The future of jobs

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“Be a doctor, an engineer, an accountant, a lawyer – or don’t bother at all.”

You’ve likely heard these words come from your parents’ mouths at some point in your life.

In fact, many of us at one point probably considered jumping into these professions because we think that they’re the most stable jobs out there – guaranteed to rise against the test of time again and again.

However, technology is growing at such a fast pace that many jobs are at risk of being  redundant in the near future.

The quick pace of tech growth has caused the scope of these professions to widen exponentially in the past few centuries, all while constantly transforming the landscape of our workforce.

Our first industrial revolution used water and steam power to mechanise our production, the second used electric power to fuel mass production, and the third used electronics and information communication technology (ICT) to automate production.

With each revolution, more and more blue-collar jobs become redundant because our advancing technology proved to be more efficient at handling certain tasks than we were.

And with the advent of a fourth industrial revolution that hints breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), computer learning, robotics, internet of things, and nanotechnology – some are finally speculating that our most revered white-collar jobs will finally be placed on the chopping board.

Point in case is a report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggesting that this might really be the case for lawyers and accountants in the far future.

“AI and machine learning drivers are expected to lead to negative employment outcomes in job families such as Education and Training, Legal and Business and Financial Operations,” asserted the report.

It is suggested that advancements in AI and learning could cut a lot of the menial work in the legal and financial professions such as reviewing contracts, legal research and audit exercises as AI could process through documents at high speed, determining whether or not something is amiss.

Similarly, an article published in the New Zealand Medical Journal called ‘Artificial intelligence in medicine: human need not apply’, suggested that doctors may also face negative employment outcomes as AI technology has already demonstrated that it is capable performing accurate medical diagnosis of patients.

According to the article, the way AI technology is able to do this is through a unique pattern recognition algorithm that compares a patient’s data to predefined disease categories.

Current examples of this taking place are IBM Venture Capital Group’s (IBM) self-learning AI Watson who has been reported to be already out-diagnosing medical residents in certain situations, and web-based AI Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) which has a reported 96 per cent rate of correct diagnosis in 50 consecutive cases published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“This is comparable with human doctors, who have been shown to make the correct diagnosis in 95 per cent of outpatients,” said the article.

While the successes of these AI technologies are indicative of a huge change to many of our white-collar jobs, it should be noted that they are not expected to occur anytime in the near future as the WEF report forecasts that they do not foresee these technologies being advanced enough by year 2020 to have widespread impact on global employment levels.

 

What to expect

But with a relentless march of innovation and research led by tech companies, what can we expect to happen when AI technology has progressed to a point where it can outperform us in most day to day tasks?

According to president of Australian Computer Society, Anthony Wong, the most obvious development from this would be that the requirements of our workforce would change drastically.

In an interview with BizHive Weekly earlier this year, Wong detailed that the biggest change that we would see in the workforce is likely that all jobs in the future would require more extensive ICT skills.

Currently, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission is reporting that 43.2 per cent of our internet users require ICT usage skills at their place of work while 17.9 per cent require ICT technical skills.

Wong expects these figures to boost drastically in future – causing some of our jobs to disappear entirely as we get replaced by computer and robots.

However, he is also of the opinion that this redundancy of jobs would only be for the more repetitive jobs like menial labour, and that most jobs on the market right now would be mostly likely safe guarded as long as it requires some form of skills that robotics cannot replicate.

“The problem with computers and robots is that they rely on data which is derived from the past. So the biggest challenge we have our hand right now is whether or not we can build intelligent machines to learn from past data and predict the future.

“And in a way, we already achieved this as some our tech innovations like IBM’s Watson have already demonstrated learning capabilities.

SOURCE: World Economic Forum (2016) – The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

“Yes, we might lose some repetitive jobs but in turn we will create higher skilled jobs as well which can help,” guided Wong.

He opines that professions and industries on the whole are all expected to be impacted by digital advancement but will not turn obsolete and instead just transform in the sense that ICT technical skills and diversified skills will much more desirable in the future.

For example, a surgeon in the future will not be the same surgeon that we know now because they need to pick up more ICT skills in order to effectively utilise the new and improved programs and technologies that are being created to allow for more precise and less invasive surgeries.

Similarly, the law profession will also began to slowly incorporate more and more AI driven software that will cut down time in the acts of legal reviews and research – requiring lawyers to improve their skill sets in programming and ICT skills to effectively utilise these technologies.

Agreeing with this, Director of IBM’s software strategy, Deborah Magid asserts that these ICT and programming skills are imperative to our future workforce and advocates that education for them should start young.

“Currently, some schools are starting to teach about these things, they are starting to start curriculums like this where kids can get their hand on some of these high tech devices.

“I think this is great because the kids can learn how to program things that are physical like a watering system or a music system, whatever that they care to do.

“And this allows them to learn valuable programming skills just by doing things,” she shared to The Borneo Post in previous interview.

 

Expanding your skill set

Besides ICT and programming skills, findings from the Australian Digital Pulse 2017 report noted that our workforce of tomorrow are expected to have more creative, innovative, collaborative and analytical skills.

According to Wong, this was to be expected as creativity and innovation will be prized in the future, being something that AI technology cannot replicate.

Analytical skills will be highly sought after in all walks of life as data derived from AI tech will need to be analysed.

For collaborative skills, Magid explained that continued advancements in technology and its implementation in all industries will begin to blur the lines between traditional Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical (STEM) jobs and jobs from other faculties.

