Professional’s may have noticed that the job landscape today is very different than the one we were looking at just five years ago. And although there is a lot of talk about jobs returning, the job search market is likely to remain daunting for many people. More and more, companies and individuals are shifting away from full-time salaried jobs to hiring freelance or contract workers. Individuals have to adapt to this ongoing trend. Here now are ways to help you move out of the office and be productive in business.
The change is happening across the world which is generating new opportunities. With the world is now facing a new reality. Progressive middle-class parents who understand this changing nature of the Indian and global economy to a digital world and who have ensured, through their toils, that their families have food to eat, own a house and a car, and savings for a comfortable life, are now left with a choice of whether to let their children tread a path that they themselves did not.
Parents who let their children choose this different path, of becoming job creators, can help their children reach their full potential in life. It is also the path to ensuring the growth of the nation, and money and wealth creation.
Entrepreneurship always comes with an element of risk, which is what most parents fear. But even with 90% of startups failing commercially, they entire process of becoming a entrepreneur ensures that students who embark on this journey early in life, end up with the latest industry skills, knowledge and experience, which makes them highly employable graduates. This augurs well for a world which is moving fast from academic credentials to achievement credentials to employ people.
Our current education system teaches students the history and theory of engineering, but does not really train them to engineer a real product or solve a real world problem.
From Class 8th to the fourth year of engineering, our computer science students are mostly reversing a string or printing Fibonacci series in their computer labs, while with each passing technological revolution, their counterparts in the United States are building companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook.
These once-in-a-generation companies are some of the largest wealth creating enterprises that started life as small campus startups set up by young students in their twenties. Can India be the birthplace of such enterprises? I believe we can, because we are in the cusp of a student startup revolution.
Let me tell you five reasons what is changing in India and why now is the time for students to think seriously about being a job creator rather than a job seeker.
1. The AICTE is the apex body for technical education in India and it has taken the initiative to upgrade a dated system. In November last year, the President of India launched the AICTE National Student Startup Policy, which, among other things, allows college students to convert their final year projects into campus startups. It also allows Universities to grant those who have gained the experience of creating a startup, a Minor in Entrepreneurship, along with the main degree.
The academic system has done a massive pivot by creating the policy framework for students to build startups while in college and recognizing this as part of their final engineering degree, opening up a world of entrepreneurship opportunities for nearly 4Million engineering students.
For nearly two decades, Indian IT services companies led by Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Cognizant and others created a world-class outsourcing model, creating large-scale employment for graduating students. However, with the advent of cloud and automation a lot of these jobs are now becoming redundant, and IT services companies no longer need to hire so many people. It is estimated that campus and graduate recruitment by IT services companies will go down from nearly 400,000 students every year to 100,000 a year. Needless to say, this will take students out of their comfort zones and fire them up to pick up skills that would make them employable post college, and possibly start their own successful ventures.
2. Companies are now looking for resources who have established achievement credentials rather than regular academic credentials. Jobs now demand know how of the newest tech advancements, so you need to be updated constantly.
For instance, many companies now use technologies like React by Facebook but React Technology itself is less than four years old. By the time our traditional academic system gets into the act by creating a syllabus, prescribing reference text books, training up faculty, and setting model question papers; the React in the textbook would be long outdated.
Similarly, in the next three years, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality will explode as an industry and the traditional academic system is not suited for this rate of change of speed. There are many new industry verticals, which are emerging globally for our students to learn and create opportunities.
Companies which are operating in this space will now need students who can learn on their own and adapt fast to new technologies and to the only way to verify this is by looking at their achievements and not just the marksheets and grades.
3. It is important for parents and students get these Achievement Credentials? The answer is by building real products, solving for real problems, and learning hands-on by creating a campus startup. Even if they do not go on to build successful companies at that stage, graduates with an experience of creating a startup from their ideas will have a significant edge when it comes to hiring over those who have simply gone through the academic motions. They are also straightaway part of the nation’s pool of potential job creators, since it is unlikely that resourceful youngsters who have had a taste of entrepreneurship will give up on their dreams that easily.
4. Building companies is tough; it takes a long time, and often involves multiple failures along the path. For the previous generation, the onus was on taking up a steady job quickly after graduation to generate income to meet the basic requirements of food, clothing and shelter.
Standing in the reality of 2018, today’s Indian middle class has ensured the essential survival issues and are now ready to take risks. A significant section of parents now have the comfort of allow their children look at opportunities outside jobs, following their dreams of building something of their own and creating wealth.
5. Thanks to the Internet which can connect people across geographies, the next generations of successful Indian companies are going to be global in nature. They will create products that not only solve problems in India but around the world.
To help young students develop a global mindset, it is important that they travel extensively and understand the different cultures, markets and business conditions. Progressive state governments such as Kerala are now rolling out global exposure programmes for young students to have such experience even while in college. People use their past experiences to make future decisions; so students who have very high quality global exposure at a young age will be in an advantageous position to become successful later in life.
Thus by the safety net of academic recognition created by the AICTE for learning gained through entrepreneurship; by state support through global exposure programmes; changing industry needs and demand for students who are job-ready; and the growing socio-economic profile of middle-class families, the highly risky path of being a job creator would soon become the preferred path for every job seeker.
Read: Digitizing Industry – A Way to Create More and Better Jobs in India