The Future of Tech Skills - Predictions & Trends

hello everybody and welcome to today's webinar on the future of attack skills so my name is Jenna and I am here today on behalf of tech Talent so you think Poland is an Aztec business with a focus on creating a more diverse and inclusive texter that is dedicated to helping professionals and organizations stay up to date on the latest tech skills so today's topic for today's webinar is a very important and timely one as I'm sure we all know the tech industry is constantly evolving so staying up to date on those latest skills is essential for professionals and organizations that are looking to stay competitive according to Industry research there is currently a high demand for Tech skills and various sectors so understanding what skills are going to be the most in the future can really help professionals and organizations plan their training and career development during the webinar today we are going to take a look at the current tax bills landscape and look at how that's evolved over recent years we'll also take a look at the predictions for the future of tax girls and what that means for professionals and organizations we'll also be discussing the implications of those Trends and provide some strategies for staying ahead within industry so we are delighted to be joined today by our esteemed guest speaker and Tech thought leader Jennifer Stewart now Jennifer is an internationally recognized data strategist AI expert and speaker and has also been named as one of the top 50 global data Visionaries and one of the top data scientists to follow on Twitter as well as being one of the most influential top 50 women in technology worldwide we are also joined by Sam board Sam is the director of training here at Taft Talent who comes armed with more than 20 years of experience in the training and development of individuals and organizations and last but certainly not least we also have Hawaiian mandir who is one of our residents technical trainers here at Tech Talent so in the webinar today then we are going to be covering several topics topics including the overview of the current skills landscape for the future of tech skills and also implications for professionals and organizations and we'll take a look at some strategies for staying ahead throughout all of this throughout the whole presentation we will also be highlighting the importance of diversity and inclusion within the tech industry as we really believe that everyone should have the access to the opportunities and resources that they need to succeed in the tech industry regardless of their background or identity so whether you are a seasoned Tech professional that is looking to stay current in your field or whether you are just starting out intact and you want to know what skills will be the most in demand in the future this webinar is definitely you we have assembled a panel of experts who will be sharing that insights and predictions on the future of tech skills and also offers some strategies for staying foreign changes sorry so sit back relax and get ready to learn about the exciting future of tax skills thank you so much for joining us today and I'll now hand you over to sunboard who is Tech Talent director of training thank you Jenna can you everyone hear me okay hello if you can sorry I'm having a few internet issues typical that they suddenly just start as we're starting the webinar hopefully um I'm back properly in the room um so as Jenna said I'm Sam board director of training here at Tech Talent I'm really thrilled to be here today um so as Jenna said I've got 20 years experience in technology so ever since um I left University I've had a job in technology um working with uh telecoms equipment programming chips programming software doing a lot of engineering for the scientific industry um and also moving into training and specializing a lot into cyber security training as well but generally um always been interested in the current state of the tech skills landscape and obviously as director of training it's really critical that we stayed aligned with all the top skills that are in demand you know what the companies out there are looking for and what we need to deliver for them so what are the top skills that are currently in demand and I think um probably why Jennifer is also on the call I think uh data has become probably one of the biggest things now in demand I think you've probably heard the terms of we're currently living in the data age um and I think we've had this exponential growth in data we've all heard about companies like Facebook and Google who you know they make a huge amount of uh their profits based around this data so um this sort of ability to analyze data visualize data um helps companies really identify opportunities for growth increasing efficiency optimize their operations so if they're not using their data they're going to be left behind um with a competition the importance obviously to be able to communicate these insights through visualizations and how we use it and how we can work with our partners is becoming increasingly more important as well um so I think data science is a one of those growing things and I think that leads into another high demand area of machine learning and artificial intelligence and often these two things will go hand in hand now I'm going to bow to uh Jennifer's knowledge on machine learning and AI um but I think there's some really interesting things happening in this space and particularly um chat gbt I imagine you'll probably mention chat GPT I think it's one of the you know flavors of the month with tech but I think it's really interesting how Microsoft have invested in open AI I think 10 billion dollars recently um and a lot of people are predicting this is going to help them become the next Google so bing bing will become the next Google you've heard it here first perhaps whether happens or not we'll see but I think this growth in um AI is gonna revolutionize how we start using our search engines um cloud computing I think is another big big skill we're seeing huge amounts of uh demand and growth for um there's so many benefits from cloud computing I think traditionally you know if I wanted to set up some web system I'd have to buy a computer and I'd use a small amount of its capacity and then if my sis my website got popular suddenly that computer wouldn't be able to handle all the traffic so by allowing someone else to manage our Computing for us and we can have easily scalable systems that can grow and Shrink based on the demand that RM systems are receiving also it allows us to do various other things like the the data protection and the security architecture can be also managed by the experts and the cloud providers because there's huge amounts of problems