Almost two decades back when I was making decisions on my career selection, Information Technology was not a well admired career as engineering but my love for computers convinced me to pursue my dream of working for a global corporate in the IT sector. One of the career counseling advice I received then was “If you’re going for IT field you will have to constantly keep yourself updated as new technologies are always flooding the market and industry keeps changing”
Since I started the journey I have seen different evolution and changes. When I completed my masters ‘Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems’ were the in-thing and I focus my studies around it and managed to secure my dream job. This gave me the opportunity to witness first hand on how quickly the industry kept changing and evolving. And today when someone asks me how are things career wise my response to them is “Living the Dream!”.
These days there is lot of media coverage about digital disruption in Australia and how greatly cognitive technologies (Artificial Intelligence) and automation will impact all the businesses and employees who have got comfy working with old operating models and tools. I sense a lot of fear among my colleagues about how will the cloud business, AI and automation impact their careers and they often question me what’s my take on this changes to our careers. I joking reply “You’re in a field where change is the norm; if you don’t adapt to the IT evolution then going by Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest your career will be extinct!”
In summary we are living in times of another industrial revolution. In the last century manual jobs were replaced by machines and over the coming time humans got used to working with machines. Then came computers and humans adapted to it as well. But now we are entering an era where people feel the threat ‘Robots will take our jobs!’ which is not really the case and maybe won’t happen in our lives but no one can predict how things will be in the next century when humans would have started living in Mars (Maybe thanks to Elon Musk!).
But if change has always been constant in the tech industry then why is it a problem now? It’s just another phase of technology evolution after all. As per Forbes article on Big Data by Bernard Marr ‘more data has been created in the past two years than in the entire previous history of the human race’ and this is alarming fact. I have a different analogy to explain this rapid evolution. Earlier change in IT was slower than change in fashion industry but these days IT is changing more rapidly than the latest fashion trend which may last a season or two. And this is causing a lot of anxiety and fear among those employed as well as those who graduated and are just getting started with their careers. News about massive layoffs by corporate add fuel to the fire.
How will you survive this digital disruption of the cognitive era?
1) Keep Learning: Be aware of where the industry is headed. Education ends with school but learning is life long. In the digital age there is no shortage of how to access a free online course and gain knowledge. Your career growth will depend more about what you do from 5pm to 9am and on weekends rather than what you deliver Mon-Fri 9am to 5pm. If you stop learning, you stop growing and create a case for your own extinction.
2) Networking: Every successful person will advise you about the time it will take to secure your next job is very much related to how big is your network. Attend regular meetup events and seminars that align to your field and new trends associated with it. Personal recommendation always beats a resume. Those coffee catch ups and casual drink or two with the right people will always help you sail through difficult times.
3) Plan outside the resume: A common advise you will get while applying for new jobs is to customize to meet the job specific criteria so you have key words for the recruiter/ HR to pick up. Apply the same to plan for your next job. If you have been working inside the On-prime IT sector and want to be part of the cloud journey what current skills will be transferable and what upkill you will need to focus on.
4) Respond and not react: Life often doesn’t go as per plan and lay offs might come sooner than expected. You can spend all notice period time complaining about how unfair your work/ ex-boss has been or you can start thinking on how will you respond to this change. There’s a saying when one door closes another opens and same goes for jobs. So keep the positive attitude and prepare for next opportunity
5) Embrace the unconnected dots: One of the most inspiring speech by Steve Jobs at Standford graduation which mentions about ‘connecting the dots’. It’s impossible to connect the dots when you look forward and same will apply during uncertain times but when you retire your career dots due to this disruption will all make a very clear path.
Lastly when times get really tough, remember the words of William Ernest Henley’s poetry ‘Invictus: I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul!’
– MP’s Personal Blog