Way Forward for Indian Grads… a Musing

Insights into the post Covid landscape for the Digital Natives

The waxing and waning of the pandemic waves, has become the way of life now. These lockdowns, partial lockdowns, curfews and re-openings have given me the time to ponder over things and try to imagine life trends beyond the crisis.

First off though, this situation has made me –

· Lazy
· Appreciate the small things in life
· Over work
· Be content
· Become worked out with stress
· Look forward to another day
· Procrastinate
· Just BE

And a whole lot more….

Being someone with 2 decades of working in corporates, and many of those years in Indian Ed Tech, my professional curiosity made me reflect about our country’s demographic dividend — how life’s treating them and the way forward. Being the resilient bunch they are, they’ve adapted to the rapid changes insofar — to their study, life lessons at school/college and interactions with peers and mentors.

But researching further, especially on the college graduating cohorts I find it’s a new world out there.

“The future ain’t what it used to be” — said Yogi Berra, an American professional baseball catcher

Yes, that’s so true. They are stepping into a new era of a receding economy and drop in GDP, in India that maybe their grandparents faced and can remember the milieu. In addition, The India Skills Report (ISR) 2021 reveals that 45.9% of the youth were considered highly employable resources. This is far less than the previous years, indicating a skill gap in education. There are still some more trials that are in the young graduates’ way:

· Many organizations are minimizing and laying-off employees. Hence, an employable, skilled workforce with experience is already easily available to recruiting firms, skewing heavily towards a surplus supply side.

· Avenues that were clearly accessible to their contemporaries or the earlier generation are blocked or have turned highly competitive.

Corroborating ISR’s findings, three-quarters of CEOs taking part in PwC’s 23rd Annual Global CEO Survey responded that a lack of availability of the right skills is a concern. When the survey was conducted, from September to October 2019, pre-COVID-19, their worry was around how that would constrain growth. Today that same lack of the right- skilled and adaptable people could hamper their ability to tackle the impacts of the pandemic.

Thus, the way to go for these graduates is to UPSKILL. By the end of 2019 in India, there were about 54 internet subscribers per 100 people according to data compiled by the World Bank in 2020.

With the widespread penetration of smart devices, the digital natives, which refers to the millennials and Generation Z, get the desired proficiencies in the shortest duration, for a reasonable fee. There are a plethora of certification programs and online degrees from top universities that they can choose from. The current manpower ecosystem is dominated by digital natives, the youth who were born into technological revolutions that’s catering to their whims.

While the numerous routes available to them to upskill is exciting, many are confused about the information overload.

“There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days.” — says Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google

Also, many of the students lack good mentors who can guide them to progress towards their goals in a defined time frame; and I’ve observed, most parents are not equipped to take up this role. Though the students research online, unfortunately, those who try the do-it-yourself approach are unaware of all their options or miss out on certain opportunities. Moreover, as there are varying fees and time periods of the courses from different online platforms, it makes it more perplexing to choose the right program.

“One good mentor can be more informative than college education and more valuable than a decade’s income” — By Sean Stephenson, American therapist, self-help author and motivational speaker

Consequently, there is a need for a comprehensive marketplace or aggregator who can guide the students by cutting the clutter and ambiguity in this hemisphere. The 360-degree platform hand holds the graduates while offering them holistic details on the outcomes that takes them a step closer towards their goal of becoming productive and independent individuals. The aspirants are benefitted as all relevant information using different sources is presented on a single screen making it easy for them to make informed choices.

A Deloitte study states, as of August 2020, 61% of Indian students who were planning to pursue higher education abroad chose to defer their plans by a year while 7% entirely canceled their plans. This is an opportunity that the online course marketplace should seize and take advantage of, as this set of students are in the study mindset and opting for the online courses allows them to consume education in parts, at their own pace and flexibility.

So, though there are some thorns in the way, student graduates can take time to smell the roses by focusing on right set of skills to learn/relearn to move ahead swifter towards their goals. Maulik Parekh explains in his book “Futureproof your Career and Company”, one of the biggest disruptors of the next decade is Gig Economy, where one can utilize his/her skills and experience and monetize them anytime and anywhere. He says the freelancing forecasts, for example, India is estimated to have 15 million freelancers today but by 2030, that number is expected to grow to 60 million. Upskill to stay relevant, move towards a career, be committed to learning to futureproof it.

To aid aspirants, the impetus is for the creation of a marketplace for consolidation of short-term upskilling courses by various platforms for sustainable employment and employability. It may not be a walk in the park but hustling rapidly on this strategy would be a potent resonation for the marketplace players.

…Well here goes, my musings will go on as I continue to look over the horizon on some of the topics that I’m passionate about.