In-demand Skills Research Articles

Digital transformation and the future of work: closing the digital skills gap

Purpose The purpose of this article is to discuss the near future digital technology landscape and propose several specific in-demand digital skills for organizations and individuals in the next few years. Design/methodology/approach This article reviews some recent publications from representative inter-governmental, governmental, non-governmental, and commercial organizations on the rise of digital technologies and corresponding growth in digital jobs. Within this context, several specific in-demand skills are proposed by the author who has written a book on the topic of digital transformation. Findings Rapid advancements in digital technologies continue to shape organizational practices and the future of work. To take advantage of emerging digital technologies and better compete in the marketplace, organizations and individuals need to upskill and reskill. Practical implications The main purpose of this article is to suggest a list of specific digital skills for executive management and human resources professionals to help prepare employees for digital jobs in the next few years. Corporate policy makers could introduce and promote these digital skills as part of the organizations’ training and development curriculum. In the area of talent management, organizations could also formulate hiring policies and assessment mechanisms to attract, develop, and retain employees with the requisite digital skills. For information technology and business professionals seeking to upskill and reskill, they could acquire these digital skills to enhance their current roles and prepare for the future digital workplace environment. Originality/value This article contributes to a better understanding of the digital technology landscape and digital skills. A list of specific in-demand skills is proposed to help organizations and individuals close the digital skills gap.

Fenomena Kesulitan Generasi Z dalam Mendapatkan Pekerjaan Ditinjau Perspektif Teori Kesenjangan Generasi

This study examines the phenomenon of difficulties faced by Generation Z in obtaining a job, using the perspective of generation gap theory. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that cause this generation to experience challenges in the job market, as well as to analyze how the differences in values, skills, and expectations between Generation Z and previous generations contribute to these difficulties. Through a qualitative approach and secondary data analysis, the study found that a significant generation gap in terms of in-demand skills, career expectations, and adaptation to technological changes plays a major role in this issue. These findings are expected to provide insights for policymakers, companies, and educational institutions to develop more effective strategies in bridging the gap and increasing employment opportunities for Generation Z.

Five key actions for redesigning adult skills assessments from learners, employees, and educators

Summative assessments provide data to evaluate the effectiveness of schools, teachers, and educational policies, contributing to a robust accountability system worldwide. However, educators and scholars argue that summative assessments do not effectively promote ongoing learning, enhance teaching practices, or align with the skills required in the workplace. Furthermore, traditional summative testing approaches lack culturally responsive practices and overlook the diverse needs of adult learners. This article summarizes research conducted through focus groups, interviews, and listening sessions to gain insight into learners’, employees’, and educators’ perceptions of assessment needs in adult education and workforce development in the United States. We conducted six focus groups, four interviews with diverse learners and employees, and two listening sessions with educators and administrators. In-person and online formats were used in Spanish and English. The results indicate that the backgrounds and needs of learners, employees, and educators in this study are diverse, but all agree there is a strong need for open assessment resources for mid- and lower-skilled and culturally diverse learners that provide them with useful information to help them achieve their personal and occupational goals. Educators in this study needed assessment information connected to the standards and curriculum that guide their instruction, and employees and their employers needed tools to identify and train adult learners for in-demand skills within industries and occupations. Assessing adult skills requires addressing these needs by designing tests that focus on learners’ characteristics and goals and are integrated with educators’ and employers’ needs and goals. The research findings suggest that assessments should be personalized to learners, integrated with instruction or job training, and embrace the cultural diversity of the adult learner population better to serve learners, employees, and educators.

Standardising job descriptions in the humanitarian supply chain: A text mining approach for recruitment process.

Uncertainty and complexity have increased in recent decades, posing new challenges to humanitarian organisations. This study investigates whether using standard terminology in Human Resource Management processes can support the Humanitarian supply chain in attracting and maintaining highly skilled operators. We exploit text mining to compare job vacancies on ReliefWeb, the reference platform for humanitarian job seekers, and ESCO, the European Classification of Skills, Competencies, and Occupations. We measure the level of alignment in these two resources, providing quantitative evidence about terminology standardisation in job descriptions for supporting HR operators in the Humanitarian field. The most in-demand skills, besides languages, relate to resource management and economics and finance for capital management. Our results show that job vacancies for managerial and financial profiles are relatively more in line with the European database than those for technical profiles. However, the peculiarities of the humanitarian sector and the lack of standardisation are still a barrier to achieving the desired level of coherence with humanitarian policies.

