The rapidly evolving world we live in demands a new set of skills. Before we can predict the future of work, we need to understand the journey that brought us to this point.
The search for and selection of digital profiles was once the Holy Grail for companies, initially forcing them to rely on specialized recruitment firms to guide them through the process. This necessary outsourcing hindered a peer-to-peer or balanced relationship: the recruitment firms possessed the knowledge, leaving companies in a certain initial inferiority. To address the educational gap, there was a need to accelerate the creation of a series of Masters and Postgraduates to supply the market with these new profiles. Business schools and universities with a focus on Technology and Innovation were the first to lead this race, but eventually, all others joined in. The urgency from companies, along with the qualitative leap in the structures required for teaching (necessary bandwidth, Virtual Classrooms, etc.), also allowed for the boost of non-face-to-face training. The initial price to pay was immature teaching plans, which had to be refined at a rapid pace. Supply (of education) and demand (for professionals with specific skills) eventually converged, although not entirely due to the invisible hand of Adam Smith.
Currently, we can question whether studies like Digital Marketing should still be considered ‘specialized’ and if instead, those that have been generated as spin-offs from these (SEO, Analytics, etc.) should be.
Today, the already complex yet necessary relationship between education and business is further complicated by a factor causing arrhythmias in many organizations. “Digital transformation” acts as an accelerator, but it is much more than that: it is a transversal tsunami. Not only has it required the creation and destruction of jobs, but it has also had a brutal impact on the organizational model of companies and how they relate internally. It has changed “how” companies work. It’s not just about the pieces you incorporate and replace, but also how they relate to each other. To add to the complexity, many companies have already made a shift from being “product-oriented” to “customer-centric,” forcing a realignment of focus and their entire internal structure (do we need fewer product managers and more customer journey managers, among other impacts?).
Face of this, the dilemma for any organization has not changed much conceptually: achieving a balance between “specialist” professionals and those with a more transversal nature. In postgraduate and master’s programs, it has long been insufficient to train in specific skills and a particular discipline. It is necessary to equip participants with tools to understand how to fit this new knowledge into an organization and in changing and complex environments, and to also provide them with “enduring knowledge,” such as decision-making models or the fit between strategic vision and operational execution depending on the organizational model, among many others.
Knowledge becomes obsolete over time, but the pace of change is accelerating. This means that the skills we acquire today may become outdated much faster than before, putting pressure on individuals and organizations to get a quick return on their investment in education.
Digital transformation has revolutionized the internal structures of organizations. Initially, we began by hiring an Ecommerce Manager or a Traffic Acquisition Manager, but their incorporation created a destabilizing factor, as a “new” digital model that had not yet fully settled had to coexist with “old” structures that had not yet completely disappeared. A complicated coexistence. Moreover, we now find that many companies have not finished this phase of digital transition and are already being asked to undertake a new layer of transformation, this time linked to the emergence of Big Data and the Internet of Things and the extensive and intensive exploitation of data. The overlap and acceleration of the layers of change “tensions” the entire chain: from the needs of organizations to the educational offerings to meet them.
The professionals who are trained, retrained, and “poured” into the market can (and should) be absorbed by it, but a deep reflection must be carried out regarding “how” they are being assimilated by organizations: roles, responsibilities, and (above all) associated remunerations along with the salary inequities (internal and external) that are generated. A true problem inoculated during the brutal economic crisis of the last decade (and the brain drain that it entailed), but whose consequences – although already visible – are still unpredictable in the medium/long term.
