India's skill gap issue: The need for trained professionals is at an all time high

As rapid digitalization becomes commonplace for businesses today, the need for a workforce that possesses skills to respond to these changes in a productive way has been crucial. Over the past few years, despite numerous efforts by consecutive governments, we are facing an acute shortage of skilled workforce across the globe. There is also a serious skill gap issue in India.

The current cybersecurity workforce is 2.8 million, while we need 4.7 million professionals to be trained and skilled to close the skills gap, says ISC. Today, in India, there is a shortage of over 1 million cybersecurity professionals as per DSCI. To address the issue, the Indian government has announced Rs. 3000 crore and Rs 99.3000 crore, respectively, for 'Skills and Education' segments in the Union Budget 2020. This fund allocation for education is higher than the last budget by 5 percent.

"For a country that supports a majority of the world's technology outsourcing requirements, it's alarming to see that India's talent shortage is 9 percent higher than the global average. As India grapples with a spate of cyber-attacks and growing skills shortage in cybersecurity, the need to rethink strategies to develop and improve the existing cyber workforce has never been more material,” says Diwakar Dayal, managing director at Tenable India.

“We commend the Indian government for proposing to set up National Forensic Science University to cultivate an interest in India's cybersecurity space. However, we believe that the cybersecurity industry as a whole can play a greater role in uplifting the next generation of world-class cybersecurity talent. This can include creating an inclusive environment for employees, providing opportunities to job seekers from different backgrounds and offering training programs to employees,” he adds.

Bridging Skill Gap with Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence 's advent to our lives is unstoppable. And yet, Artificial Intelligence today is still the most cynicism-inviting technology where people are usually at the two ends of the tug, either supporting it or getting paranoid about its infiltrating the human lives and infrastructure. However, cynicism is the first treatment that most potent ideas or technologies face on the earth. AI is not only changing how we interact with our environment but it is making the environment talk back to us.

AI, for example, is today the most potent tool to determine and provide to us the roadmap of the future job market trajectory. And interestingly, this 'future' is not a poetic expression hanging in ambiguity in some coming years. With the pace at how IT is evolving every minute, the 'future' could be even a year later or just a mere week away from today.

"The old ways of hiring and managing a workforce are outdated. They relied on resumes and job descriptions and didn't sufficiently match people to jobs. AI can change that. AI, using hundreds of public data sources, can look at a job candidate's skills, and match them to prospective jobs. This gives both job candidates and recruiters a much better sense of what jobs are a fit - far better than the old "keyword search." For existing employees, AI allows employees to proactively manage their own careers. The AI technology can show employees what jobs they fit into internally, or what skills they need to move into the job they want internally. So often, employees leave for new challenges, and with an AI-based platform, they are much more likely to find those challenges at their own companies. AI can do all this not just with "hard skills" such as certain computer programs, but it can surface "soft skills" like leadership, management, and teamwork. It can reduce the hiring time and hiring costs, and reduce turnover,” says Ashutosh Garg, founder and CEO, Eightfold.ai.