Skilling the youth
Skills in today’s world act as a passport for our youth to secure jobs as Industry norms across the world have changed drastically. Skills needed to secure jobs across various sectors keep on updating and the new generation has to remain abreast with such changes and keep on improvising on their skills.
It is lack of skills that youth in Jammu and Kashmir have lagged behind in putting themselves in the front row of job seekers across various sectors. Thus the importance of starting a structured skilling mechanism increases tremendously as only skills can land our youth in the job markets.
Thankfully, a comprehensive, four-track integrated roadmap to transform the skilling ecosystem in Jammu and Kashmir is being planned so as to make its population future-ready for emerging employment opportunities.
The five-year roadmap, starting from the school foundation level will include various levels that will help the students to emerge skilled enough once they end up completing their education.
The first track, ‘foundational skilling in schools’, focuses on compulsory exposure to vocational and 21st-century skills for students from classes 6 to 12 through structured modules, exposure visits, hackathons and career assessments.
Besides, a second track, ‘career launchpad in colleges’, will target college students and graduates through minor skilling courses, internships, finishing school modules and support for competitive examinations, with academic credits, stipends and structured placement support.
The third track, ‘Industry-ready technical skilling’, will aim to strengthen ITIs, polytechnics and technical institutions through a hub-and-spoke model, diversified courses, dual training systems and stronger apprenticeship linkages, while as the fourth track, ‘Upskilling and Lifelong Learning’, will focus on the existing workforce and informal sector through short-term skilling, mid-career upgradation, recognition of prior learning, entrepreneurial skill development and district-level model skill centres.
Though, this highly ambitious project will take some time to fetch results but one thing is certain that the job markets across the globe have been seeking highly skilled hands to be on their watch lists.
Today we are witnessing emergence of Coding skills where hands on experience and knowledge about Python, Java, JavaScript, C++, Data Science, Digital Marketing, Cloud Computing and Cybersecurity are preferred.
Similarly in business and management, skills like Project Management, Digital Transformation, Finance & Accounting, Marketing & Sales and HR and Leadership skills are in high demand.
The emerging tech including AI & ML, Blockchain, virtual reality and augmented reality are also highly sought after and our young generation can avail such skills to surge ahead.
Even soft skills like communication, problem solving, time management and strategic planning can help them to land in good positions where they can sail through a promising career.
However, a unified end-to-end job listing platform integrating international, national and UT-level employment opportunities needs to be put in place so that the skilled youth get instant opportunities without any waste of time.
