Upskilling to the industry standards and communication have gained prominence for recruiters. Companies are focussing more on the candidate's self-development initiatives.

According to an ET report, as an increasing number of companies are looking at the option of hybrid workplaces — a blend of remote working and working from office — this has led to reassessing the set of skills and competencies in the new work milieu. While digital transformation has been a top business priority of many companies over the last couple of years, the pandemic has not only accelerated the use of technology and digital tools but also led to the need for a whole new set of skills for people to function in a remote environment, said the HR heads of leading companies including Tech Mahindra, EY and PeopleStrong.

The new skill sets span from core technical skills to digital skills, business skills and soft skills.“Companies are taking a 360-degree view on skills. This includes digital skills such as digital marketing, business skills such as problem solving, ideation and innovation, and interpersonal skills to communicate effectively in a virtual work environment,” said Anurag Malik, partner, people advisory services, EY India.

Almost nine in 10 engineering jobseekers think that soft skills such as business communications can prove helpful in getting a job, finds a survey by IP-driven incubation lab BridgeLabz. The survey, titled “Skills Engineers Should Hone to Stay Relevant in the Upcoming Years”, has responses from 1,300+ engineering job seekers, who reveal their inclination towards acquiring a robust,

Interestingly, 81% of the job seekers view business communication as a requisite in the engineering field, while 16% are indecisive whether or not it is an indispensable part of the discipline, only 2% don’t consider it important. The respondents also revealed the skills they would like to hone to stay job-relevant. Apart from domain knowledge, 33% of job seekers would like to learn about critical thinking. This is followed closely by the urge to refine linguistic and technical flexibility (31%) and business communications skills (29%). Only 8% of respondents sided with developing cognitive skills

“We expect to see an increased demand for future-ready employees, adept in digital or niche skills like ecommerce, cyber security experts, data analysts, machine learning analysts,” said Harshvendra Soin, global chief people officer, Tech Mahindra. “The technical skills in demand are role and industry specific,” PeopleStrong chief executive Pankaj Bansal said. In IT, coders in security and networking, microservices, machine learning and Big Data would be in high demand; in pharma demand would be higher for R&D, and manufacturing workers and frontline sales staff with digital selling skills. In auto, connected technology skill sets would continue to be in demand, he said