As the cars that are beginning to enter the ecological transition, the training that we will need after the year and a half of changes due to covid-19 will be hybrid. In most cases, we will neither return completely to face-to-face nor will we remain in the forced situation of the last year, in many cases fully telematic. Professionals should review their resumes in search of deficiencies, not only in their digital skills, but also in social and adaptive ones, such as empathy or resilience. The training that workers will need is already beginning to be reinvented or updated in colleges and business schools and in the human resources departments of companies, preparing for the hybrid world that this pandemic has precipitated.
The effects of the health crisis on society and people will cause a series of professions to position themselves among the most in demand in the coming years. Professionals and students of higher education will be able to redirect their tasks and training towards these new labor claims. Apart from health care companies, which have already experienced a boom during the covid-19 crisis, the demand from psychologists and specialists in occupational medicine, among other professions, will increase.
Professions in the electronic commerce, distribution, customer service, agriculture, industry, cleaning or security sectors will also play a leading role.
As well as those aimed at providing services and care at home to the elderly and support for children for the study.
Another sector that is going to increase its presence in the market is going to be computer science.
Among the profiles that are going to be more attractive are, as highlighted by an Infojobs study,
software
developers
and ICT consultants (experts in new information and communication technologies).
And for these jobs, both university graduates and intermediate and higher VET degrees are requested.
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"Professions that have already had greater employability in recent times (such as those related to artificial intelligence, the internet of things, autonomous vehicles, drones, cybersecurity or
big data
) will not change, but new ones will be incorporated and all will experience a qualitative change ”, explains Javier Blasco, director of the Adecco Group Institute. “The key is going to be in training related to competencies. For this reason, the certificates of professionalism (those that accredit work experience) should be put in more value than ever, as well as the training for employment that is offered by the Vocational Training (FP) centers ”, says Blasco. "This would allow, in a short period of time, the mobility of workers within the sectors themselves, such as commerce or distribution, towards the professions that are going to be more in demand."
A recent Adecco report highlights 15 professional profiles that are already key and that will continue to be so, such as warehouse, cashier and delivery personnel;
manufacturing operators, collectors and customer service personnel.
They also include computer technicians, developers, geriatricians, doctors, nurses, social workers, nursing home and hospital assistants, cleaning and passenger transport personnel.
An office in a file image.Jason Alden / Bloomberg
“We started talking about liquid education in a world in constant change and now that we have had the home office we have learned that, through platforms, we can be more efficient and stretch productivity. Technology has shown us its friendliest face, as a vehicle for communication, for interrelation, ”reflects Santiago Íñiguez, Executive President of IE University.
On the professions for the immediate future, Santiago Íñiguez begins by encouraging young people to see the holes that are being created to start their own projects. “For recent graduates, entrepreneurship is a great opportunity. There will also be it in the small
startups
in which they grow more quickly ”, he advises. Íñiguez points out four sectors in which demand will grow: "Social health, food, logistics and air transport".
"Before covid-19 there was already talk that the professional of the future needed different skills, the old way of learning or teaching no longer served, in which your perspective was a linear path and you became an expert in one thing only" , recalls María Obiols, director of Esade Careers, the professional careers service of this business school.
"And now, in the immediate future, the worker has to be trained in a set of skills that, whatever happens, will be his passport."
A changing environment
Esade conducted a survey, during an online program
,
among 400 people in which he asked them about the concept that would best define their experience in the first two months of the pandemic. The most repeated was "uncertainty", followed by "digital" and "adaptation to change". When asked about the immediate future, the most repeated were "flexibilization", "digital", "virtual" and "remote". Obiols tells it: “First of all there has been great uncertainty. And now the most precious asset of companies is going to be trust, that is, that their professionals generate confidence in them regarding the results they are going to obtain ”. This expert considers that many companies will keep 30% of their work
online
in the future. "In Esade, in fact, we have been preparing these hybrid programs, 40% in person and 70%
online,
" he explains.
María Obiols also highlights the role that logistics will have after the covid
.
“Having to get to people's homes is going to force many companies to rethink their critical activities and, with it, skills and
reskilling
(recycling, above all, to adapt to digital change) and
upskilling
(in other complementary subjects). And it summarizes two types of skills that will have to be had at this stage: “On the one hand, the cognitive ones, such as critical thinking and project management, and, on the other, the adaptive ones: the social, the emotional, the ability to adapt. to this new environment and resilience ”.
Obiols also cites other sectors that will continue to demand a large number of professionals, such as renewable energy, electronic commerce aimed at consumers (B2C,
Business to Consumer
), cybersecurity (“we are going to be very exposed to ”) Or teaching, to retrain and to acquire new skills.
“Companies should double their education budget to give critical employees the skills to cope in the new scenario.
Those that do it before will come out before the crisis ”, he concludes.
Two workers with masks in their workshop.EMMA INNOCENTI / Getty Images / Westend61
Experts agree that in this hybrid world, people will be valued more than ever. And the protagonist is going to be co-responsibility, as it was during confinement in homes. We are going to go to highly negotiated work models, almost person by person. But, in return, trust and its relationship with performance will be essential.
"Everything that has happened has been the trigger for a new employment scenario," explains Mónica Pérez, Director of Communication at Infojobs. “In the first two months of the pandemic, the demand for employment fell almost 70% compared to the same period last year, and there have been behaviors that allow us to observe two types of profiles, those closely linked to the crisis (such as those of the health sector) and those that include technical competences and digital skills in jobs in which they were not claimed before ”.
As is logical, the main sector of the job offers during the pandemic has been the health sector. Especially of nursing assistants and graduates in Nursing. And companies that are experts in personnel selection believe that this increase will continue and will also affect VET graduates in this sector. There will also be a reconversion of the sector linked to the elderly that will affect geriatrics and the request for specialists in their care and attention. "There is also a boom in the professions related to prevention," emphasizes Pérez. "The occupational medicine specialty, in fact, was already having a great acceptance before the pandemic."
But if work, education and life in general have been complicated during
covid-19
, it is scary to think how everything would have been without technology.
In the end, the improvisation to which we have had to hold it seems that it is not going to be a good recipe to be a good professional in the hybrid world that awaits us.
As Santiago Íñiguez says, recalling a phrase attributed to Mark Twain: "I need two days to improvise."
Rethink education
In the education sector, this crisis will accelerate the growth of online training that had already started long ago. "The educational world is seeing a transformation with online courses, MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) ... and many had believed that they were going to liquidate formal education, but it has not done so, although they have had a decisive influence," he explains Santiago Íñiguez. “Now, this whole situation has brought about a deeper, faster change. The way of governing the university, the role of the teacher, the incorporation of technology within the pedagogy itself. We have to rethink education ”.
The Executive President of IE University assures that "academic results are better in the hybrid format." "Although some mechanisms will have to be corrected and the programs will have to be reviewed." The Instituto de Empresa has launched a program precisely for teachers to learn to teach online. “Technology is a commodity”, Íñiguez points out, “the platform does not add value, the teacher does it”.
"Elearning and eworking are going to take hold," says Javier Blasco. “Whoever has been doing it wrong during the pandemic will be left behind. Because remote training techniques have come to stay ”. In addition, the platforms are being perfected, which will help to make better use of working time. Blasco concludes that, after this storm, higher education curricula should be revised to make the system more agile and to rethink the relationship between employment and training.
