The Digital Skills Gap: How You Can Prepare, Pivot, or Perish
The skills gap. This term has been a buzz word in the media and in dinner conversations repetitiously over time, but never in history has there been a more critical time to address it. Although some argue the skills gap is just a supply and demand labor issue the public and private sectors interdependently need to address, wherever the action needs to take place, it is clear a change needs to be had. As of 2017, according to Workforce, “60 percent of U.S. employers have job openings that stay vacant for 12 weeks or longer. The average cost companies say they incur for having extended job vacancies is more than $800,000 annually.” With just under 28 million companies in the US in 2012, it would be hard to quantify, but these vacancies have a clear detrimental effect on our labor market and in turn our economy. Although companies state the primary reason for not being able to fill these vacancies quickly is not enough qualified applicants for the job positions, the explosion of technology has only exacerbated this issue.
As technology grows more pervasive in our personal lives, the dexterity required to work with these new technologies are expanding in the workplace even more. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics stated as of 2017 there were over half a million technology positions open currently and by 2020 there will be over a million jobs available than applicants that can fill them in computing alone. Although it is difficult to forecast the kind of stagnation and strain these job openings will have on our economy, an even more staggering burden is according to TechRepublic “2 out of 3 organizations do not have a plan to address this [skills gap] challenge.” Essentially saying, although they know the tidal wave of technological demand is coming, they do not have a plan of how to guide their company to safety from it.
Businesses today often believe if they are in a non-technical industry they do not need to to stay abreast of the latest technological advances and do not need to put a priority in re-skilling or hiring new digital talent. When in reality, there are countless case studies of businesses with a digital-first strategy putting myopic, non-adopting companies out of business (see infographic). Organizations big, small, and non-technical most embrace technology at all levels of business, as Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister states: “Every company now is really a tech company, with needs for social media, supply management, and distribution. The jobs [in technology] will grow exponentially.”
As Randi reminds us, a primary issue of the rampant technology growth, is a matched growth of technologically-savvy workers to fill these new business needs. Technology by nature changes so dynamically that it is hard to forecast what skills to best train people on. To give some perspective, a mind-boggling number released by Dell states 85% of jobs in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet. This creates a unique challenge and a bit of guessing game for educators and employers on how to best train people to stay adequately trained for the jobs of tomorrow.
So then what can you do, as an employer and as an employee do to combat this seemingly exorbitant skills gap issue? As an employer, I would do everything in my power to prioritize re-training and hiring of people with digital fluency. Or, I would hire a consulting firm to help me analyze, consult, and implement solutions through technology and avoid digital disruption. Literally, I would do everything in my power.
As an employee living in this time of technological need, there’s, even more, you can do. This is where my story of digital transformation begins. I recognized this skills gap long ago and knew I wanted to build myself as a valuable asset in the marketplace. I have an International Business degree and was sitting with a couple years of sales experience under my belt, but neither of these provided me the comprehensive skills I needed to take me where I truly wanted to go. So, I began researching ways to gain valuable digital skills and started looking into classes that I believe most people think they need to break into technology: coding. Now I don’t know about you but as a hyper-extrovert, coding is really not my cup of tea. I just thought the barrier to entry to working technology was knowing how to code, but that is absolutely not the case.
Coding is the foundation for all technology products and services, but there is an onslaught of jobs that require “digital” as opposed to “technical” savvy that offers anyone a fair shot of working in technology. So, even though I knew that coding wasn’t for me, I was so eager to make a pivot that I had had a couple calls with coding academies, was researching different micro-degrees and was close to biting the bullet on some of them, — when ISDI Digital University fell into my lap.
ISDI is a one of a kind institution offering a Master’s in Internet Business — it’s an MBA for the digital world. Now I personally never pitted myself as getting a Master’s because I always thought I would learn the most “business skills” from working full-time, but was I definitely mistaken. The primary reason that drew me in to the program is the same reason I enjoy in class every day and that is the pragmatism and practicality of every single lesson that is taught. From Digital Marketing, to Search Engine Optimization, to eCommerce and beyond, not only are we taught internet business strategies relevant to the increasingly digital business ecosystem, but they are taught by an extremely impressive montage of business leaders in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of digital innovation.
This kind of program truly was the kind of solution I was looking for in helping close the greater, and my personal skills gap. A non-coding, but still highly valuable and pertinent set of skills I could learn and then apply to a digital role. The options from here are truly limitless, from consulting companies on how to digitally transform themselves at all levels, (the equivalent of ISDI’s “thesis” project is doing just that with a real business), to working at a large tech organization, to working at a startup, to starting my own business, all doors that have been opened from the network and learnings and I am grateful for every single one.
So in the end, although the skills gap is a complex and persisting problem in our society, there are solutions and organizations working every day stay ahead of it. Especially with our increasingly globalized economy, it is imperative that our lower and higher education systems develop their curriculums as ISDI’s has, for the 2018 economy and beyond. From there, it is up to the companies, employees, and future job seekers to understand the business dynamics of our increasingly digitized world. One only needs to look at Airbnb and Lyft’s business model to know what companies of tomorrow will look like and with that, all the talented and skilled people needed to run them. Why not have one of those people be you?
