"The job market needs a specialized world of professionals"

This is one of the reasons why specialist roles are elite in nature wrapped with a unique professional status, authority, and competitive salary & benefits. If employers continue their conventional hiring trend of streamlining job applications based on traditional & generalized education standards, then it is inevitable that the economy would suffer from a severe loss of talent to fuel growth. If there is something as future education that you would like to pursue, a more specialized approach would help you with a strong career direction, mastery of expertise, domain knowledge, leadership vision, and future growth. This shortage of skilled workforce has recently led companies and HR to hire/outsource candidates from leading Edtech start-ups and companies who produce market-cantered talent offering a wide variety of new-age, industry-specific courses in engineering, IT, data sciences & commerce fields to enhance functional efficiency, process improvements and knowhow tools to ensure high work performance. What drives every organizational success and growth today is ‘Core Competency’ – the ability to be a problem-solver, decision-maker, and strategic thought leader, and I am deeply convinced that every offering at Miles & Futurense, designed & catered based on these values, is already on their way to make an impact.” . In this case, opting for a generalist course may not provide you with a clear picture of the trending skills or in-demand job roles in the market. For instance, IBM’s P-TECH and Google’s certificate programs are typical instances to know where students are encouraged to hone industry-demand skills while gaining professional experience at a single time.

Deep Connection

Many assume that being a generalist is more advantageous as you have a broad range of expertise/knowledge under your belt, but the downside is, that they lack vision and expertise of looking deep into a concept or knowledge which a specialist usually does! Since a specialized education equips professionals and students with steep domain knowledge, functional expertise, and futuristic demand that are hard to come by others, they are seen as a potential resource & value by companies to lead critical operations, decide on new management structures and drive business value. On the other hand, universities and colleges must recognize the value and vision of ed-techs of setting a competitive skilled workforce for tomorrow. A recent report states that over 75% of companies face talent shortages in sectors like IT, Engineering, and Commerce. Building a strong workforce of tomorrow is not just the responsibility of the employer but also of the higher education system. If a company has too many job postings, the HRs should look beyond the traditional degree criteria by giving importance to micro credential programs and executive certification courses. So, what better way can you think of achieving this goal is by opting for an executive or specialized education certificate or program. If there is an immediate need to focus on a particular function in a company, it may not dare to spend resources and time on generalists to train them on-job, but rather rely on specialists who are capable of fulfilling the requirements instantly. However, keeping a wide eye on the job market trends and in-demand marketable skills would be the smartest approach to decide on your specialized future executive education or certification program, which promises an edge in challenging facts, have diverse viewpoints, and provide multiple solutions rather than prescribing one.

Digital Education's Importance

Digital education and capabilities are at the core of every transformative effort and I suspect how much a generalistic education would match that expectation today. This provides us a clue that specialist education helps professionals to land niche roles in large-scale organizations which ultimately helps them to negotiate higher salary packages and benefits. Job postings in most companies demand a three- or four-year degree program, but most students get disqualified due to inadequate in-demand domain expertise/skills or lack of professional experience; sometimes the applications even get tossed out for following a non-traditional education pathway.

Competitive Salary

Generalist education may be a big demand in small firms and businesses but these small-scale firms may not afford to hire a specialist for every function or department.

Lead the Game

A recent McKinsey report suggests that over 6 to 12 million jobs would be created by emerging technologies in the next decade.

Crossroads after Graduation

Once you complete your graduation, you may not have set your career goal. Technological evolution and the emergence of new digital capabilities have turned many roles irrelevant as digital revolution and automation have taken the center stage. The higher education system must attempt to partner & collaborate with Ed tech firms/corporate/companies that offer dynamic and thriving industry-powering courses and certifications to establish a job-ready workforce and ever-evolving learning ecosystem.

So the big question is, how do we build tomorrow’s workforce? Of course, a simpler solution could be – Building an industry-led niche talent. This may be one of the reasons why Ed Tech companies are in a stiff-neck competition in offering diverse, exclusive, and immersive industry-specific certifications and executive programs to bridge the demand-supply gap in the field of finance & accounting, business analytics, branding & advertising, digital marketing, human resources, business leadership, AI & machine learning, data science, data engineering, and cybersecurity. And how we get there is by following some unique approaches.

Breaking down Stigma

Companies need to step up to open doors for professional certifications and executive programs offered by leading Ed tech companies, besides regular and conventional degree programs. As companies are struggling to maintain the innovation of tapping the right and best talent, many ed-tech companies are taking the lead in preventing the skill gap by offering cutting-edge professional certifications and new-age partnership programs to help students and professionals gear capabilities and career progression in a competitive job market.

The archaic educational system and generalistic courses no longer work for the current job market.

Employers’ Outlook needs to Change

Company managers need to take a fresh look at providing alternative value-driven education to students/professionals to gain employable new-age digital skills. As technological advancements and digital tools are making the headlines and shaping the workforce and culture, generalist programs. If you are a generalist, that’s absolutely fine! But that’s not enough to give you the mileage to become a recognized leader in your respective professional field. As the pandemic dust starts to settle, India is facing unprecedented skilled labor unemployment due to the low supply of skilled workforce. To support millions of candidates who are not able to complete regular three or four-year degree programs or struggling to acquire competitive new-age skills, ed-techs have stepped in to provide skill-based, industry-led executive education, bridge courses, and professional certification to make them career differentiators and change-makers along with bridging knowledge & skill gaps.