Originally published in Deccan Chronicle

IT Sector depends on the ability of the talent to unlearn and relearn quickly to remain relevant to their clients. With 25 per cent of the IT workforce being profiled with low learning agility is likely to create a severe job vs skill mismatch that will make it very challenging for the Indian IT sector that needs talent with high learning agility fueled by ever-growing new technologies.

The data also reveals that only 2.62 per cent of job seekers appear to have high learning agility, and almost all (91 per cent) making efforts to improve their skills further. With such a small percentage (2.62 per cent) of highly agile learners as compared with low learning agility (25 per cent), not only will the private sector need to come up with creative effective ways of quickly upskilling or re-skilling their currently employed talent, but also the policymakers will have to look at new education methods to bridge the gap and reverse this trend.

SCIKEY research also reveals that 11.10 per cent of job seekers are absolute instruction takers and totally depend upon being spoon-fed, making them highly inefficient irrelevant in the age of digital transformation and automation, especially in the IT sector.

The findings also indicate that only 1.71 per cent professionals are profiled with excellent management skills, and only 1.10 per cent of professionals exhibit high leadership skills required to excel in this era. Analysis also finds only 0.6 per cent of professionals who can be groomed for a CXO role.

These are the findings of the survey on 'Mindset state of IT Professionals in India on Career Growth Aspirations' conducted by SCIKEY, a talent lifecycle management venture. The report is based on insights from 10,117 respondents. These mainly include IT professionals between the age group of 22 to 47 from Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Haryana and West Bengal. The SCIKEY Research Report has been derived from the SCIKEY MindMatch Algorithm. This algorithm can map a professional's mindset that is based on a set of questions that understand the individual's emotional quotient, ego filters, aspirations and belief levels, habits and the ecosystem disturbances that cause distractions stress in a professional’s life. This data is further filtered to derive professional behavioural elements of any individual and is termed as "Mindset Map".

Alok Kumar, Director, SRKay Group said,"Indian IT that was the darling of the 1990s, is it ready for 2020 and beyond? SCIKEY analysis shows percentage of leaders, innovators and quick learners are in short supply that will challenge India IT growth story while a large number of existing IT professionals will struggle to cope up with fast-changing demand for skills that new age job would require."