and drivers will account for nearly 6 lakh positions, says the report, based on 11 lakh profiles in over 1,000 companies. Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and other metros are expected to be the biggest drivers of this sector. And two-thirds of this workforce will be under the age of 40.

Now, this has evolved as another employment fad to a major macro-trend in the human resources and capital ecosystem.

The gig economy has now started in everyday services like food delivery executives, app-based drivers but also high-end permanent staffing roles like that of software engineers, UI-UX consultants, full-stack engineers, CAD designers; to name a few.

However, the gig economy used the carrot-and-stick approach to hire. Informal sector workers were lured with higher incentives and once incentives were lowered, there was tangible bitterness against the companies that had 'organized' the labour.

Skill gap is challenge for India

India economy is growing at rate of 6.7 - 7% and job opportunities are emerging steadily; the looming challenge of skill gaps and skill mismatch translate into bleak unemployment figures. India is enjoying demographic dividend and joining the workforce every year and getting no job substantially impact the economy and the people. With labour data indicating the generation of lakhs of jobs, it is regrettable that the market is deprived of the appropriate skills required for the emerging jobs.

As day to day new technologies are emerging and the old technologies have become obsolete, with advent of new technologies such as Machine Learning, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, the companies are looking for candidates who possess above skills are getting jobs and those who are still doing Java and other old programming are no longer have opportunities in job market.

The urgent need is the criticality of upskilling and retooling, to keep the job-seekers eligible for the contemporary, skill-enabled jobs or risk job loss. The world of work is evolving rapidly and as such, upskilling and reskilling will remain strategically critical manoeuvres, in the foreseeable future.

Therefore, the 'ability to learn' will always remain as the one skill that will keep the labour force employable in the future.