Undiscovered Talent
what would it take
for us to discover our real talent
how can we get to the root of our
undiscovered talent
and use it to unlock and explore
opportunities
for ourselves and for our nation
what if i told you it was about not
really having a choice
but to make things work generation z
or those born after 1995 have been born
into a digital world
one full of choices even as millennials
born in the 1980s and the early 1990s
have often needed to travel to discover
ourselves or take in a gap year to
explore
options our parents probably never had
and to change the way we think or to
encourage us to work in a particular
direction
you often have to tap into our actual
belief systems
how many of you have had that intern who
quit
just because they weren’t feeling it
how many of you have waited and waited
to find that
perfect person to make sure that you
were truly in love
we all know that marriages in our
generation
are getting later and later
look at the movie game changers for
instance
they didn’t try to change our behavior
what they did was tap into our belief
systems
and use influencers to show us that
being vegan
might actually be the healthier way to
be
and it worked millions of people have
actually
watched that movie and been convinced
by a documentary on netflix
this isn’t such a new concept really
marketers
have been using the ability to change
consumer behavior by actually changing
their attitudes
towards certain beliefs and then
eventually using it to sell their
products
what they’re doing is fixing cognitive
dissonance
aligning people’s values and beliefs
with their behaviors
and then resulting in a corresponding
behavior change
but what happens when there’s a drastic
event like covet 19
our behavior has to change overnight and
that
in some cases may also force us to
change our attitudes
leading to a different way to
essentially solve for cognitive
dissonance why is this interesting
and why is it especially interesting for
the future of work
we’ve had to stop traveling embrace the
way
that we have zoom parties netflix
parties
adopt technology but it’s also made us
explore some certain
rapid industry changes change the way
that we respond to health and hygiene
adapt and appreciate some things that we
possibly would never have
done before and done it much faster
because we didn’t really have a choice
more interestingly
it’s allowed us to push ourselves and
access
undiscovered talent that we had within
us
i run an edtech company called talent
where we provide career training and
jobs to generation z
we surveyed many of our customers to ask
them how has this
change affected them and the way that
they approach work
we found that people have lost jobs in
industries that they cared about
and they have left industries that they
believed in
corporates have had to let employees
work from home
even when they didn’t want to
and companies have had to virtually hire
people
often democratizing talent allowing
those
in smaller remote areas to work
and access job opportunities that they
wouldn’t have been able to
otherwise people have had to improve
several types of skills
from their communication skills to their
coding skills
and of course rapidly improve their
comfort with technology
so we have ultimately changed the way
that we work
we changed our behavior a whole lot
and we did it but worse is just a
temporary change
or has it also fundamentally changed
people’s beliefs
94 of our respondents say
that their attitudes have been changed
by this experience
78 of them have changed their view
towards work-life balance
and 70 of them have changed their view
towards work from home
57 percent now believe that they will
spend
much more energy on their health and
their overall hygiene
but more importantly they have all been
pushed to learn new skills
we have all been pushed outside our
comfort zone and we have had to make
things work
not surprisingly in the u.s over 50
percent
of love marriages end in divorce
but less than four percent of a range
marriages end in divorce because they
have no options sometimes
but to make things work in a survey that
we conducted pre-pandemic with jen
said we found that passion and interest
is a key driver contributing more than
40 percent to how gen zen makes their
career decisions
passion counted more than skills
aptitude
or even their previous experiences which
counted for less than 10
each in how they would pick their
careers
but today 46
of our generation is now focused on
learning
new skills we’re pushing ourselves
outside our comfort zone because we
don’t have an option
so what can we take away from this shift
while we had no option but to do this
because of
this catastrophic event what can we
actually
learn from this experience can we learn
for example to build new skills
which are the need of the hour anyway
instead of waiting for another big event
to hit
us can we adapt as required
to where we need ourselves our country
and the world to be
5 10 or 15 years from now because after
all the world is changing very quickly
and we need to build skills now even if
that makes us a little uncomfortable
even when it doesn’t seem required
immediately so that we can be relevant
later a few years ago
i traveled across india to understand
how people would respond
to online learning from vishakhapatnam
to patiala goa to lucknow
chennai to nasik i spoke to thousands of
young people and faculty
and ran surveys to understand their
attitude towards online education
many of them requested us to come in and
conduct
employability sessions in person
they said it would take a while for
people to adapt
to online they said it impossible
to learn certain skills digitally
and now many of those institutions
are delivering their very own online
programs
many of those same students who were not
confident about learning online
have reached out to us for online
employability training
surprisingly we’re seeing equally good
outcomes
both in terms of learning as well as
satisfaction
online while it is uncomfortable
sometimes
for our customers and for us perhaps
that’s when the maximum growth is
actually happening
because we’re being pushed and
challenged
don’t get me wrong i’m all for passion
but i think it’s worth exploring areas
that the world
needs us to change for and take
inspiration to build a career
that is not just inward looking but also
forward-looking because it is only when
we stop doing what we always know
and explore outside what we know that we
learn new things
and we find undiscovered talents within
ourselves
as a nation we could grow our capability
and diversify
the skills that we bring to the table
we could increase our creativity
developing an ancillary suite
of skills that would make us more
competitive and more relevant
on the global stage
for all you know we might just be happy
while adapting as well after all
who says that the arranged marriage
folks from yesterday
are madly in love today thank you