Why should you update or improve your
skills? What happens if you don’t update yourself?
One has to update one’s skill as it will
enable him/her to get a new job or seek betterment from the job he already has.
But if you don’t update or improve your skills you will not merely be lagging
behind others and will even find your learning curve for performing essential
things in your profession a bit steeper.
According to Accenture’s
research report, skills gap exists in large US companies and suggested that
nearly half of US businesses plan to increase their investment in training in
the next 2 years. As far as Indian scenario is concerned, Cisco’s report titled
‘Bridging the skill’s gap with industry: Academia partnerships’, points out
that only 25% of technical graduates are considered employable by IT and ITES
segments.
At the world scenario, the following
infograph suggests how the skill gap persisting among work force leads to
vacant positions in various sectors in various countries.
Source: http://img.icbdr.com/images/jp/infographics/2013_GlobalSkillsGap.jpg
How should we tackle the problem?
The first option is companies offering
training programs through blended mode, online and mobile learning.
The second option is allowing individuals
to update their skills on their own and offering certain incentives for
upgrading their skills.
If the skill gap demands direct interaction
with faculty and actual usage of devices then I suggest blended mode be used
for imparting training.
Otherwise, training through online mode
would be more feasible, as the man power belongs to working community.
Therefore travel and accommodation expenses involved in assembling the work
force in one place and the No. of office
hours involved while offering the training through direct F2F mode can be considerably
reduced if skills are imparted through online program.
I recently came across the website SkillUp where they are offering more than 400
courses in 12 categories through leading US Universities in online mode.
A visit to the following page ‘All About our Courses’
would provide an opportunity to explore the various categories and the
corresponding courses offered in each of them.
Finally, I conclude my blog post by saying
that learning/improving and updating knowledge must be a continuous phenomenon
and not a one time event. I practice what I suggest to my readers and my recent
blog post titled ‘MOOC
Course I have Taken’ confirms the same.
Do share in the comments box if you have
learnt any skill recently and through what mode.