Scaffolding Critical Thinking Among Interns Through The Use Of Prompts For Reflective Writing

With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0), the elimination of some of the existing ones, specifically those that involve repetitive and predictable manual tasks, has become a threat to job seekers and those already employed. With the advancement of technology, employers are currently seeking individuals with essential skills not replaceable by machines. Among the most in-demand skills are critical thinking skills, which are also transferrable skills across different industries and roles. Higher education institutions play a crucial role in moulding the potential of undergraduates to meet the current needs. The tertiary curricula should be tailored to cultivate strong critical thinking abilities. Among the teaching approaches that have been explored and found helpful for the development of critical thinking is through writing reflections. Instead of writing descriptively, writing reflections requires that writers be critical and analytical in their writing. However, writing reflections is very challenging to many student writers, thus, there is a need to scaffold their reflections to help elevate their critical thinking skills. This conceptual paper presents the arguments for scaffolding critical thinking prompts for reflective writing. As assessing higher-order thinking skills involves measuring reasoning over recall and necessitates assessing authentic performances, the scaffold is situated within the internship context. This experience closely mirrors their impending entry into the working world.

TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION: THE EMERGING TRENDS IN EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AMONG ENGINEERING GRADUATES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

We are living in a fast-paced competitive world where new technologies are being introduced almost every day, trends are evolving, manual jobs are becoming obsolete, and new tech jobs are on the rise. Technology has eased its way into our lives, it has given rise to uncertainty. The rapid changes in the technologies have also transformed the need for in-demand skills in the industries. In addition, newer domains are emerging in the market and this is fuelling the demand for talent with the required skills that are capable of driving the organizational growth. Organizations and educational institutes need to cater to the requirements of the industry for upcoming generations and lay foundations for devising solutions that support rapid skill development. Industry 4.0 was in the recent past in 2011, its focus was on digitalization and included automation, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, connected devices, data analytics, cyber-physical systems, digital transformation, and more., India needs to invest in constant upskilling of human resources and stay agile. Industry 5.0, seems to have already set in, 2020. The focus is personalization and humanization, emphasizing collaboration between humans and machines to create sustainable products and services and to deliver value-added tasks to customers. Hence, it is essential for us to keep learning and constantly upskill ourselves. The importance of upskilling for leaders by stating, When a person stops learning, they start falling behind. Therefore, we must learn new skills in such uncertain times to adapt to rising jobs in the era of industrial transformation. Over the past few years, the world is experiencing rapid changes in every sector. New employment avenues have opened and due to this, the demand for tech-savvy new-age skills has also grown. Keeping this in view this article is focus on to study the emerging trends in reskilling, upskilling and capacity building programmes. KEY WORDS: Uncertainty, Technological Transformation, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Digital Transformation, Upskilling, Reskilling, Capacity Building.

Machine Learning Algorithm Comparison for the Performance Evaluation of Manual Welding Process

With the development of technology, the shipbuilding industry has seen a rise in automated welding processes. However, manual welding continues to be a necessary and in-demand skill. Unfortunately, the supply of both high-skilled and unskilled welders has steadily declined over the past decade, leading to a shortage of professional manpower. To address the issue of manpower shortage, a proposal has been made to provide timely and efficient training program for unskilled welders. However, evaluating the effectiveness of the training has proven challenging due to the lack of clear criteria for assessing the performance. This paper conducts an effective performance evaluation of unskilled welders using powerful machine learning algorithms. The evaluation is based on a dataset collected from both high-skilled and unskilled welder groups in manual welding processes. A comparison study is conducted to determine the most suitable algorithm. The goal is to identify the positive and negative parameters in the training of the manual welding process and provide an effective education strategy for unskilled welders. Additionally, the paper aims to find the algorithm with the highest accuracy. Overall, this study seeks to provide a solution to the shortage of manual welding professionals through the development of an efficient education strategy.

