India slips to 89th rank in global talent competitiveness: Report

India's vocational skill market has regressed with time.

Published in Jan 2016 in an e-HR web portal

The Global Talent Competitiveness Index highlights a slump in availability of skilled labour force as India has slipped 11 places to rank 89th on the global index of talent competitiveness. The list has been topped by Switzerland followed by Singapore, Luxembourg, the US and Denmark in the top five positions. In 2015, India was ranked 78th on the GTC Index. 

The list was researched and compiled by INSEAD business school in association with Adecco Group and the Human Capital Leadership Institute of Singapore. Among the five BRICS countries, India came last in the list while China topped.

Even though India and China remain a one of the top exporters of talent, the study suggests many developing countries that have prioritized higher education over vocational education.

“In both China and India, skill shortage in vocational talent shows up clearly in the GTCI scores, as it also does in South Africa.

“This last year has seen a cooling off in the growth of emerging markets, and indeed we note the relative decline in the talent competitiveness of all BRICS countries except Russia,” the study said.

It has also being observed that Brazil shows a decline in skill improvement and China continues to strengthen in growing talent.

“In India, there are no signs of an improved regulatory and market landscape to enable the ‘Make in India’ campaign. This gap in terms of vocational skills, however, is not limited to BRICS and emerging economies: GTCI data shows that it extends to a number of high-income countries, such as Ireland, Belgium or Spain,” the study noted.

According to the report, one of the critical areas of focus for countries such as China and India is to attract talent from other countries.

“China has a low performance in terms of Attract (71st), and India shows one of the worst scores (103rd) — particularly affected by the lack of international students and, unlike China, by not being able to attract and retain global talent (so being more at risk of a brain drain despite the connection with the diasporas working the IT sector),” it added.

The report also suggests that the improvement of skill market in India would significantly impact the talent pool not just in the region but globally.

Probable sought-after careers of 2016

In 2016, digital marketing courses emerged as one of the most sought after professional courses, followed by Android app development, Big Data & Analytics and The open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF), according to simplilearn. 

Published on 05 Jan 2016 in an e-HR web portal

It is that time of the year when individuals and professionals do their own SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat) analysis and this helps them define their New Year resolution. Eventually they use their analysis to ‘self-upgrade’!

Simplilearn – a certification-training provider has interviewed over 2,000 professionals to find out what their career goals are for 2016.

In 2016, digital marketing course emerged as one of the most sought-after professional courses, followed by Android app development, Big Data & Analytics and The open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF).

Interestingly, a majority of the inclination towards digital marketing courses came from Hyderabad followed by Bengaluru and Pune. Digital marketing has now become an in-demand skill, used to launch and manage successful businesses online. There is a strong demand for professionals skilled in social media, data analysis, SEO, PPC, e-mail marketing and content marketing in the current job market.

Big data certified professionals come second in the list and professionals from Bengaluru are most keen to take this up. Big data certified professionals are sought after in most of the industries, be it IT, Telecom, e-commerce, Retail or public sector. Effective data crunching and analysis leads us to valuable insights that help the company in finding its own niche area of excellence.

The Open Group Architecture Framework or TOGAF is a professional certification programme on Enterprise Architecture Framework for individuals and organisations launched by the Open Group in 2004. With leading IT giants such as IBM, HP, Oracle, Deloitte, Capgemini and Cisco implementing TOGAF methodologies to transform their business, job opportunities for TOGAF certified professionals have increased multi-folds.

TOGAF certified Enterprise Architects who are skilled in modelling, system integration, applications & role design with project management, are earning a whopping $124,000 compared to their non-certified peers and are most sought-after by Fortune 500 companies.

Similarly, data science is also expected to become the main-stream career option for many professionals; industry believes that its potential is yet to be harnessed. New algorithms are being prepared that are expected to unleash the potential of data science. The median salary for a data scientist is about $95,000 per annum.

Android App Development also features in the list as over 4.88 billion mobile phone users globally, and mobile devices have become ubiquitous. Moreover, using Mobile Apps for everything from shopping to design to playing video games has become commonplace.

The blossoming start-up scene has also contributed a large chunk of the demand for Android app developers, and many of these start-ups are prepared to pay very competitive salaries to deserving candidates. With necessary experience and skills in popular programming languages like Objective C, C++, C# or Java, developers can expect to earn a good, steady income. Salary per annum can range from between $89,000 and $125,000.

With online certifications fast-tracking careers, it is indeed an inexpensive and quick route to learn new skills and grab that dream job in the hottest job categories of tomorrow.