SERI & SCMO digital skills panel discussion

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

SERI and SCMO had recently conducted a week-long Digital Talent Survey.

This was followed by a panel discussion “Are Skills the Currency of the Future?” moderated by SERI’s CEO, Dr. Helmy Haja Mydin.

His panellists included Dr. Sumitra from MDEC, Professor Elizabeth Lee from Sunway Education Group, and Aadrin Azly from Petronas.

Then and Now

Notable highlights included Dr. Sumitra’s observations that there is so much more choice and flexibility now. She described, “You can figure out where you start and where you get off. And then you can decide where you start again in the sense that you can pivot your career.

“You can decide whether you want to go to a university and take a course, or whether you want to do a career makeover halfway by going to another academy in between, or you can go online and upskill yourself as you (are working).”

However she also pointed out that we need to be responsible for our own development and career growth, when in the past this was not the case.

“The growth mindset is going to be so critical, which is why in the study, people skills, or soft skills, or essential skills is needed for us to survive.”

Skills-based hiring

Aadrin opined that skills-based hiring is going to be inevitable. Possessing skills like data, analytics, and Artificial intelligence (AI) opens up opportunities for them talents.

So, a degree is seen as a (a way to enter) an organisation. But this is changing.

“This is something that we definitely need to start thinking of. Some traditional industries like oil and gas practice degree-based hiring and there is expectation for the hired talent to grow within the same industry, if not company.”

So, a degree is seen as a (a way to enter) an organisation. But this is changing.

“It’s not just the hiring policies, but also processes around how to manage these talents, how do we think about remuneration, where do they go, how do they advance in their careers…people grow and get promoted based on their management skills. This is the conventional way.

“But with skill-based talents, it’s about the knowledge you acquire, the capacity you build, the more skills you have then you get rewarded. You may be a full-stack engineer till you retire, and you don’t necessarily have to be a manager or a VP. But you are remunerated accordingly.”

Common curriculum framework

Where do management skills and leadership skills begin to come onto a talent’s radar? Is there space for these kind of skills for someone who is on the same trajectory of a full-stack engineer like Aadrin mentioned?

Sunway has a common curriculum framework whereby skills like basic computing run across all faculties for students to take up.

Prof. Lee, CEO of Sunway Education Group (Sunway) shared, “When it comes to nurturing digital talents, I would want it to be a little bit more encompassing and say, it should not just be digital. It should be overall.”

Sunway has a common curriculum framework whereby skills like basic computing run across all faculties for students to take up.

“We also promote research to students, and computer science students have the opportunity to learn psychology for example.”Basic tech and entrepreneurial skills are infused in this framework, and build problem solving skills and (for students) to use digital tech skills to enhance efficiency and the quality of work.”

Prof. Lee also opined we need to further hone soft skills, thinking skills, the imaginative and creative type of skills that we are all imbued with. Currently there is so much concentration on the academic portion and studying to pass exams, instead.

Digitising a mammoth organisation

Aadrin believes an endeavour like digitalising an organisation begins with democratising digital skills learning all throughout.

For example, their citizen analytics programme involves equipping employees with basic understanding of data science and data analytics, so they can do it on their own.

“There’s a lot of upskilling going on now, and we want to go even beyond that, by preparing a pipeline of data-analytics savvy talent for Petronas,” Aadrin said.

A conducive ecosystem

When asked by Dr. Helmy how to stem a braindrain, Dr. Sumitra in her policy maker hat shared, that it is necessary to have a conducive ecosystem.

Due to pervasive remote working trends, a talent in Malaysia can serve a global audience. Companies like Petronas with multi-country presence, can also actually tap talent from anywhere in the world.

“This is going to make the job market even more competitive,” she said.

“We need to think about the kinds of companies that we can develop in Malaysia, not just Malaysian companies but also companies we can attract to provide this high growth jobs.

Due to pervasive remote working trends, a talent in Malaysia can serve a global audience. Companies like Petronas with multi-country presence, can also actually tap talent from anywhere in the world.

Because these high value jobs is what’s going to attract the high value, high quality talents, and the more we are able to attract the high quality talent, regardless of whether they are Malaysian or not, the better our ability will be to even retain the Malaysian high quality talents.”

Dr. Sumitra believed that with this conducive ecosystem, Malaysian talent will want to stay back, contribute and be in that conducive environment.

Taking learning into our own hands

Dr. Sumitra has strong views about talents being accountable about their own career and skills development.

“Technology has levelled the playing field, it has enabled people to learn and there is no need for us to wait like we had.

“It’s all up to us now.”