A survey commissioned by a European think tank found an alarming problem that could’ve potentially paralyzed Europe’s giant strides into the tech-powered future workforce. The IT sector was staring at a talent shortage of over 900,000 employees. 

Or, there was, because this survey was conducted in 2014. Which means they’ve probably fixed the problem by now and bridged the talent gap, right? 

Sadly, any attempt made at closing the talent gap has been undone by rapid technological advancements that require the talent to be reskilled once again. While there are no updated figures for 2021, all indications are that there still is a massive shortage of talent in the European IT sector. 

Interestingly, this seems to be a global phenomenon that continues to grow unabated, even in talent-rich countries like India and the USA. 

This article explores how skills mismatch is one of the chief problems leading to this burgeoning talent gap and how to solve it. 

How A Skill Mismatch Sets You Up For Failure 

Year after year, software giants such as Infosys, HCL, TCS, and others swoop down into Indian engineering college campuses and hire thousands of candidates from across completely unrelated streams such as Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering & even Bio-medical Engineering. Their logic is that such talent can be easily retrained and transitioned into an IT role since they’ve already proven their technical proficiency by enrolling and completing an engineering course.  

However, ground experience reports that such people are less likely to up/reskill due to a lack of deep understanding about the field they are working in.  

This skills mismatch is, in fact, a problem of rising concern across many fields, especially among STEM majors who opt for a career in the IT industry.  

A recent research paper noted that individuals who are mismatched receive lower earnings than their well-matched counterparts in occupations that use similar skills.  

This type of mismatch creates a longer-term problem for enterprises as employee skillsets go out of sync with the demands of an evolving job role. On a side note, the researchers also note that the disparity is even higher among women STEM graduates.  

Many STEM graduates have reported that the expectations in technical jobs are something they are unsure of handling effectively.  Needless to say, this is a concerning statement that should prompt HR leaders to revisit their hiring strategies. 

Our own research indicated that this problem has a readily-available fix in the market. 

Fixing Skills Mismatch To Prevent A Global Talent Catastrophe 

‘Fixing’ is not the right word to use here; instead, adapting would be a better choice.  

Adapting to the growing demands of technical jobs can be accelerated by a two-fold strategy that includes: 

Creating More Entry-Level Jobs 

Pushing a non-computer science graduate into the deep end of a development role is not ideal. Most enterprises realize this and ensure that they receive adequate training before they are deployed on the ground.  

However, employees indicate a sense of overwhelm and increased stress levels when they find themselves in jobs roles they barely qualify.  

Draup’s research indicates that one key way to mitigate the fallout of this skills mismatch is to create more entry–level jobs for job clusters across industries. 

Be it Data Science, Blockchain, Process Automation, or any other job cluster, the need of the hour is more entry-level jobs where people from non-technical backgrounds can safely practice and develop their technical skills. 

Talent managers are also becoming increasingly aware of this aspect and are actively running initiatives to fix the skills mismatch problem through entry-level job creation. Another strategy that they are pursuing with renewed vigor is reskilling.  

Leveraging AI-Powered Reskilling 

While creating entry-level jobs is a welcome move, it doesn’t fully solve the skills mismatch problem. To solve this and ensure that the workforce is sustainable, talent managers and learning & developments teams are leveraging AI-powered reskilling platforms such as Draup.  

Using such reskilling solutions, HR teams can easily reskill/upskill their employees to mitigate the effects of skills mismatch and the growing talent gap. 

AI-powered reskilling software can prevent the skills mismatch problem plaguing most enterprises by: 

• Identifying critical next-gen roles by evaluating competitor hiring trends 
• Crafting the ideal career trajectories for your employees 
• Understanding missing skills and certifications required for planned career progressions 

• Identifying courses and certifications to bridge the skills gap 

Draup’s reskilling solution analyzes over 4 million career paths and explores hiring trends in real–time to help employees pick out ideal career pathways to reduce skills mismatch and build a sustainable future workforce.