What is Gen Z India looking for? A strong focus on skills while hiring, say 18-24 year olds

As one of the youngest nations in the world, rising unemployment amongst India’s graduates and young professionals is a worrisome problem. Today, on the occasion of World Youth Skills Day, LinkedIn has released a new study by research firm GFK focused on Gen Z students and professionals (18 to 24 year olds) in India, capturing their current sentiment, changing perceptions, and future outlook towards jobs, internships, skilling, and networking opportunities.?

One of the top findings states that 90% of Gen Z job applicants are disheartened and demotivated after several job offer rejections.

The second wave of COVID-19 has been disruptive to say the least. As new cases spiraled once more, a fresh bout of localized curfews and state-wide lockdowns derailed India from its course towards the much-anticipated ‘V-shaped recovery’ in April 2021. According to our Labour Market Update, hiring levels improved from a 10% low in April to 35% in May. While the entire workforce continues to battle this economic uncertainty, it’s no surprise that India’s Gen Z workforce continues to be one of the most impacted groups in today’s shrinking jobs marketplace.

Our research spotlights the plight of India’s youth:?

• 72% of students and 65% of Gen Z Indians have been professionally impacted by the pandemic.
• Fewer opportunities, slower recruitment, and higher competition are the top 3 barriers in job search for Gen Z Indians.?
• During the second wave, 70% of Gen Z job applications were either cancelled or rejected, leaving 90% of these young applicants demotivated.
• In fact, 72% of India’s students also state that internship opportunities have greatly reduced since the second COVID-19 wave.
• The pandemic has also disrupted the academic plans of nearly 75% of those with higher education plans. To cope with this vast change at such a career-defining juncture, Gen Z Indians are quickly shifting to online learning, and are actively seeking mentorship, and developing the right mix of soft and hard skills.?

We need to urgently rethink how they hire and reskill talent to prevent Gen Z Indians from being left behind in the workforce. In fact, 51% of Gen Z professionals are expecting their employers to make skills-based hires today.?

Skills-based hiring is when companies assess candidates on their transferable skills and overall potential, and not just traditional ‘signals’ such as formal qualifications and previous direct experience. In fact, we? see the transition taking place. As per LinkedIn data, 77% of hiring managers and recruiters in APAC have? made competencies the focus of job descriptions at least once in the last year. Further, 35% of recruiters’ evaluation is found to be centered on non-traditional methods when examining candidates’ skills.?

Not only for India’s Gen Z professionals, but for the complete workforce, LinkedIn understands the urgency to develop skills that can revitalize India’s economic recovery. Skills are the currency of the future.?

We are committed to helping companies, recruiters, and professionals shift to a skills-based approach to professional growth. This is the only viable solution to an evolving workforce dilemma. The vision is simple: Hire and develop talent for the future, not the past. An important part of this mission is to help companies speak the same skills language, encourage skills assessment, and build skills paths in tandem with learning paths to hire for skills. To help companies achieve this vision, we have launched a few initiatives to democratise access to skills and give everyone the opportunity to develop, demonstrate, and convert their skills to opportunity. In March 2021, in partnership with Microsoft, we also pledged to help 250,000 companies make a skills-based hire.?

We want individuals, employers, educational institutions, and government agencies to speak the same skills language to improve workforce planning, hiring, and development programs. We are considering a range of solutions, such as granting access to LinkedIn’s skills taxonomy where we have 38,000 standardized skills for specific use cases, building translations between skills taxonomies and helping LinkedIn Members to leverage their skills to advance their career.

We recently also launched Skills Path earlier this year to help recruiters source candidates in a more equitable way, based on their proven skills. LinkedIn Skills Path is a new initiative that gives pre-qualified candidates a fair shot at getting hired by helping them strengthen skill discrepancies with LinkedIn Learning curated paths. Globally, we are working with various companies including Gap Inc, Twitter, Gusto, GroupM, Microsoft, GitHub, Taskrabbit, and Wayfair. In the coming months, we will be looking to partner with Indian companies and the Government using Skills Path.

But if you are keen to know what is top of mind for Gen Z India, here are some insights:

• They want skills-based hires, flexibility: About half of Gen Z Indians want their employers to make skills-based hires (51%), communicate transparently (55%), and offer flexible schedules (52%)
• They want fair play: Start assessing employees and new hires for skills and transferability instead of work history to level the playing field.?
• They want time off to learn and upskill: Start weaving learning into their company cultures and offer more time off to employees, so they can develop their skills. 48% of Gen Z Indians want more time off to upskill

As one of the youngest nations in the world, India’s future of work will be driven by Gen Z professionals — the torchbearers of innovation and fresh perspectives that can revitalize India’s economic recovery. India, with the world’s largest Gen Z population, will have a major global influence on the future of work.?

For more insights on workforce challenges and opportunities for young professionals, check out our video series in partnership with Ankur Warikoo here .