By Arindam Mukherjee, Co-founder & CEO, NextLeap
With the increasing emphasis on skills in recruiting and hiring, merely attending a class or being certified is not sufficient proof of your readiness for the job anymore. What matters now is how well you can put into practice your learnings and produce tangible results through that.
If you are among the young professionals out there, this will mean changing your approach from “What did I learn?” to “What can I do with what I learned?” Here are six things you can do:
1. Build projects around real-world problems
No better way can be found to exhibit proficiency than through implementation. Rather than confining their activities to only theoretical tasks, young professionals can undertake projects based on practical challenges faced by businesses, consumers, or end users.
For example, a student of product management might choose to tackle a challenge posed by an existing product; do consumer research, competitive analysis, and create a product solution for the problem.
2. Showcase the skills that are relevant to the role
The purpose of a good portfolio is to make it clear for the hiring manager which skills an individual possesses and how those skills have been utilized. Instead of putting in everything in terms of projects and certifications, a professional should focus on projects which can highlight those skills which can be relevant for their target positions.
For instance, a role like product manager will require skills such as user research, product thinking, and prioritization of data, while the role of business analyst will require problem-solving skills, analytical skills, and communicating with stakeholders.
3. Show how you work with AI
Fluency with AI technology is rapidly becoming one of the key factors that determines readiness to work in many different professions. Therefore, young professionals need not only prove that they have skills with AI technologies, but also show understanding of how to apply AI to enhance their activities.
It may include using AI for research, information analysis, generating ideas and checking them, automation of routine tasks, improvement of workflow processes, etc., with validation and optimization of the results by human mind. It will give a better indicator of readiness to work than a simple listing of “AI skills” in CV.
4. Work on projects that mirror workplace situations
The value of learning increases greatly as learning begins to mirror the circumstances professionals may be faced with in their careers. Up-and-coming professionals should seek out projects that include deadline pressures, ambiguous problems, incomplete information, collaboration and feedback.
That is why project-based learning is becoming increasingly significant in career readiness. Examples of these platforms include NextLeap, where projects are used as a means of applying theoretical knowledge in realistic circumstances, enabling the demonstration of problem-solving techniques rather than knowledge alone.
5. Use feedback and outcomes to improve the work
Iteration is vital in terms of demonstrating competence. The younger individuals can get feedback from their mentors, colleagues, or any professionals in the industry and use it to improve their work.
Whenever possible, they need to be able to quantify the results of their project. Instead of just stating the fact that they have “developed a marketing strategy” or “analyzed the customer data”, they can talk about the insights that were gained, decisions that were made, or the increased efficiency that was achieved.
6. Build a visible body of work over time
However, the demonstration of skills does not have to end at the completion of a particular course or graduation. Professionals can continue adding projects, case studies, experiments, AI-powered processes, and lessons learned to make their portfolio of achievements noticeable.
This will give them a much broader profile than just the collection of certificates. An employer will be able not only to understand the courses taken by a person, but also to evaluate his/her consistency and the evolution of skills over time.
Overall, the importance of learning is not so much about knowledge itself but rather in what an individual can do with it. The increased importance of skill demonstration in the context of hiring means that young professionals will have to go beyond collecting certificates and show the skills acquired, including role-relevant expertise and work with AI.
This transition from the certificate-based learning to skill-based learning is impacting the development of career learning platforms.