we'll talk about cyber security shortly but it's very difficult if I'm a small operation to guarantee um that my data in the class in their my own systems is secure but by using the cloud I've got a lot of faith in the people that Amazon Google Azure Etc that they can make sure that my data is uh much better secured than I probably can um so this has become a hugely um sought after um I guess a skill in the job markets today so lots of companies with notice have really sort of invest in upskill in their current employees in Cloud computer to meet this um huge amount of demand um that we have in that space um and another technical skill um one quite close to my heart because my background um is in software development is uh the need for people to be able to write software because as we do more things with data science with uh cloud computing Etc we need people who can make these systems they're generally obviously we need to be able to tell the computers how to do these things now we have lots of what we call no code solutions that are starting to appear but still um the the back of all these new modern systems are built um by people who can uh do software development so languages like Java python JavaScript becoming massively important I think in our sector and there's huge amounts of skills gaps in people who can actually deliver these things I think as well everyone's probably got a mobile phone and uses their mobile for probably more each day than they they LED on so huge amounts of app development on Android and iOS us it really in demand by employers at the moment and then finally you might have heard of SAS or software as a service so where we can basically offer software as a service so we see lots of companies move into this model if you think about I don't know a Gmail I never download Gmail to my computer um I it's a free license but I let Google manage all the software and I just use it as a service and I think we're seeing huge amounts of company companies move into this model I think Microsoft are doing it across pretty much all of their portfolio Office 365 is online and I think their gaming systems you can subscribe uh to I think it's Xbox Live or something and you can access their all their games for a subscription feed rather than just buying Products off the shelf that have a limited uh limited shelf life um so these Tech skills are all massively important there's huge amounts of uh scope for jobs um really exciting I think well I like technology so I say it's really exciting but I think one thing we often forget about when we work with uh Technical Systems is uh the ability to have good soft skills as well and one thing we're really noticing when we work with a lot of our industry partners is the increasing importance of having good soft skills I think when I first learned how to program uh lots of people didn't need to be able to speak to other people and work with a sure my age a bit but these days um all these sort of high-tech um areas of work are team based rather than an individual base so soft skills allowing us to present things to argue our cases to collaborate to communicate is really important um in all these sort of organizations before so I'd say effective communication is one of the critical skills needed in the tech industry um like projects often involve cross-functional teams and we need to share ideas information uh both clearly and concisely and we need to be able to collaborate we need to work with various stakeholders who maybe have massively different skill sets to our own so having these sort of abilities uh to work with other people I and also problem solve is really important in the tech industry in fact I often think the tech industry is all about solving problems and very often soft skills interweave with how we approach problems how we have strategize to solve the problem how eventually come up with the solutions so this sort of critical thinking and Creative Solutions are becoming more and more highly sought after but by lots of the tech companies that we work in partnership with um so finally I think uh cyber security um I quite like cyber security I think it's uh one of the exciting things these days I think a lot of people picture it as someone sat behind a computer with their hoodie up um hacking away and then saying I'm in or something along those lines but cyber security has become a hugely important um to every aspect really of the tech industry um more and more sensitive data being stored online we need more people um who can help protect that data a cyber attacks come in many many forms these days you've probably heard of viruses malware fishing attacks and data breaches so we need professionals who can not only prevent attacks but also respond quickly to attacks um to stop them happening in the future um so we need people familiar with the latest tools Technologies um they need to be able to secure both our data our systems our networks um they need to have good visibility of new threats because new threats appear all the time I think um that's one of the big buzzwords in cyber security I think they call it threat intelligence but trying to predict the next attack before it actually happens so really important that we can stay up to date um I think we've seen throughout um the last I don't know 10 or so years that the the consequences of cyber security breaches can be devastated lost data loss Revenue reputational damage I think is a really big one um I think we've all cured about ransomware as well and the sort of uh problems that creates and obviously huge fines um if my data does get stolen so lots of uh reasons that we need these skilled cyber Security Professionals to help protect our systems um it's not just the professional cyber security I think one important thing is that everyone needs to be cyber secure aware um I think 97 of cyber security attacks at some point involved exploiting a human being rather than a computer system so it's not just our systems that need to be secure I think all our employees need to have basic cyber security awareness as well and obviously someone has to train those people and teach them how to be cyber aware I think we've all got that one friend or relative who will happily click on any link that anyone sends them um make you pull your hair out probably as well so I think the importance of cyber security in the tech industry cannot be over stated with this increasing number of cyber threats and especially uh the recent war with Ukraine and Russia has caused a huge amount of extra cyber attacks taking place in the west so companies need professionals who can help protect their datas and systems from attacked and obviously again soft skills really useful in the cyber security industry so I think one of the exciting things I think a