If you think you can secure a job after getting a degree from a respectable college/ institute, you are mistaken. Your skill set is more likely to land you a job. Arman Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of EdYoda, a digital platform that imparts industry-oriented education to help students find employment, tells us why freshers and those experienced too need to polish their skill sets.
“The idea to start EdYoda was born when I was visiting my native town and spotted young graduates trying to learn new skills by watching YouTube videos. I was convinced that fresh graduates need further training to make them employable and industries too need graduates to be industry-ready,” says Ahmed. He is certain that in the near future, skills will matter more than degrees and e-learning will become the primary medium for learning new skills. “But are we ready for it?” questions Ahmed.
With 1.3 billion people in our country, Indians are constantly struggling and competing with each other in every sphere. “From securing admission in schools/ colleges to getting a good job, competition is tough everywhere. Often, an individual is unable to secure a job because s/he does not have the desired skill sets,” he says adding that with the rise in technology and AI and ML taking over our lives there is a huge demand for data science talent in India. But students do not have the skills, which is why there is a huge vacancy in the IT industry in India. “You need to be skilled not just qualified for these demanding jobs in various sectors,” he adds.
“The only way forward is to understand the structure, nature and demand of the industry a person wants to join. Do not get into AI and data science if you just think it is a cool job, get into it if you have the passion, because passion is where you are going to start building your skill set from,” says Ahmed. For doing so, students must identify their true interests and then work towards studying the basics and background which will then help them determine the skills required for the industry.
“People often think that if you graduate and land up a job, your part of studying is over, but with changing times, people need to understand that they need to learn and re-learn at every step that they take in their careers,” says Ahmed. With digitisation taking over industries, a person who has worked with traditional means needs to learn how to survive this change simply by acquiring newer skills.
“It is here that digital learning plays an important role to bridge the gap between students and the enterprise,” says Ahmed pointing out that EdYoda alone till date has 45,000 registered users, 12,000 have enrolled for the courses and 3,000 users have registered for their online programmes.
“Technology is driving a change across industries and it is more dynamic than ever and moving with a velocity very few had imagined a few years ago. For the millennials, tech literacy is not a choice but a must because of which there is a need to re-imagine the education from physical to virtual platform that caters to skill development and application of them in the industry to sustain and grow,” he concludes.
