Key skills required for a career in Digital

By Amitabh Mishra, Chief Digital Officer, Vedanta

If you’re a software professional, you may be wondering, “What exactly is Digital? If I want to upgrade my skills for a career in Digital, how exactly do I go about doing it?” Or perhaps you’re about to graduate and hoping to equip yourself to find a job in this emerging field. (In this piece, I have used ‘Digital’ to denote the broad technology domain, in order to distinguish it from ‘digital,’ which means data that is transmitted in 0s and 1s, as opposed to in a continuous, or analog, manner.)

A massive shortfall in Digital talent is in the offing. According to Gartner, by 2020, up to 30% of tech jobs will go unfilled due to scarcity of talent in Digital. The biggest shortfall is likely to be in the following specific areas:

1. Front-end developer
2. Product manager
3. UX/UI designer

This is, of course, great news if you’re a young tech professional. But what exactly are the skills you need to develop? If you’re confused, you’re not alone. Even middle managers and CEOs are. In the last month, two CEOs I know defined Digital in entirely different ways. Major IT service providers have flourishing Digital practices, but the structure and execution of such organizations are so different that the natural question arises: “Is there really a uniform understanding of Digital?”

The answer is no, because the perspective of an organization will necessarily be from the prism of what that industry requires. For example, an industrial company producing large electrical equipment views Digital and IoT (Internet of Things) synonymously, while an end-customer-oriented B2C company views Digital as the primary vehicle to provide an enhanced user experience.

Please see below for a representative matrix, which lists purely technical roles in nine areas:

All right, now,what are your next steps?

1. Pick an area and role. You can’t be everything at one time. While some of the areas above are inter-related, you’d need to pick an area that is aligned to your strengths, and a role you’re comfortable with, e.g. Analytics – Solutions Architect.

2. Pick three skills you’d like to master.Just three to four are enough to perform effectively in a function, depending on the industry, company size and level of specialization in the function. Let’s say, going with the above example, you pick the following three skills: data warehouse, SQL and shell scripting.

3. Determine the level of skill you wish to develop. No employer would expect you to master every skill to the same level. For each of the three skills you picked in the previous step, select the level of proficiency you wish to develop: (a) Basic, (b) Intermediate, or (c) Advanced. For example, you may wish to say: Data warehouse – Advanced, SQL – Basic, Shell scripting – Intermediate.

Now that you have a list of skills you wish to develop, and the level of proficiency you want to acquire, all you need is to put together a plan of action with your specific objectives and timelines.

As digital transformation disrupts businesses in the coming 3-5 years, there will be one factor which, more than any other, will determine if organizations can turn Digital to their advantage. That factor is people. It’s the most critical element for a company to transform and grow. By equipping yourself with the appropriate skills and competencies, you’ll position yourself to take advantage of the Digital revolution and establish a stellar career for years to come.