Hybrid Skills: A shift in the Recruitment Landscape

By Clive Mutame Siachiyako

In what others summed as “death of the degreed world,” Enerst & Young recently announced that it will no longer consider degrees when assessing employees in preference to hybrid skills over academic credentials. Precisely, the industry is looking for someone who can view opportunities, challenges, and problems through multiple perspectives. In short, it is looking for the hybrid employee to fill the growing demand for hybrid jobs.

Hybrid jobs are accordingly among the fastest growing and best careers in today’s job market; leading to more than 250,000 position openings in the last year alone. Probably if you have looked for a new job lately, you could have noticed what is happening in the job market: being good at just one thing is no longer enough.

Whereas in the past a specialised skillset could land you your dream job, today’s employers are looking for more. They are looking for multi-faceted and multi-skilled employees that can combine technical skills such as programming or presentation savvy with “offline skills” such as analysis, design, communication, or marketing.

Enerst & Young hopes that the new recruitment setting would “open up opportunities for talented individuals regardless of their background and provide greater access to the profession.” The company said it had made the decision to change the application rules for its graduate, undergraduate and school-leaver programmes after an independent study rated its in-house assessment programme and numeracy tests as “a robust and reliable indicator of a candidate’s potential to succeed”.

The shift adds fever to training providers and job seekers. Questions on what has gone wrong, what should be done and how can graduates be remade relevant to the industry are on a buildup. Job seekers are scratching their heads on why they cannot grab their dream jobs, the education system worrying about means to narrow the mismatch gap while the industry wants things to happen to sustain economies viably. Some universities have welcomed the shift as they see it a ‘reminder’ that training of yesterday and today needs apt position tomorrows’ industry requirements.

So if you are looking for your dream job; one that can challenge and inspire you, then it is time to get your hybrid skills on. Pick and harness new skills from an array be it in technical, vocational education and training, social entrepreneurship, or information technology windows for your upturn in the industry.

But first, what is a hybrid job?

A hybrid job is one that requires many skills and roles, such as technology and people skills, to effectively get the job done. According to a 2016 Bentley report, for many industries, specialty skills that were once separate from each other, and jobs that two or even three people in different departments used to do, are now being combined into one role. For example, one of the most in-demand professions today, Product Management, is the ultimate hybrid job, requiring product, technology and business skills. The same is true for Growth Hacking, Community Management, and other in-demand positions. Green jobs equally have a plethora of skills requisites that can place you well in the industry.

In addition, the report shows that some previously popular jobs are in decline as their once-innovative skills have become mainstream and integrated into other roles. For example, postings for social media strategists have fallen 64 percent in the last five years, even as the skill of social media strategy has risen sharply in human resource jobs (up 376 percent), sales jobs (up 150 percent), and marketing and public relations jobs (up 117 percent).

Whereas there is a need to get the young population skilled and ready for employment as soon as possible; a concern emerges: are those skills necessarily academic? With all industries experiencing some form of disruption, hybrid skills are becoming a premium driver. Digitisation for instance continues to collapse the traditional value chain of each industry. As a result, the operating systems and business models of companies are changing rapidly out of necessity.  As these companies pivot and adapt their business models, it has become clear that completely different skills sets are now required to run these new, agile businesses. Job seekers too have to gear-up and get counted by up-skilling for value.

And what are hybrid skills good for?

In today’s world, job security does not come from relying only on your boss to tell you what you need to do. Job security comes from knowing yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and especially the skills that will give you the added value to get and stay ahead of the game.

Therefore, building a hybrid skillset is so important because these skills can potentially offer more job security. Acquiring diverse skills enables you to be versatile enough to embrace change and new challenges. This kind of professional flexibility results in a worker getting more opportunities in a constantly changing job environment. Moreover, building up your hybrid skills enables you make more deliberate and mindful decisions about your professional life.

We all know by now that millennials are looking for jobs that bring them meaning – more than 50% of millennials say they would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values, while 90% want to use their skills for good. By developing the right skills you can position yourself at an advantageous place to get those meaningful jobs.

Realistically, even though you have a job right now, it does not mean it is going to look the same 10 years from now. Even more importantly, developing more well-rounded skillset brings you value. You can look at problems more creatively and communicate and collaborate more effectively with diverse teams. And filling multiple roles can help you ward off boredom – more skills usually mean more interesting and varied tasks to accomplish. Indeed, one of the key denominators across people who innovate and stand out is that they take the time to cultivate multiple skills.

Recruiters have long complained that degree scores fail to give employers a true picture of a candidate’s potential. What Enerst & Young is pre-empting thus is the widening skills gap that digitised or disrupted businesses now need to fill. Disrupted businesses have complex problems to solve and that requires hybrid skills with an emphasis on soft skills: communication, leadership, ownership and teamwork. The most needed, but also the most lacking, are critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Academic qualifications do not necessarily produce these skills.

So, why are degrees being valued less?

Firstly, in terms of scarcity, degrees have become more common, therefore less valuable in economic terms. Secondly, degrees cost more today, but are worth less. Debt repayments [for education loans] versus future income simply do not add up. Thirdly, modern businesses do not consider degrees essential any more, hence the concern that the students are fighting in the wrong trenches.

Obviously there are many professions that still require traditional academic studies, but overall, the skills needed for future jobs and new templates of business point towards multiple and varied short courses (for example, coding or user experience design), internships and on-the-job learning.

What has happened now is that as more people with degrees fail to find employment, they eventually accept lower-skilled jobs. The less educated or unskilled are then pushed further down the labour market. In some cases, they are pushed out altogether.

So now what? How do you build the skills to future-proof your career?

The main takeaway is that it is no longer about career obtainable using degrees.  Careers are dynamic, they ebb and flow over time as technology advances; thus we have to fit into the industry. To get the job you want you need to think about skills. You need to think broadly about the types of skills you have and the types of skills you need to develop to help you stand out.

Labour market research shows that having two specialties at the intersection of two fields is a plus for job-seekers. If you are in a technical profession, focus on acquiring marketing and business skills. If you are on the creative side, consider analytics. The company you are applying to is going to look for both sets of skills. To build up your skills consider taking online courses or signing up for in-person short and long-term courses in marketing, programming, product and more. 

Be mindful that people and talent issues are now widely recognised as critical to business or organisational success. Monumental demographic shifts, entry into new and emerging markets, virtual and globally mobile workforces, and ever-changing risks are forcing companies to take bold, definitive action to improve how their human resource supports the business.

References

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ [Accessed: 10/10/16]

http://www.bentley.edu/ [Accessed: 10/10/16]

http://www.news24.com/ [Accessed: 10/10/16]