Bridging scarce skills gaps
South Africa’s unemployment rate is soaring — at the same time, employers are grappling with skills shortages in many key areas
There’s a growing realisation that degrees are not necessarily the key to employment, and that the concept of “giving” people jobs is an outdated one. Cost-constrained employers cannot afford to give anyone anything — rather, they must focus on what return on investment the employee can offer them.
This is both good news and bad news for job seekers. The bad news is that they are unlikely to be “given” a job. The good news is that if they take the initiative to make themselves potentially valuable as employees, they will have something to offer in the job market — degree or no degree.
A prime place for job seekers to start is in the ICT arena. Companies are experiencing a major ICT skills shortfall across all verticals. Aiming to improve customer experience through new mobile apps, better data analysis and stronger social media engagement, companies are urgently seeking coders, data scientists and social media strategists. For youths with initiative, these are all areas where knowledge and proven capability count for more than qualifications on paper.
Paul Dunne, chief executive of the Digital Skills Academy, an international organisation offering postgraduate IT courses, says over the next five years, the most indemand skills globally will include Computational Thinking, or the ability to manage the data processed individually and to identify patterns; computer programming and design skills; customer-centred digital design skills; new media literacy and digital innovation skills.
With wi-fi access and a smart device, anyone can learn the basics of coding, app development and the principles of data analysis, social media strategy and web design, for free, online. Paid-for certification courses are also available online for developers, tech support, systems support, web design, SEO (search engine optimisation) and more. These courses, ranging in duration from a few months to two years, typically cost significantly less than tertiary institution courses and pave the way for students to practice their newfound skills by offering services to friends and acquaintances while studying.
Dunne says businesses typically report a shortage of soft skills such as social and emotional intelligence and cross-cultural competency among IT graduates. “Unfortunately, many high-level IT graduates lack these soft skills, which can only be gained through practical training and … real world work experience and work environments.”
He notes that this is a common challenge around the world. “The 2016 Workforce-Skills Preparedness Report commissioned by Future Workplace and Payscale Inc. entitled Levelling Up: How to Win In the Skills Economy, identified critical thinking and problem solving as lacking or absent from graduates’ skillsets.”
He believes that in the short term, demand will increase for people with strong negotiation skills, service orientation, adaptability, business acumen, agile project development and “agile-thinking” ability. Dunne believes hands-on training and learnerships will build the ICT skills pipeline and equip graduates with the necessary soft skills.
First-time jobseekers are up against a dual challenge, according to South African non-profit Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator. Millions lack both work experience and access to the networks that provide information on opportunities and introductions to the right people. Harambee is working to introduce young jobseekers to the right networks, prepare them for the workplace, and provide them with valuable early on-the-job experience in a programme backed by the government’s Jobs Fund and almost 300 employers across the country. Even factors such as mock interviews and dressing for interviews are covered in the programme. To date, over one million assessments have been carried out and 30 000 job seekers have gained their first work experience through the programme.
In many sciences fields, ongoing efforts are being made to build a skills pipeline to help meet the sector’s growth ambitions. Professor Thandi Mgwebi, head of research at the University of the Western Cape and a long-standing player in the skills development arena, says she believes a number of factors contribute to skills shortfalls in the sciences. “For one thing, we need to strengthen the relationship between science and the public. This is a challenge the department of science and technology and a number of other government departments and industry are trying to address, through efforts to stimulate the science conversation. Other contributing factors are challenges in the basic education system, a lack of funding for postgraduate sciences students, and the need for a greater investment into research and development in South Africa.”
Another skills challenge in the sciences is the belief that one must study a degree course to enter science fields. “There are also certificate and diploma courses at technikons and colleges for a number of careers in the sciences sectors — for example water management and waste water managers,” she notes. This article has been made possible by the Mail & Guardian’s advertisers. Contents and photographs were sourced independently by the M&G’s supplements editorial team