Disappearing Jobs A Myth, Focus Should Be On Employability: Experts

Bhubaneswar: The talk about disappearing jobs is a myth as more opportunities are on the anvil due to rapidly advancing technology, but the question of employability persists requiring a skill revolution, HR Professionals representing leading brands opined on Saturday.

“Everything is driven by technology today and it would be incorrect to assume that employability was getting reduced because of innovation. It’s the skill you have acquired which decides whether you can be employed,” Gourav Saini, Director (HR) of HMD Global, the Finnish company that makes Nokia phones, said while addressing the two-day second HR Conclave which began at the SOA Deemed to be University here.

SOA and the Global Work Force Management (GWFM) have jointly organized the conclave being attended by industry experts and academic leaders. GWFM is a non-profit professional organization with the mandate to share best practices and strategies to address challenges facing the industry.

Saini said students who were graduating from an engineering college should realize that the B.Tech degree provided them with the eligibility for the job but they must possess the requisite skill to qualify for the position. “There is a distinct difference between eligibility and skill,” he told the students attending the conference adding “skill shortage is a reality and learnability will define your future.”

In his address, Sandeep Tyagi, Director (HR) of Samsung Electronics, said it was estimated that 75 million current jobs would disappear by 2022 but 133 million technology-driven new jobs would occupy the space for which skilled personnel would be needed. “We are in the age of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Robotics,” he said adding more than 60 per cent of stock market trading today was done through an algorithm which was programmed through Artificial Intelligence.

Robots are also poised to take up a lot of jobs while some restaurants have already started using them, he said while delivering his lecture on the “Future of Work”.

Inaugurating the conclave, SOA Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Amit Banerjee said the concept of HR had undergone a paradigm shift requiring improved training of employees to keep pace with technology transformation.  “Technology had opened up new vistas and the bottom line is that if you don’t have the skill, you’ll face difficulty,” he said.

Among others, Prof PK Nanda, SOA’s Dean (Research and Development), GWFM’s Founder Shiva Kumar, Co-founder Partho Ganguly and SOA’s Dean (Students’ Welfare) Jyoti Ranjan Das also spoke.

The conclave is being attended by a plethora of industry experts including Anupam Srivastav, Talent Acquisition Head, Tivo, Prasoon Misra, senior manager (HR), Ericsson India Global Services and Amit Sachdev, CHRO and Business Solution Evangelist at Tata Insight.