The Future of Work: Analysis of Required Skills for Graduates in the Technology Industry

This article analyzes the skills required by employers in the technology industry for fresh graduates and the competencies needed to sustain business competitiveness. It also discusses the future of work and the practical skills that graduates should possess to be competitive in the market.

The Future of Work
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Introduction
Technology has changed how employment industry focuses on skills required to
undertake daily business activities. In order to make sure organization gets relevant employees
suitable to undertake their activities, employers need to be sure there is skills match with
advertised employment opportunity (Shivoro, Shalyefu & Kadhila 2018, p. 222). Analysis of
current employment opportunities in the market would be main focus of this article in order to
ascertain skills in demand by employers in Information Technology industry. Graduate
opportunities would be analyzed in order to determine which skills fresh graduates should
possess in order to be competitive in the market. This analysis would be very useful to graduates
who wants to align themselves with industrial requirements when looking for jobs. The nature in
skills and competency requirements by employers have been changing as firms try to structure
their business operations. In order to remain relevant in the industry, organizations have been
adopting new operational strategy such as technology adoption. Besides technological adoption,
ability to secure business competitive advantage in the market would be analyzed in a bid to keep
privacy of the business (Elmedni & Lyons 2015, p. 42). Therefore, employment opportunities for
fresh graduate, required skills by employers and competencies to sustain business
competitiveness would be at the center of the discussion.
Analysis of the current graduate job market
In the technology sector, there are so many graduate opportunities which require diverse
skills and competencies in order to secure employment. Some of the employment opportunities
in technology industry are; software development, Technical customer support in various
organizations, website developer, graphic designer, code validation and testing, Network setup
and administration, front end and back end developer as well as system maintenance (Blickley et

al. 2013, p. 26). In order to secure any job opportunity in this sector, employers are looking for
skills such as; software development in core java, mobile development, skills and ability to work
on SOAPs and RESTFUL applications. On the same note, skills in code debugging and
validation is required in order to be able to support customers in various market sector.
Employers expect graduates to demonstrate these required skills during selection process by
setting some practical interview questions (Cain et al. 2012, p. 81-82). These questions can either
be practical on code development environment, online code interpretation or theoretical on
papers as the aim is to test for software development skills. Similarly, employers are testing these
skills by requesting a presentation of any software developed in their technology of choice such
as java, C# and PHP.
Once of the attractive advertised position is on Technical customer support. The
responsibilities that suitable candidate would perform are; hardware and software
troubleshooting in cases of issues, supporting customers on inabilities to understand minor
software functionalities, network troubleshooting and maintenance as well as data analysis. The
ideal candidate to fill the position should possess the following skills; data analysis, hardware
and software troubleshooting skills, in-depth understanding of network and maintenance as well
as database development and maintenance. This position was quite attractive to me by virtue of
the fact that, it does not have so much commitment compared to software development. There
are no technical skills required which might be challenging because it is just customer support
which require proper communication skills and relationship management (Farkas & Nagy 2008,
p. 48).
Analysis of the Future of Work

The nature of the market has been changing and it will continue to change as time
advances, especially ten years to come. It has been observed that as business environment
changes, business requirement changes and skills requirement in the market cannot be an
exception. In future, Technology employment market would be focusing on real practical skills
rather than just understanding of the concepts (Rayner & Papakonstantinou 2015, p. 109).
Computer and information security has become a major challenge due to technological growth
and its misuse by various experts. In order to match graduate skills with market required in the
next 10-15 years, graduate would be required to equip themselves with practical skills from both
market and class work. Since it is quite difficult to get all these consolidated skills, graduates
would be expected to take necessary personal measures. These measures would involve looking
for practical skills from experienced experts through volunteer and placements programs.
From the research, it can be observed that practical skills in the technology industry are
quite demanding because they are difficult to get (Zaharim et al. 2010, p. 925). To meet the
market demand, organizations are expected to absorb its prospective employees’ through
graduate trainee programs (Pan & Lee 2011, p. 96). This helps organizations to train and absorb
competent graduates as they transition from education based programs to market. Through
graduate placement programs and setting up practical environment for both testing and training,
organization would be able to develop graduates to resourceful workforce in a short period of
time. Due to technological advancement and challenges that are associated with innovation,
software development and information system security would be the areas of interest. To be able
to feature in the market substantively, graduates would be required to possess practical skills
developing code resilient to injections as well as network protection and data encryption.
Conclusion

It would be worth to advocate the nature of research done in this case has been of great
importance as it has highlighted some of key areas that graduates should focus on. It has
influenced my decision because it has unearthed very important issues that need to be considered
in the next 10 years’ time. This understanding should be considered by all experts in the
technology industry as they present a reality of industry in some years’ time. In this regard,
failure to reconsider such findings as one of the important scenarios to boost academic and
technical skills would render some experts unsuitable in the market. Being aware of such radical
changes in the market, it would be possible to set career development goals to acquire relevant
skills and experience. Therefore, getting relevant academic certifications and refresher courses
would be of great importance.
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