lot of people often feel quite frightened is that the tech industry is constantly evolving and it can be seen quite daunting to sort of keep up with the latest skills and Trends but I think it's critical to stay ahead of the curve uh to be current and be able to do the best things I mean um I I often program using a language called C which is a really old language and if it wasn't for the fact that industry moved along I would still be programming in c which wouldn't be efficient at all so we have all these new tools um we need to use them to really be able to be at the Forefront of tech um these days um so thanks for listening to me I'm going to hand over now to uh Jennifer um if uh you want to introduce yourself Jennifer and take the mic hello there they've really interested to hear everyone's comments so far and thank you for having me here today my name is Jennifer Stirrup and I'm excited by all things technology and I learned to code when I was eight years old in a programming language called basic so if you're feeling old Sam I certainly am I don't know if anyone has heard of these languages but I think the thing is that in the IT industry you have to be prepared to keep up with change and learn new things but actually I really do believe that people will join the I.T industry because they like change because they are going to be challenged and learn new things and they want to know the most up-to-date things I think inside of the I.T professional there's an inner geek so even though I started years ago learning basic I'm now running around doing EI systems so I'm living proof that you can change adapt and grow by keeping your skill set up to date so that's just me individually and but what does this mean actually for you now what we do know is that the world economic forum for example is put forwards a job report now their job report actually said that um is going to be um 50 their reports said I'll get the shout fifty percent of all employees will need to reskill by 2025 as adoption of new technology increases so that's the world economic Forum I'm not making that up we can supply a link at the end but what that means is we need to sit with that for a little moment and think what does that mean well the adoption of Machine Technologies such as Automation and machine learning means that people are probably thinking am I going to be threatened by a machine now the good news is that all of this technology change means that according to the world economic Forum we'll have a hundred million new jobs that will emerge and all of these new jobs will require more interaction with things like machines and algorithms so people's jobs are going to change and if you want to be ahead of the curve which most I.T

professionals really really do really are then having that skill set keeping that up to date is really important I don't know if you've ever read the book in the seven um it's something like seven steps that successful people who do seven successful habits or something like that can dig it out at the end but one of those successful habits is called sharpening this song and what that means is instead of just sewing the whole time sometimes you have to stop what you're doing go and sharpen this saw then come back again and it's like that with our skill set as well sometimes you do have to take a pause go and sharpen your skills and come back again and it really means that you're more effective than you were before seven habits of successful people so I'll take you the link for that so where is all of this coming from oh this change well we can see this across a variety of sectors not just in I.T but in the public sector businesses and even governments so one of the drivers for this is digital and technological transformation so what we see there is we start to hear lots of buzzwords appearing such as artificial intelligence Quantum Computing the intellect of things in robotics now these seem like they are disparate strands for different things but actually together they've been really pushing forward in gaining momentum for quite a while now so and we're actually looking at not just technology changes but societal changes as well we're really entering that fourth Industrial Revolution which will change the way that we live we work in how we communicate and what we're going to see is really amazing technological developments so Sam has already mentioned in chat gbt that's just one of the technology changes we can start to see so with that said because we are starting to think about this fourth Industrial Revolution you're probably wondering what that means well when you look at history the first Industrial Revolution use water and steam power to automate and make a nice production the Second Industrial Revolution was electricity electric power to start to create mass production the third Industrial Revolution used in electronics and information technology to automate production so these things start to come together the fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the thought so it's more than just electronics and Indus and and information technology it's really about a fusion of Technologies things starting to come together and that really blows the lines between biological digital and physical spheres so we're starting to see that we are us using more and more of the internet of things in order to gain more information about our environments when you combine that with robotics and AI suddenly It all becomes clear that we can do so many things with these Technologies when we start to combine them now the thing with the fourth Industrial Revolution is it's going to it's things are growing at such a peace no it's not just the velocity and the scope that we see changes but the impact is well on individuals so it's all of these things we may look at them as first words but I would really encourage you to start to become familiar with things like artificial intelligence learned and all about data because what underpins these pillars of the Industrial Revolution are artificial intelligence Internet of Things robotics autonomous self-driving Vehicles 3D pen printing is another one then we start to move into areas such as nanotechnology biotechnology and even moving towards Quantum Computing but underpinning all of these things is the data okay because if you don't have data you're not going to have artificial intelligence you're not going to be able to do robotics you won't have any data to help instruct the robot what to do a Internet of Things is all about sensors providing data but if you take that data away iot is nothing and already these Technologies are all around us from self-driving cars to drones for example virtual assistants chat Bots and software that can translate for us software that can even make investment