JobEdKG: An uncertain knowledge graph-based approach for recommending online courses and predicting in-demand skills based on career choices

Modern job markets often require an intricate combination of multi-disciplinary skills or specialist and technical knowledge, even for entry-level positions. Such requirements pose increased pressure on students, new graduates, and job seekers to find suitable sources of information to enhance their employability. Unlike standard competence management systems, this paper presents JobEdKG, which helps job seekers from various backgrounds choose online courses based on their prospective careers in addition to predicting different skills that may be required in their chosen career path. While existing solutions focus on internal institutional data, such as previous student experiences and a fixed set of skills provided by curated datasets, JobEdKG considers external data, recommending online courses that best cover the knowledge and skills required by selected job roles, in addition to extracting and predicting skills of that particular job roles. To achieve this, we first extract skills from job postings and online courses. These skills are linked to job titles, online courses, and other concepts in order to create a knowledge graph (KG). We assign an uncertainty score to each fact in the KG based on the prevalence of the fact in the source data (i.e. job listings and online courses), which results in an uncertain KG (UKG). Finally, we model the constructed UKG in order to infer different relations between the different concepts. The code and the data are available on our GitHub repository (https://github.com/team611/JobEd) and a user interface to browse the KG is available at (http://jobed.datanets.org/).

Exploring Information Systems (IS) curricula: a semantic analysis approach

PurposeToday’s in-demand skills may not be needed tomorrow. As companies are adopting a new group of technologies, they are in huge need of information technology (IT) professionals who can fill various IT positions with a mixture of technical and problem-solving skills. This study aims to adopt a sematic analysis approach to explore how the US Information Systems (IS) programs meet the challenges of emerging IT topics.Design/methodology/approachThis study considers the application of a hybrid semantic analysis approach to the analysis of IS higher education programs in the USA. It proposes a semantic analysis framework and a semantic analysis algorithm to analyze and evaluate the context of the IS programs. To be more specific, the study uses digital transformation as a case study to examine the readiness of the IS programs in the USA to meet the challenges of digital transformation. First, this study developed a knowledge pool of 15 principles and 98 keywords from an extensive literature review on digital transformation. Second, this study collects 4,093 IS courses from 315 IS programs in the USA and 493,216 scientific publication records from the Web of Science Core Collection.FindingsUsing the knowledge pool and two collected data sets, the semantic analysis algorithm was implemented to compute a semantic similarity score (DxScore) between an IS course’s context and digital transformation. To present the credibility of the research results of this paper, the state ranking using the similarity scores and the state employment ranking were compared. The research results can be used by IS educators in the future in the process of updating the IS curricula. Regarding IT professionals in the industry, the results can provide insights into the training of their current/future employees.Originality/valueThis study explores the status of the IS programs in the USA by proposing a semantic analysis framework, using digital transformation as a case study to illustrate the application of the proposed semantic analysis framework, and developing a knowledge pool, a corpus and a course information collection.

Building the Foundations for Information Communication in Sports Science and Its Use in Decision Making

ABSTRACT A central component of sport science is the development of systematic analytical frameworks to enhance performance through processes that include data collection and analysis to generate insights. Moreover, sport scientists are tasked with preparing information to be communicated with stakeholders to support better decision making. Communication of information using visuals is becoming one of the most in-demand skills of the sport scientist, but this is just one part of a more complex process because effective information transfer requires more than the production of charts and reports. To promote effective communication, modern sport scientists must be able to gain a clear understanding of diverse data structures and the best way to represent them. They must also develop competency in the disciplines of data management, visual design, and information delivery, which can improve the processes of visualizing, reporting, and storytelling. This article focuses on key aspects related to the collection of information and the communication of findings.

Enhancing the Globalmet Training Record Book with the Infusion of the Book of Knowledge

The Training Record Book (TRB) is an essential document cadets use during their shipboard training. The TRB guides the student and the shipboard training officer, ensuring cadets attain the necessary competencies under the STCW Tables A-III/1 and II/1. The limitation of the TRB is that it is dominated by the psychomotor domain of learning. At a forum of the International Association of Maritime Universities (IAMU) in 2020, the most in-demand skill by 2050 is soft skills, followed by technological skills. This entails the development of not only psychomotor, but also cognitive and affective domains. In addition, the skills and competencies needed will go beyond the technical competencies stated in the STCW. The methodology utilized a qualitative design with an exploratory concept wherein the Book of Knowledge (BoK) was incorporated in the cross-referencing of the learning outcomes, and the TRB tasks develop a more holistic, comprehensive, and future-proof shipboard training.

Support the education of your future employees.

