Skill up and stand out: How to crack a demanding job market in 2023

• A Great Learning study found that in 2022, building skills in data science was likely to result in 3x rise in salaries by 2040 compared to those who haven’t upskilled.
  
• A marketing professional who upskills in 2022 will earn 100% more than her peers over a period of 10 years.
  
• The industry recognises and pays a premium for relevant skills as compared to legacy skills.
  
• An often-overlooked component of upskilling is developing the right set of social and professional contacts to unlock potential career moves.

Every graduate has a moment of reckoning: after years of preparation and being tested, they’re ready to face the world and carve a career, hoping for instant success and believing they have the right combination to crack the job market. But being labelled a ‘fresher’ in a viciously cutthroat environment offers a sudden reality check for most wide-eyed, hopeful aspirants, bringing up real-world challenges and barriers that can be hugely dispiriting.

Freshers have the odds stacked against them—employers logically seek experience, people who can get going right from day one, and personnel with proven track records. From an economic and viability standpoint, companies look to invest in reliability, as the long-term benefits of skilled employees outweigh the immediate low hiring costs associated with freshers. Up-and-coming hopefuls also lack inside perspective; you don’t simply learn organisational dynamics in a classroom. Intuitiveness comes from experience, and it’s little wonder graduates find it difficult to land their first jobs once out of college. Freshers also face the dreadful proposition of encountering a slow, uncertain post-pandemic job market that is still finding its feet as global volatility and economic unpredictability loom large. Companies and MNCs are either rescinding their offer letters or delaying their recruiting in the backdrop of new, more austere hiring practices, causing an onboarding bottleneck that’s proving challenging to get past.

But, thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom. Freshers can appeal to hirers, brush away more accomplished competition, and possibly skip bottlenecks by skilling up, reskilling and building a portfolio of attractive abilities. A recent report by Great Learning has shown that professionals who invest in upskilling early on in their careers earn twice as much as their peers and receive significantly higher increments than them. They also gain financial independence much earlier than those who do not. The modern job market regards upskilling and reskilling very highly, as it is a way to stay up to date with a dynamic environment.

Here are some steps that can help guide young professionals ready themselves for the job market:

1.Select your industry domain – Knowing which basket to keep your eggs in is crucial when it comes to an ever-changing environment. Traditionally, industries such as finance and technology have been regarded as high paying. With growing digitalisation, technology has emerged as one of the hottest sectors, especially with regard to new-age technologies such as data science, AI, ML, blockchain, etc. A Great Learning study found that in 2022, building skills in data science was likely to take salaries of professionals to 57.9 lakh per annum by 2040 - 3x that of peers who haven’t upskilled. Similarly, a marketing professional who upskills in 2022 will earn 100% more than her peers over a period of 10 years.

2.Build the right skills – Enhancing your skill sets can open up unimaginable new opportunities and streams of revenue for you. It can introduce you to a sea of domains and skills demanded by recruiters across the globe. For example, a software engineering professional with new-age skills can make up to 4x as much as her peers who have traditional knowledge and the same level of expertise. A professional who hasn’t upskilled will be able to build her retirement corpus only by the age of 60, whereas an upskilled professional would have accumulated her retirement fund by 50 years of age. This is because the industry recognises and pays a premium for relevant skills as compared to legacy skills.

3.Choose the right learning platform with research and a data-led approach – There are innumerable ways through which you can increase your knowledge capital. However, the focus needs to be on building capability rather than just receiving certification on paper. To achieve the highest aaknowledge. Many upskilling platforms have connections with hiring companies and provide dedicated placement assistance to help you make the best of your cutting-edge expertise.

4.Network for the win – An often-overlooked component of upskilling is developing the right set of social and professional contacts to unlock potential career moves. Once a candidate has updated her skill sets and zeroed in on an industry domain, the next stage is to connect with the industry through its peers and influencers – leverage employment-focused online platforms and engage with mentors and like-minded professionals; build a social network that is privy to your interests, profile, skills and creativity and caters to nurturing your professional relationships. Having the skills alone might not suffice, you’ll need to advertise them and show people why you’re qualified. Take advantage of the tools available, join groups and forums, and participate in events, connecting with a global network of established members. You stand to gain specific insights and tidbits you otherwise wouldn’t. And if you capture someone’s interest, you might find yourself at the receiving end of a recommendation or a possible job opportunity or two. Complement your networking by participating in industry-relevant programmes and live projects like hackathons and summits. They further provide an understanding of the inner workings of particular specialisations and are a great way to meet industry partners and stakeholders with similar goals and attitudes

5.Curate a relevant portfolio – A portfolio is your identity and speaks on your behalf before you’ve even personally met a prospective employer. As such, take a lot of care in ensuring that your portfolio is fresh, contemporary, and offers an inside view of your talents and abilities. Detail your experiences, don’t shy away from showcasing your wins, highlight tangible outcomes you’ve effected in projects, and give a sense of progression and your hunger to succeed. Update your CV with the skills you’ve picked up and let hirers know you’re up to the brief and have what it takes to work in the industry. And finally, prepare for interviews and possible curveballs and participate in career fairs to get a sense of the job market and what companies are looking for.

The bottom line is to make smart choices, put in the effort, and ensure that the effort is aligned with your goals and the larger industry ecosystem. Investing in learning and building the right skills is a foolproof way to secure your position in the future. This not only guarantees access to more appropriate opportunities and prepares you for the most demanding moments of your career, you also draw better benefits and are always a couple of rungs above the rest of the contenders on the highly challenging and immensely crowded employment ladder.

(The writer is the co-founder of Great Learning)