decision for us so there's a whole range of things happening so we talk about these passwords but the crucial point is that data skills underlie all of these if you have data skills then you can move into EI if you want to and you can certainly move into other areas as well there's all of these Technologies are also enabled by cyber security now it's actually a really important area as well it's actually crucial for many organizations like Samsung's mentioned the risk of a data breach is not just Financial reputational it could be legal as well and customers I think eventually with companies rather companies eventually will be they'll their approach to cyber security will become very much tied up with their brand okay I don't know about you but when I think about certain airlines all I can think about is do to preach right because that's important to me and I want people to be careful with my data if they're with programming as many many people are using open source it appears everywhere right we can see it in pi in Python for example so when we start to improve an open source security we start to make our overall programming Estates much more secure now software supply chain infections are becoming increasingly costly and they're also becoming increasingly prevalent so for example the United States recently uh in response to the solar winds breach in 2021 you may remember that from last year a President Biden actually responded to that by setting aside an additional 750 million dollars in order to invest in cyber security so when you hear me people making Investments like that you're starting to think right there's a job market appearing in there because people are putting their money behind these Technologies and they need the skills in order to do that so solarwinds for example used vulnerabilities and software created by solarwinds by the way it also works was because solarwinds was a trusted software solution it was too really downloaded and accepted by organizations all around the world so one thing you start to see is the same happening and open source and we can actually see that happening a little bit at the moment there's a few different types of attacks such as dependency confusion and names basic confusions and what that really does is it exploits the way that dependencies work in common source open source languages such as python Ruby and JavaScript we can also see things that type of squatting that uses common misspellings of package names to sneak that naughty software under the guise of an established product now because we're using so much open source all the time I think if you're a developer it would be really useful to know some cyber security to have those skills to cross-skill as well as become more involved more deeply in your existing skill set so for example you may have heard of the through Tech the Cali Network like Cali spelled k-a-l-e-y and what happened there was it was a cloud-based communications platform used by an estimated 83 million iot devices actually appeared on people's phones throughout Africa now the thing is that it could actually because of the breach and the platform that could then allow the remote's control of these devices to include monitoring audio and video feeds as well because it's getting such reopen Source it was a notice for some while now the technology itself is open source and actually you can still go and download it from GitHub it's still there but the point being that we're starting to see the intersection of these skill sets we're starting to see that programming you have to start to learn a little bit about cyber security as well and I'd also strongly recommend knowing about data too now because we're starting to move into this fourth Industrial Revolution really we see the convergence of Technologies together let's start into bringing up about new business models as well and workplace transformation now as we know the global pandemic had a huge impact on how we work and what that actually meant was because we've seen the rise of new business models we're starting to see a focus on things like diversity inclusion and equity and also sustainability as well people are looking at sustainability Tech Green Tech so as this new online business models emerged after the pandemic we're starting to see a move towards hybrid working that opens up the availability of skills so I think it's it's companies become more aware of their sensitivities their duty to the environment you're going to start to see people's skills and to perform on that to actually change as well now and just the last Point really about how do we bridge that skills Gap a report by Mackenzie and Company in 2020 said that 87 of Executives and HR managers say that they're currently facing as major skills Gap the skills Gap is the mismatch between the available and required skills and talents within the organization if they don't have one now they're expecting to face one in the very near future so this is called the skills Gap and what it really means is employees don't owe City skills they need to do in order to do their jobs well in the future now the study actually showed that skills used to be valid for around five years but now many skills are becoming outdated after two years so actually there is a bit of a rat race trying to keep up but certain things will always be popular data skills being one of them and so we see a a need for people not just to understand how to build a machine learning algorithm or how to use one but also around the ethics of using that as well say for example the organization is showing a bias in how decisions are being made and what that tells us that the machine learning module has not been changed properly in terms of the data so with that it's not just about everyone becoming a machine learning programmer so it's not that it's also about interpreting those models what the results are what does it mean how can they be improved and like Sam's already mentioned the communication piece is absolutely crucial there's no point telling people that the P level is 0.05 that doesn't mean anything to many business people what you want to do is take that data interpret it and become that data translator where you understand which the machine learning algorithm or business intelligence reports are doing what they're saying but been able to make that easy and digestible for other people to understand so this involves a technology skills but also things like critical thinking and Analysis problem solving and also active learning strategies as well how do you best learn so I think it's actually really important to understand that the job market has been defined by skills as well as roles and as the shift in the job market starts to increase and accelerate it's great to see that demand skills