Companies have long relied on academic programs to provide trained employees. When trained with relevant, modern skills, graduates of these programs can minimize costs to businesses, including recruiting and on-the-job training expenses. Particularly in technical roles, such as optics, a pipeline from academia to industry may be created through partnerships among the academic program and the regional industries. However, graduates can only be as informed as the academic program that fosters their education. When industry members find ways to influence this educational process, graduates earn useful, in-demand skills, while industry members see applicants with the right mix of these skills apply for their job openings. This paper discusses some ways industry can impact the educational process to ensure that their applicant pool is loaded with potential.

Fully Online In-demand Skill Training: Understanding Participant’ Reason and Reaction

Gaining skillswill aid the youth generation to obtain careeropportunities and while also making their workforce efficient and in line with the current industry in the era of the 21st century. However, skill demands by industry are typically gained outside formal education settings. Thus, a new paradigm of learner-directed study has emerged as a promising development for educational sectors. This study proposes a skill-based training based on the in-demand hard-skill industry in online settings, and an investigation of participant reason and reactions to the training. The study attempted online training in the topics of User Interface and User Experience (UIX) and Social Media Marketing, which were discovered to be in demand within the Indonesian workforce. The study was able to employ 434 Indonesian registrants, however, only 151 were able to complete the post-training questionnaire. The study's analysis revealed that the majority of participants were university students looking to improve their skill setsbefore entering the job market. The learners responded positively to the training procedures and learning approaches. This study concluded that skill-based online training has the potential to improve industry-required skills.

Skill Set required for 21st Century Student: Case study of University Level Student

The swift and extraordinary change in the world has left people with no surprise. Countries around the globe are working hard to maintain relevancy by reshaping themselves, and for doing so, they are adopting such policies that help them keep up with this ever-evolving change of the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world. It is essential to consider the implications this has for the education system. This new age of information demands that the education system evolve accordingly and face severe disruption. Hence, the critical skills required by 21st-century students to thrive in the professional world must be identified. The education system needs to focus on inculcating these skills into the students effectively. Researchers have accredited that, engaging students in the learning and innovating process with the help of enhancing creative and critical thinking has become an integral part (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, p.50). This research aims to aid this process by identifying the top five (05) skills required by 21st-century students. To evaluate those five skills, this research has incorporated a diversified sample size, which has included professional students (Business Graduates, Engineers, Doctors, and others) and the affiliated faculty to these areas of study for achieving the set target. The findings of the study have summarised that for preparation for the 21st century, today's students need more than just education. They are keener to learn skills that can help cater to the requirement of the coming time. These high skills not only help them during their studies, but they will also become lifelong partners in their success both academically and professionally. In coming times, those who recognize high in-demand skills are meant to serve as a possible benchmark for our education systemto reconfigure its broader policy framework and delivery mechanism. Additionally, students can benefit from these skills to prioritize the required skill set to increase their employability. The study's finding indicates that it has become inevitable for the education system of Pakistan to reorient, reorganize, and restructure the overall education system to meet the needs and requirements of the 21st century needs and demands.

Career Readiness Skills for Marketing Majors: An Examination of Soft Skills, Hard Skills and Course Applications

What are the skills marketing majors need upon graduation from college? In today’s world, many of the skills rely on technology within the field of marketing (technical/hard skills). Other skills (soft skills) can be taught across various curricula. Organizations, educators and professional job search sites are placing increasing emphasis on “workplace” or “career” readiness skills. In this paper, the authors discuss their analysis of 133 pieces of literature from practitioners and academics on the in-demand skills needed by marketing majors. The first section provides a categorization of marketing soft skills to give a broad picture of various soft skill sets that students need to be aware. Next, the paper analyzes different “hard skills”, or technical abilities individuals need to perform to be successful in different marketing careers. The authors then examine the primary soft skills needed to execute different hard skills. Finally, the paper discusses course strategies to implement soft and hard skills in class. Attention is given to developing an integrative and “robust” set of soft and hard skills, and strategies, that can be used in different types, and sizes, of marketing classes.

