Today, with the neo-normal in full force, businesses have been forced to adapt more resilient strategies whilst ensuring sustainability and growth. This has resulted in businesses looking out for smarter leaders to ensure that smartness of outcomes is intact even in the scenario of future pandemics and uncertain external conditions. Hence, it only makes sense for all the young graduates/postgraduates and even students to ensure that they have got the right skillsets in the current post-pandemic era; not to just land the right job but to also ensure all-round growth and development of both self and organizations. These are next-gen skillsets for all graduates and postgraduates.
In this regard, you should essentially be cultivating the below skillsets to ensure that you are in a position to steer your organization/business towards positive growth:
· Effective Communication – With the neo normal emphasizing remote working cultures in this post-pandemic era and having resulted in a remote working revolution across continents of the globe, you must remember to develop effective communication techniques which you may have to utilize when working with colleagues/clients from different countries of the world.
· Resilience – This is yet another pre-requisite that organizations seek while recruiting in the neo normal. If you think you have resilience strategies to result in undisrupted workflows and supply chains even in the case of eventualities (future pandemics, recessions, volatile market conditions, et al), you have an edge over your potential competitors. Now, resilience is applicable across all domains; and not particularly restricted to Information Technology (IT).
· Emphasis on digital security – At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, with people taking to the digital space in a big way, cybercriminals were able to come up with advanced thievery and privacy invasion mechanisms. Hence, the demand for cyber security professionals to deploy cyber safety mechanisms and thereby secure digital space privacy is on the rise now more than ever.
· Research and Development – The Covid-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity in the post-pandemic era for research and development of smarter solutions to make society a better place to live in. Hence, now is the time/opportunity for startups (and people with ideas to establish startups) to disrupt and create smarter societies that can take any pandemic head-on whilst ensuring that normal everyday life is not affected.
· Smart and inclusive healthcare – The Covid-19 pandemic emphasized the need for robust and smarter healthcare mechanisms across the world. A need and demand to make healthcare inclusive and affordable has also surfaced; hence, healthcare professionals/aspirants can look at cultivating skillsets such as developing low-cost medical devices/implants, IoT-driven devices, deployment of AI & ML for smart healthcare, and better disaster detection & management systems to make smarter healthcare mechanisms all-inclusive and smart for society.