are sky rocketing I want to thank each year old me for becoming a bit of a geek and learning a on a very old computer all about how to learn data because that skill believe it or not still relevant now the demand for data skills is skyrocketing and will continue to grow there was a study by data Camp who offer um they have tutorials and things out so data Camp did a study that showed that data skills are invading the rest of traditional roles such as marketing and finance leading to a whole range of hybrid roles where people's data skills are become becoming crucial to what they do for example this study showed that marketing experts who know SQL earn 40 more in salary than marketing experts who don't have any SQL skills so don't go thinking that you have to be a programmer right you have to sit with a hoodie on and and type and hack away that's the perception people have and there's certainly people like that in the industry there's also people that look like us right people who look like me who can sit and code away pull data out pull it together do things with that data and really work magic and it's not just about it's ending there it's about the impacts that you can have with data I do some work in as some volunteer work uh with a charity a women's charity and it was basically been able to help them to pull their data together to go back to the police and ask for a donation for each referral that the police made to this particular charity they were not able to do that before so the data perspective was actually quite simple but the impact was huge because the money that was raised by that women's charity meant that they could do things to improve the services and really ultimately help the women in the families that those with the charity was helping so I've also done some work in data science which was all about predicting who is most likely to become homeless the idea is about catching people before they fall okay so trying to work out who's most likely to become homeless and how can they be helped before they fall into that very unfortunate position so actually having data skills is more than just sitting cracking out chord right it's about interpreting the data and also thinking about the impacts that you can have in your community but also in your workplace as well so and as part of that I want to say that these data skills are accessible to everybody I have to confess I didn't like maths at school right uh it bored me and I couldn't see the point geometry trigonometry what's happening what was the purpose but the real thing for me was about statistics because I could use that as a tool in order to help other people and that's where I think diversity inclusion really starts to come into its own because you can use your skills to help other people to come to the table as well so I think we're going to chat a little bit now about how the future is diverse and inclusive I'm sorry I took so long but this is one of my own wisdom dressing topics so with that we'll have a think about the implications for professionals and organizations so I'd like to pass over to power and if that's okay oh sorry I was going to segue across but thanks Jennifer that was a really insightful talker lots of really important Trends and predictions I think for the future of uh Tech skills for the growing demand for data related skills and machine learning expertise um and then we're going to go into the importance of diversity inclusivity into Tech so have some great insights there um but I'd like to hand over to Pawan who's one of our technical trainers at Tech Talent with a wealth of experience and expertise to share um over to you poem thank you I feel really special because I've been introduced twice now so uh thank you very much um hi everyone my name is Palin I am as I've been told I'll introduce myself now um I'm a technical trainer here at Tech talent and um my background is a little bit different in that I don't come from a techie background I come from an educational background um but regardless of kind of which sector I've worked at I've my focus has been in working with diverse individuals to try and upskill them and right now it's focused on up skinning them and developing their Tech skills so uh today in my little bit I'm going to be providing some practical tips and strategies that organizations can use to stay ahead in the tech industries and I'll kind of tackle that in a few different ways so firstly as the tech industry continues to involve we know that it's fast paced we know that it's been it's moving really fast it is essential for professionals to stay current on the latest tech skills in order to remain competitive so you can no longer as it has been well gone into you can't align the skills that you already have you have to keep learning and growing and developing to not just stay ahead of the hook curve but just stay a pace um so there are different ways that we can stay current on these latest tech skills so the internet amazing as it is has a myriad of different training and educational resources online that are free to use and waiting to be used um those sites like LinkedIn like Reddit all of these are where professionals share their insights then knowledge on a wide range of tech topics or even things like GitHub which are more um technology technology focused they're used for people to collaborate as well as as really valuable resources so it's really important to make use of what is already there um it's not if upskilling is a a far away goal and that's it's difficult you've got all of these things that you need to put in place in order to reach it it's something that can can be put into place now in a short time frame there are also other uh free course platforms that you can make use of as well um There Are Places and boot camps and tutorials and academies like Tech Talent where we offer and they offer courses in a wide range of topics so whether it's cyber security if it's data analysis uh cloud computing software um engineering as well which is close to my heart as a software developer um so these uh boot camps these workshops these intensive learning programs their entire MO is to help the professionals acquire new skills so they're set up they're ready and they're ready to be taken advantage of um so there are loads of resources already available that I think um professionals and organizations so individuals and organizations should take advantage of in order to build that strong Foundation of knowledge in order to stay current on the latest trends and all of the best practices in the field as well and the other strand of this that I want to talk about and it's it's the importance of diversity and inclusion it's something that's very close to my heart as well um it's important nowadays for organizations to