How to enable the students to take up fresher jobs in the technology job market?

Please find the list of technologies, to those which all the IT companies, would look for in an ideal resource, especially in a fresher.

Disclaimer: I have given my perspective of what & how a student can be shaped for a job market, based out of my learning and observation of the global events.

Expectation:

The ideal resource should not stick to one single technology, i.e. they don’t need resources who are masters in a single technology. They see the “Jack of all trades, master of none” kind of resources as ideal resources as they are quite good at taking up any work day-to-day, to deliver what is needed at that point of time. The world is extremely dynamic than ever before in the human history. They need multi-skilled employees, who are able to quickly adopt for the new opportunities that show up. So, the resumes of the freshers should contain all the below technologies, at least as bits and pieces in each of the category.

The companies are no-more spending their money in getting the freshers scaled up in 6-9 months. They want the freshers to take up work and be productive like an experienced resource. The colleges fail to deliver such skilled resources, and that’s why graduates are unemployed, even though, many of the job opportunities are vacant in the industry. That is why, the companies like HCL are coming up with concepts like TechBee (https://www.hcltechbees.com/) to dive in to bring in changes by doing the job of the colleges.

Mindset & Morale: [the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time.]

Handling millennials is a big problem for any company as of now. Most of us are having low level of morale. There are so-many researches being carried out for handling us. Part of the problem is with the society and on-course struggle for prevention of failure of the capitalism. Even US is slowly turning towards Socialism, because their younger generation believes in it. There is a popular say now that “Capitalists are destroying capitalism”. So, we millennials are very aware of what did the wrong-foot capitalism did for the environment and what does a capitalist want from us (I am not against capitalism and there are good examples for capitalism too). As a result we do jump the company, so-often to get higher pays and we are not afraid of losing the jobs as most of our families have good backing and we have a ignore-the-society mindset. We are not motivated by money, but our mindset is why should I get paid less, if you are making a lot.

Only way to get a millennial involved is, the purpose driven culture, which makes them feel, ‘being-included’ in a journey. They get motivated only if they serve for a purpose. Take Elon Musk as an example, he set a purpose of getting people to Mars and saving earth from global warming caused by fossil fuels and he has the biggest fan following of millennials. His products like Tesla cars do sell a lot, even the marketing costs are zero and no dealerships but direct sales.

So, in order to get a millennial’s morale working-up, any company need to tie-up their goals with a larger purpose other than just numbers and that goal should be directly tied up to the individual’s goal. Colleges have to work up on the students’ morale a lot to shape them up.

Financial knowledge:

Insurance, Banking, Share Market, Mutual Funds, Loans & Investments is a must to be known knowledge for an ideal resource. This would help them understand the bigger purpose, easily. Ittook nearly 1.5 years for me to know, all these, all by myself. Until then, I could not get the bigger picture of Who am I? Why am I living? Why should I do this work? Now, understanding all of these, I am able to understand where will this world go? So, I can actively participate in this unmeasurably large movement. Also, I can understand, what do I want, what can I achieve from current stand point, what is the limit, how can achieve it, and start working towards it with a realistic goal.

Automation & Entrepreneurship:

US, European Union, Middle-East, China, Russia are all buzzing about the automation. More automation, more unemployment in Organised Sector. So, unorganised sector is the next target for getting organised, so that they can also be automated in next to the nearer future. A well-known example is Taxi/Cab hiring through Uber, OLA which got highly organised. This business model has created new jobs.

The point is current organised sector cannot provide the jobs to everyone coming out of the colleges. So, entrepreneurship should be encouraged to get unorganised sector businesses intoorganised businesses. Most of the larger tech companies are now acquiring so-many start ups, as they fail to nurture the skill-sets, in-house due to their current business policies. So, entrepreneurship saves the larger companies to tackle the digital transformation journey, which in-turn saves the capitalism. Encourage the students to engage in entrepreneurial journey, by providing adequate support in government aided opportunities, skillset, knowledge and finance.

Colleges should update the syllabus yearly, and can create integrated 5 year courses, instead 4 year courses to cover the gaps.

Universal Basic Income for upskilling:

It is getting famous in India at the moment and most probably to get implemented a lot, as we can see all the political parties promises minimum wages for 70-80% population of the country, who are farmers. There is a strong chance that government would fund the graduates for upskilling, which is also a form of UBI. As per research and practical implementation in small scale, UBI doesn’t make people lazy; it actually helps them win the poverty-drivenilliteracy & upskilling challenges and become more qualified for the job requirements. Please create short-term upskilling courses (Online, MOOC & classroom) for the skillset that the industry seeks for; to which those funds should be utilized.

Futurism:

The world is driven by research which is been carried out across all sorts of futuristic requirements. There are almost perfect predictions been captured in websites likehttps://www.futuretimeline.net/timeline.htm & https://futurism.com/ which gives an idea of what should be done now, in order to get a student ready for a market after N years. Students who are aware of these upcoming changes can easily drive themselves to get mapped to the opportunities.

List of technical skill sets which can get job Now and up to a nearer future:

Blockchain (materials below)
Data Science & Analytics (Materials below)
Full stack Developer (Java/ .NET/ Python / JavaScript) stacks. Esp., latest advancements in all these technologies
Automation – Robotic Process Automation & Intelligent automation
Microservices architectures & DevOps (Docker, Kubernetes Containerisation)
Cloud
New Age Mobility – Post 5G – Mobile / AR/ VR apps for 5G powered telecom
AR VR – Graphics design – tools like Unity
Content presentation and Graphical Design and Illustration – A must skill set for working for a visually driven generation
IoT – Hardware, Software, Network Security, Edge Analytics
Cybersecurity – IoT has come, and so are the vulnerabilities. So Cybersecurity should be a must skill set. Also, Quantum Computing is coming, so should focus on post-quantum cryptography.
Industry 4.0 Concepts
A fresher should be able to understand the basics and identify what are the differences of each of those above skills.

Here are the few faster & self learning materials for the top 2 of the above list.

Data Science Materials:

LinkedIn Learning Courses.

Programming Foundations: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/topics/programming-foundations?entityType=COURSE
Data Science & Statistics Foundations
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/become-a-data-scientist

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/get-ahead-in-data-science

Python for Data Science
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/master-python-for-data-science

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/advance-your-skills-as-a-python-data-expert

Ai & ML Basics https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/become-an-ai-and-machine-learning-specialist-part-i
Ai & ML Intermediary https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/advance-your-ai-and-machine-learning-skills
Ai & ML Advanced https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/become-an-ai-and-machine-learning-specialist-part-ii
How a Data Science Team should be working? https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/become-a-data-science-team-member
Data Science in Health Care Domain https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/advance-your-data-science-skills-in-health-sciences
Projects
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/deep-learning-image-recognition

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/deep-learning-face-recognition

AI Latest - https://www.linkedin.com/learning/learning-xai-explainable-artificial-intelligence/summary
Data Science is an umbrella of different Roles. Here is a guideline for those roles:

Data Engineer:
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/master-sql-for-data-science

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/become-a-data-engineer-mastering-the-concepts