Co-founder Allen Blue leads session on 'New Talent Dilemma' during The Government Summit 2015 in Dubai
Dubai, UAE; February 10, 2015
Allen Blue, Vice President - Product Management and co-Founder, LinkedIn, led a session on 'The New Talent Dilemma' on Day 2 of The Government Summit.
Statistics from the USA showed that while 95 per cent of educators felt that they were preparing students for the workforce, only 30 per cent of employers felt that students were graduating with the skills to be employable. A study conducted on Linkedin about the most popular skills uncovered some that probably did not exist three to four years ago.
"As you can see around the world, the job market is changing quickly. Old skills are becoming redundant, newer skills have very few qualified people, the market expectations from the workforce are changing, and educators are challenged to make their curricula most relevant for their students," Mr. Blue said.
He classified the workforce into Creators and Innovators, High-Skill Workers, and Human Touch Workers. With the drive towards automation, 40 per cent of all jobs in the future could be replaced by machines or algorithms.
"It is becoming critical for employers, educators, and job-seekers to create an ecosystem, with each group's priorities being addressed so that they benefit from this collaboration. Job-seekers will benefit from jobs and the required training, employers will benefit from a strong pipeline of quality candidates and employees, and educators can benefit from focused students and new partnerships. The Government has a key role here too - providing tools for the job-seekers to connect and communicate with the right prospects, help the educator showcase their outcomes and create the framework for education start-ups, and helping employers with subsidies and financial assistance," Mr. Blue said.
While outlining initiatives by the professional networking platform to connect quality talent to the right opportunities, and to aid businesses identify, on-board and retain this talent, Mr. Blue highlighted the 'LinkedIn Economic Graph'.
A key advantage of hosting more than 332 professional profiles and more than 4 million company pages from around the world is the ability to mine data for patterns and identify trends. This effectively means that the LinkedIn Economic Graph will, in future, map the global economy with a profile for every individual, company, job opportunity, and the skills required to obtain those opportunities, every higher education organization, and all the professionally relevant knowledge associated with each of these entities.
A global economic graph will give Governments the visibility required to plan ahead and strengthen efforts in education, skills development, and industrial investment, based on economic requirements, talent availability, and developing needs of the market.
"To attract innovators, organisations and governments need to provide economic freedom, the opportunity to work with great colleagues and partners, autonomy of decisions, and a sense of purpose. Innovators are those who focus on driving innovation that can address human challenges. Enabling, igniting and nurturing this passion and capability is a multi-pronged approach that needs various stakeholders to come together and create a climate conducive to innovation," he said.
The Government Summit concludes on February 11. The three-day programme, focusing on 'Shaping Future Governments,' features 50 sessions from 100 speakers in academia, intergovernmental organisations, government bodies and businesses.
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For further information, please contact:
Nedal Al Asaad / Omar Badran
ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller
Tel: (+971 4) 4507600; Fax: (+971 4) 4358040
E-mail: nedal.alasaad@bm.com, omar.badran@bm.com
© Press Release 2015