attract and to retain uh this top Tech Talent by promoting diversity and inclusion it's crucial nowadays that I'm I don't think we can kind of oversell it enough that a workplace needs to prove and to demonstrate and show that it values and it respects all employees whatever background they are from and by doing this the organizations are able to attract a wider range of candidates promote a more positive and productive wide Enviro work environment and also reduce turnover as well because as we move forward we know that the priorities of our workforces have changed and therefore the core values of our organizations need to change likewise as well and it's also important because by incorporating diversity and inclusion at all levels as well not just top down not just at the bottom but at all levels organizations are actually making full use of a large pool of potential that would otherwise go ignored so a little bit of an anecdote I love talking about myself but um I actually when I was a teenager learned how to code as well I learned how to develop websites and I did that by myself by looking at source code etc etc and I was told by my school why don't you go into it but it didn't seem um to me and this is I'm talking about 15 years ago now even then it didn't seem like it was an environment that was open for me one I was a woman two I'm an Indian woman and it just it didn't seem like there was any space for me there so that means that I've come to this this new industry much later on than I would have but it also means if my if my story is being replicated uh throughout the community which I guarantee you is it means that organizations themselves are missing out on this I've said it large pool of potential of people who are will be highly skilled bring different perspectives to the table so don't think of it as a oh this is a tick boxing exercise that we need to bring other people in who uh fill this Gap or fulfill this role it's actually you are by ensuring that diversity and inclusion are part of a company's core values and that you're actively promoting these through initiatives like unconscious bias training employee resource groups as well diverse hiring practices um it means that you're actually bringing this this Tech Talent it's not not Tech Talent us but Tech talent to the table um this also actually does mean however addressing diversity at a Grassroots level as well reaching out to those underrepresented um groups who may not have realized or may not believe that the tech sector is open to them um I think that diverse groups minority groups um however you want to call them or whatever you'd like to call um these groups as well I think they're very used to fighting to make their own place at the table but I think now the onus is also on organizations to make sure that they're reaching out and they're they're not expecting people to have to fight twice as hard in order to be represented that they're actually bringing these groups into the workplace as well and making it and taking advantage of of their experience um so I think not just just kind of looking at diversity and inclusion but looking at the workforce as well so you've got these wonderful people on board how are you actually going to invest in them in and making sure that they uh are actually you know learning and growing and that's by investing in training and education as well so by having that as well as part of your core value as uh of substantiating in um supporting professional development companies are able to Foster that kind of continuous Learning and Development culture which helps as we know it boosts Employee Engagement boosts employee satisfaction and their retention as well because they are going to want to stay in a place where they are able to grow because people inherently want to grow want to get better want to achieve so by prioritizing not just these Tech skills as well but these soft skills these professional skills such as communication collaboration problem solving um you're able to maintain retention as well maintain retention but retain um uh diverse groups and retain your employees so I think that's one of these things that I I I like working for Tech talent for is because we understand the importance of staying on top of the latest tech skills but also fostering this this culture of continuous Learning and Development and also reaching out to diverse groups as well um and we have that kind of range of resources and training programs that are there to help um professionals acquire new skills from people for people like me who come from a English I was an English teacher coming from an English background to acquiring these new schools to expand the networks that I I um that they are exposed to and to advance their careers as well so um I'm I think that that's it for me I'm going to hand things back over to Sam now and he's going to discuss some strategies on how individuals and businesses can say instead from a more kind of business standpoint thank you yeah thank you uh oh and thank you Jennifer as well for the invaluable input and also thanks to everyone who is still with us so as power said we'll talk about a few strategies um as we don't have much time left I think we'll just focus on two of the main aspects from today obviously keep an update with skills is important but I think diversity and inclusion is really important as a point just talked about um I used to work on the cyber security degree apprenticeship which was part of the funnel to get people into our intelligence community in the UK and one of the ways that they stay ahead of lots of other countries is with diversity inclusivity of thought um lots of different people different backgrounds have different ways to approach and solve problems and actually that's really powerful because if you have everyone from the sort of a same background the same way of thinking um you're going to lose that diversity of thought and you're not necessarily going to come up with the best solution you'll probably come up with a the most popular solution but probably not the best solution so it's not just about ticket boxes it's actually about how can we work work well together and be a much better whole than the the separate parts um so I think um inclusive hiring practices are really important I think one of the problems we have is as Paula mentioned a lot of people see that Tech is not for them um but we've got a huge skill shortage we've got a huge diverse Workforce and I think we really need to connect those two things together and get much more diverse inclusivity in Tech between all our different um groups um that we uh we have in the country especially are at the representative groups um in technology um the other thing is artificial intelligence I think um it's a very much a buzzword