Skills-first approach will be the big thing for future jobs: Ashutosh Gupta of LinkedIn India

In the changing world, the skill-first approach is increasingly becoming the new process to hunt for fresh talent, which primarily focuses on a person’s skills and capabilities, rather than job profile, degrees, and colleges. 

While speaking about the skills-first approach at Business Today’s B-School summit, which is being widely adopted by recruiters across the world, Ashutosh Gupta, Country Manager, LinkedIn India said the new approach is helping companies in developing a highly skilled and inclusive workforce.

“Skills First is the new wave of hiring not only in India but across the world. Earlier, we used to have a template-based hiring process. Now, things are drifting towards skills. Recruiters on LinkedIn are able to recognise workers on the basis of the skill sets they have shared on their profile. The industry is slowly adopting this way, where people are being considered on their skillsets. Skills will be the new currency of the future,” said Ashutosh Gupta of Country Manager at BT Best B-Schools & HR Summit in New Delhi.

He added that at LinkedIn, the team is trying to build upon the new approach with various stakeholders in the industry, which includes companies, institutions, colleges, schools, and others.  

He further said that focusing on skills can help employers find non-traditional talent and also help employees and job seekers to understand the market, trends, the skills they have, and the ones they need to acquire.

Gupta said, as per a LinkedIn survey, more and more people are willing to acquire new skills and move out of their traditional function to fit into the changing market.  

“Our survey has found that 8 out 10 Indians are very much open to the idea of pivoting their roles into a new function,” Gupta said.

The World Economic Forum, earlier this year, also stressed on skills-first hiring. It said that taking a skills-based approach can be useful for candidates to pursue a personalised learning plan for training, upskilling, and/or reskilling as needed, preparing them to unlock a desired future job.

It noted that in 2022 companies, including Accenture, Apple, General Motors, EY, Google, IBM, Merck and PwC, among others, removed degree-based application requirements for several roles and opened employment access to non-traditional applicants.

Talking about AI in jobs and Chat GPT, Gupta said: “AI is not about the displacement of the jobs; it is about that certain jobs will become more productive, there will be a different layer of productivity due to AI. The human brain will remain as relevant as it is now. But it is important to meet the AI revolution head-on by upgrading your skills.”

 

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