Absorptive Capacity and Technology Spillovers: A Quantile Regression Approach

Employing a quantile regression estimator, the study presents new evidence on the role of human capital in exploiting the technology effects from foreign direct investment (FDI) in low-technology industries. A new model of human capital to capture the non-linearity of FDI effects according to employees’ educational qualifications was developed. This study examined whether workers’ absorptive capacity had different effects on FDI spillover at different points of conditional distribution. Although the study found that the ability of employees with degrees and diplomas to exploit foreign technology exceeds the median quantile, it also acknowledges the existence of both ‘over-skilled’ and ‘over-educated’ workers at a higher quantile of FDI distribution. As the problem of shortages and mismatch between skills and education for workers with degrees and diplomas still hinders firms from applying advanced technologies from FDI, this study proposes using the law to make firms work with universities. Firms could inform universities of the industry’s in-demand skills regularly and get involved in the development of the university curriculum to ensure that graduates are equipped with skills and knowledge that can be ‘transmitted’ to different industries.

Creating New Knowledge with Undergraduate Students: Institutional Incentives and Faculty Agency

ABSTRACTUndergraduate students today face a more demanding and competitive labor market than their parents’ generation. In response, some pursue double majors to signal breadth to potential employers and to improve their job prospects. Some students also realize that a strong signal of workplace readiness is acquiring in-demand skills through independent and collaborative research. In this article, four professors at an undergraduate-focused public university in the United States share their experiences working with undergraduate students on research, focusing on the “supply side” of student research training and mentoring. We discuss how institutions can support differently situated faculty members, who face different career incentives and constraints, to integrate undergraduates in their research. We also address the limits of what is possible for faculty‐student research and suggest ways to overcome them.

Effective management of work groups through the behavioural roles applied in higher education students

One of the most in-demand skills for engineers is working effectively in a team. However, divergences inside the group often lead to the unsuccessful progress of the task. Therefore, creating a methodology that allows overcoming this obstacle and promotes successful teamwork seems fundamental. In this work, we present a novel questionnaire that we have designed and implemented to form balanced work teams based on the behaviour and personality of the group members. Concretely, the roles selected were Leader, Collaborative, Thoughtful and Creative. The role assignment was performed using a questionary and applied to different subjects and degrees. The role of Leader was predominant, but when analysing the group mates' opinions, a relevant decrease was observed, indicating that the students answered the questionary as a leader but did not show leadership capacities. The second role majority was Collaborator, and Creative and Thoughtful roles obtained the fewest percentages. Finally, the academic results of different courses and the students' feedback experience have been analysed, getting an upbeat assessment of the new methodology for forming groups, and it has also been observed an improvement in the average marks of the subjects.

Preparing the youth for the future of work through apprenticeship programme in Brunei

PurposeThis study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the government-incentivised i-Ready programme in alleviating youth unemployment in terms of the transition from education to the labour force market.Design/methodology/approachFocus group discussions are conducted to reveal the perceptions and experiences of the apprentices in the i-Ready programme. The SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis framework is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the i-Ready apprenticeship model in building a future-ready human capital.FindingsThe study found that the JobCentre agency utilises online recruitment technology and proactively promotes work-based training in the public and private sectors. However, the apprenticeship still needs to improve programme coordination and provide an inclusive regulatory framework. The study also discovered that internships could enhance in-demand skills training and establish apprentices as a crisis-recovery workforce.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings are based on a small-scale focus group study and represent the current state of the i-Ready programme. Future research integrating data from multiple stakeholders is recommended to provide a more thorough picture.Practical implicationsIn terms of efficacy, the findings indicate that i-Ready has made significant contributions to local employment and, with certain modifications, is on the correct route to producing future-ready youth.Originality/valueTo date, there has been no research on the effectiveness of the national i-Ready programme system as a strategy that may help alleviate Brunei's youth unemployment crisis.

Exploring the Utility of Social Content for Understanding Future In-Demand Skills

Rapid technological innovations, especially in the information technology space, demand the workforce to be vigilant by acquiring new skills to remain relevant and employable. The workforce needs to be engaged in a continuous lifelong learning process by educating themselves about skills that will be in demand in the future. To do so, it is essential for students, job seekers, and even recruiters to know which skills will be in demand in the future and to invest time and resources in developing these skills. On this basis, the main objective of this paper is to investigate whether social content can offer insight into potential future in-demand skills in the IT job market. Based on the analysis of social content from Reddit and job posting data from Dice and Monster websites, we find that social content related to job skills is a strong indicator for future in-demand skills. We further find that specific social content associated with recruitment-related topics are stronger indicators of future skills. Our findings encourage learners and job seekers to pay close attention to online social content to strategically plan new skills and maximize their employability.