everyone loves to see artificial intelligence I think we've all seen movies like Terminator and so forth that talk about um artificial intelligence but it is the future and whether you just want to call it machine learning or whether you want to call it artificial intelligence um it's here to stay I mean it's gonna as as Jennifer really alluded to it's fusing all the different Tech skills together so the data is going to underpin everything that's going to connect together and that's why we're in this Force forced Industrial Revolution um I think there's a bit of a talk as well about ethical AI you can see on the slides um and I don't know whether that goes back to Terminator or not but obviously lots of issues like privacy security and so forth are going to be really important with AI as well because um the data underpins all this stuff so how much data should be transparent and how much is reasonable or responsible to give and two AIS as well um and also when you know a company who does AI maybe if they're struggling are they going to sort of break the rules on AI um the ethics of AI going forward I think it's something that uh is going to be a lot more common I think we'll probably see things in the news um going forward about a lot more talk about ethical Ai and how companies actually treat this data and process this data and I think we've all clicked on those captures can you see uh which which one of these boxes are a traffic light I think we've all seen them I always get really paranoid when a tiny corner is in one square and I don't know whether it's accounted or not but we're helping to train um self-driving cars to spot traffic lights by clicking those boxes which I think is fair enough but as we start giving over more and more of our data to AI I think there's going to be a lot more of ethical gray area um that hasn't really been considered properly yet um I think as well I think obviously we're from Tech talent and we can help both individuals and organizations in the implementing strategies and staying ahead of the game obviously we offer training um educational resources on diversity inclusion um courses and workshops on AI and machine learning and we've got trainers that can provide guidance on latest industry Trends uh back practices help both professionals and organizations identify which skills are currently most valuable in the job market um if you are interested learn more about tech Talent um we you can stay in touch um oh sorry stay ahead in the tech industry Implement these strategy and feel free to reach out I think a contact address will appear on the slide I think contact Tech talent.academy I'm more

than happy to discuss uh personal development career paths and where you can find resources uh free training and other Career Development opportunities so thank you for everyone who turned up today for our webinar on the the future of tech skills big thank you to Jennifer for coming in as our guest speaker we hope you found all these insights and predictions um really useful and uh thought provoking now we have um uh taking some questions Offline that have been submitted before the webinar started um so we'll maybe just quickly go through some of those questions while we've got a bit of time left and before we finished um just to mention our Tech Talent we are committed to helping both individuals and organizations stay ahead of the curve so please do reach out to us if you have any further questions or interested um in learning more about how he can help you or your organization um so my first question uh maybe I'll put it out to the panel um maybe we'll start with a nice easy one how do I make my CV look better for tech jobs if I don't have much experience oh Jennifer if you want to go first sorry one suggestion I have is that if people don't have much experience and they don't feel confident and first of all you're probably better than you think you are a lot of people I think especially if they come from um diverse backgrounds sometimes feel they they're not deserving of it this the table because they don't know this I haven't passed that exam or something like that but you are you absolutely are you bring so much every time I think people sometimes undervalue themselves and and it's always obviously great to keep training and when we have been a female technology I've always tried to make sure I pass courses and got certifications to prove to myself more than anyone else that always had that seat at the table if you sometimes you can work for Charities just then you spare time to try and gain some experience and bulk up the CV a power and I don't know what you think yes thank you um so I've kind of got two two things to say here so the first one is to highlight your transferable skills because your professional skills whichever background you're coming from they're going to be they're going to be valuable so if you um used to manage it in your past life if you've managed high workloads if you've got an uh artistic background anything like that highlight that because these are all really good skills that will help you move forward in the tech industry as well I think as well then if you're saying about how do I make it look better for text for tech jobs is to also boost yourself by putting the work in and learning the fundamentals as well to show that you have an interest in what it is that you're going for so whether that is going to a boot camp or training or or using on those online resources that I mentioned earlier having them on your CV will help make you a bit more marketable as well um just uh just to repeat what I said kind of earlier that there were organizations out there like Tech talent that have been set up in order to bridge that skills Gap so have a little research have a little think about um what organizations are out there that can work for you to help make you more marketable as well yeah and one thing I would add as well one of the great things about tech is you can actually do Tech in your spare time um for example you could do programming courses and then you can show off what you've learned in those programming courses maybe on a linked uh GitHub or something like that that you could put on your CV here's an example of my work um I had a friend who wanted to become a games programmer so he wrote his own version of Tetris and that's what got him his first job in the games industry in these are the really successful career I don't know if anyone should have Evil Genius too um he was the lead developer on that so it's just about you know that passion these days I think qualifications has taken second fiddle to people with a passion and a drive to actually learn and do Tech um which is uh as we've said it moves so fast these days you know that drive and passion is something that