“In the future, I expect jobs will be performed by teams of people in different disciplines working together because if you have only one type of person to do it, it is going to be really hard as they might lack the right expertise.

“For example, if you have a mechanical engineer who knows about hardware, a software engineer who know how to program, and someone from agriculture who really knows the industry, you can have all those people collaborate and create solutions that really make sense,” she explained.

Following this, she shared that that IBM who also provides education and training services locally, has also been encouraging local universities to promote collaboration among their students from different kinds of faculties.

“I am a big believer of communities and people doing things together,” she mused.

 

Diminishing job market a key concern

While both Wong and Magid brought some solace that majority of our skilled jobs will not turn obsolete but rather just experience a change of scope, there is still the issue of diminishing number of jobs.

From the WEF report, current trends in technology could lead to a net employment impact of more than 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labour market changes between 2015 to 2020.

These losses of 7.1 million jobs are mostly concentrated in the office and administrative job family while the two million gains in jobs are mostly in the categories of Computer and Mathematical, and Architecture and Engineering.

While the estimated 5.1 million figure of job loss may seem daunting, some argue that it is merely the current industries and economies becoming more streamlined in their operations, and that newer industries and enterprises that have not been created yet will likely come to rise to help offset the total amount of job losses.

What this means is that society will likely balance itself out to accommodate for themselves, but if you want more job security for yourself, pursuing a career in Computer and Mathematical or Architecture and Engineering jobs would be ideal.

 

Balancing jobs between genders

However, the issue with this lies in the fact that women worldwide traditionally hold more Office and Administrative or Education and Training jobs while men hold more Computer and Mathematical or Architecture and Engineering jobs.

And if no intervention is done to help encourage more women into pursuing STEM related jobs and professions, we may likely see a larger gender gap in the workforce going forward.

To this, Magid advocates for Malaysia to overcome this by upholding the current women in our STEM industries.

“During my visits to Malaysia, we met a lot of women in business and government who have ended up starting their own companies, so I don’t think there’s a lack of ambition here.

“There should be a focus on finding a good role model for young girls to look up to, so they can have the confidence to do well in technical businesses as founders of start-ups,” she reasoned.

Suggesting a potential role model, Magid pointed out that mechanical engineer and co-founder of Grabcar, Tan Hooi Ling, would be an ideal candidate as she has demonstrated that women can be highly successful too in the male dominated tech world.

And in addition as women in STEM jobs have been found to earn 33 per cent more than women in non-stem jobs, it is expected that the gender wage gap will close up even more as more women enter STEM jobs.

 

Tackling employability, job trends

So far, there are both worries and reassurances regarding the future of our changing labour market and job securities.

We have been told that the best way to adapt to these changes are to start developing technical skills that future employers are seeking and to consider pursuing or moving into STEM related industries or professions.

But what else can we do to help increase employability in the future?

In an interview with BizHive Weekly, Sanjay Modi, managing director of India, Middle East and Southeast Asia of online recruitment website Monstercom shares that the journey to being the perfect job candidate doesn’t just end at having all the required skills and qualifications for a job.

He explained that while being equipped with the fundamental skills and qualifications for a chosen pathway is standard for job seekers, what makes them stand out to employers is their ability to demonstrate a mix of soft and hard skills.

“Industries are all developing at a rapid pace, with new procedures, trends and disruptions coming up constantly. This means a mix of soft and hard skills would be critical for scaling the career ladder.

“These skills include problem solving abilities, interpersonal skills, communication skills and the ability to adapt to these changes quickly,” he explained.

The ability to adapt to changes quickly is especially revered by employers as demonstrates that and candidate is resilient and able to cope with adversity, Sanjay guided.

When asked how candidates could demonstrate this trait, Sanjay suggested that they shared specific instances with their potential employers of situations where they had triumphed over adversity.

“For me, one situation that stood out the most was a candidate who had just dealt with an organisation restructuring. The situation was definitely unpleasant, but by no means anyone’s fault in particular.

“In face of such adversity, the candidate, despite bearing the brunt of an unfortunate retrenchment, was still willing to be involved in the process of helping the organisation move along, ensuring a smooth handover process on his part.

“These little actions do matter, and it will clearly demonstrate the qualities of an individual in the face of difficult situations,” he recounted.

And for fresh graduates who may not have such stories to share, Sanjay added that employers are eager to listen to any relevant experience that can shine a light on the qualities and traits of the candidates – whether it be a past internship or school commitment.

“And avoid discussing salary upfront; employers are not fond of that. This was also reflected in our latest research where 26 per cent of employers consider this to be one of the biggest mistakes a candidate can make in an interview.”

And advocate for networking, Sanjay encouraged all potential job candidates to incorporate networking into their work lives as he believed it can be a powerful tool for anyone to build on their networks for business opportunities.

“While frequently portrayed as an activity limited to those in certain professions or industries, really anyone can attend a networking session.

“For students who are thinking about taking the first step, there are definitely outlets to look into such as interest groups and community or campus events. Those who are going through internships can leverage on company networking opportunities to meet others in the industry, make an impression and expand their own network,” he guided.

Sanjay warned that corporation management teams need to start committing to long-term plans on bridging any existing upcoming workforce skill-gaps through studies of their current environments and competencies.

“Preparation will have to start now and will involve a series of activities including an inward scan on existing workforce profiles and policies, and an environmental scan on the trends, challenges and labour supply for the sector specific to the company.

“These findings, together with a visionary leadership team, will be key to a well-prepared organisation for the demands of the future. Market conditions will always be changing, but it helps to be ready internally at least, to cushion the impact from the external environment.”