employers are increasingly looking for um is there a way AI can be used in customer service uh for 24 7 contact with customers I think that's uh something we've probably all experienced does anyone have any thoughts on that yeah definitely I think that you can have chat Bots and the thing is with their chatbots is they're becoming so much more clever and I used to go to back in the day in the 90s and early 2000s I used to build we used to call them agents they used to answer email automatically so it was a bit like a chat board but it went to an email address and it would do some natural language processing and send back a response to the customer so we're automating and then it started to be on their website then it disappeared for about I don't know 15 years now it's came back again so it's funny because the skills that I developed then have become popular again now so the point being that when you invest in your skill set you never lose that you might not be using it right now but you might be using at some point in the future in future you is going to thank current you for having learned that so any investment you're making yourself is always always worthwhile so yes we definitely can use them for customer service and it's not just the um the chatbot itself it's also about the data from the chatbot what data is being transmitted how can you Analyze That to perhaps optimize the chatbot or identify how successful it's being whether you need to retrain the algorithm sitting behind it so it's very exciting topic actually I went for another webinar thank you um I think this sort of follows on almost um with the creation of products such as chat GPT and if you've not seen chat gbt um I definitely have a look I think there's a part of it called playground which also writes code I like to play around with that but with the creation of products such as these how can young companies stay competitive in the market I think that's a really good question yeah and I can take that one I think chat GPT is very good for translating and rewriting and giving in fact finding so it gives you something digestible I gave it a title of one of my own blog topics to see what it would do and it rewrote my blog post and gave me it back the structure was the exact same I can believe it so it obviously just gone off and Googled our Bing search my my and came back with the same thing and and answered it rewording for agwitting I wasn't sure how I felt about that to be honest I thought well I must be right if chat GPT said I was has done that but we'll try to check gbt in other Technologies can't do is give you an opinion so I don't know if my blog post is right or not I know that it's been returned by chat GPT in some sort of rewarded format but I don't know if my opinions were right or not and I think that's where the real human skill comes in because our brains will decide uh you our brains are designed to have a ideas but not to hold them humans we don't always have very good memories they probably should offer lots of ideas every day that are great but you lose them because you don't write them down and I'm starting to get better at that so I think that's the human skill that Vivo needs to stay competitive is to dial up our human skills coming back to what you said earlier Sam about communication a creative thinking and all these then great transferable skills that Pawan has mentioned as well thank you I think that's a great segue into my next question um what would you say is the most important soft skill needed when working in Tech oh I can take this one um so I think the most important stuff School professional school you can see me I'm always saying professional school instead it's a growth mindset I think oh another way to put it is resilience because I think there is so much knowledge out there and it's constantly being added to and developed that it's very easy to feel lost in a sea of how fast things are moving and how much you don't know and it's important to be resilient and take everything as a learning experience that you are not trying to get to an end point but you are on a journey and you are developing as you go on and I think again that's one of the differences between like an AI and a human is that you are always developing and getting better and if you are growing and you are taking every kind of obstacle or setback or anything that you get really frustrated with because you don't know it you're not giving up and that you're continuing and you're coming back in another day and I think that growth mindset that resilience is really important in every industry but it definitely in Tech thanks poem I think we've only got time for one question left we are getting a bit short of time so I've I've cherry-picked I think the question most applicable um to everything we've talked about today um how do you think that the tech job market will be affected by advancements in AI I think that's that's a really good question yeah I think we're going to see that AI I think will disappear that you start not to notice it so Arthur C Clarke uh famous science fiction author wrote the tennis is technology could be sufficiently um seen as magic you know because it just happens and we don't notice it the thing that's one of the great things with technology you'll see there will be big changes but we won't necessarily see them so for example you probably whip out your phone all the time to use a Google Maps as I do because I have a terrible sense of direction and before you know it you've become reliant on it you haven't thought about it before you know it you lose your map reading skills I don't even buy the a map every year I used to diligently buy the AA map every January so I had an up-to-date road map in my car so if I was driving anywhere it was there don't do that now I don't know if they even still sell those in garages but I think yes huge changes things like communication people use chat gbt to generate content but then they'll use the human skills to decide if it's any good yes thank you um so we've just ticked on to the hour mark so um thank you everyone for joining us today um if you have any further questions or interest in learning more about how we can help you or your organization uh please do not hesitate um to reach out to us um I think there's an email address contact at techtalent dot Co dot UK um on the on the slide there but thank you again for joining us today and we look forward to continuing the conversation with everyone else oh and thank you Jennifer um for coming in as our guest speaker and thanks finally to all our audience who came in to listen to us talk uh have a great day everyone and best regards let's see thank you everyone take care take care bye bye

2023-03-04 00:10

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