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Today, the demand for hands-on technical skills is on the rise, as industry 4.0 is creating a tech-driven world at a lightning-fast pace. In this fourth industrial revolution, technologies like machine learning, AI, big data, data science, cloud, internet of things (IoT), and robotics are creating new opportunities for businesses.

In an effort to leverage the opportunities, companies across all industries are progressively investing in recognizing the right digital initiatives and empowering the workforce to deploy solutions. But this industry-wide transformation results in a major challenge that is access to a skilled workforce.

As the demand for talented and skilled workforce rises, the workers need to realign the skill sets and career goals with the requirements of the industry. On the other hand, since the skills required for jobs today are evolving at a rapid pace, today’s formal education systems haven’t been able to meet with the times. As a result, nearly 3.84 percent of current graduating engineers are employable in software-centric jobs at start-ups, and just 3 percent possess functional skills related to mobile technologies, machine learning, AI and data engineering, as per the recent National Employability Report.

E-Learning Emerges as a Major Disruptor

Since the current education system totally out of sync with the changing requirements in today’s disruptive age, e-learning platforms might be influencers. It offers programs on industry-focused skills, emerges as a robust alternative for bolstering the skills required. The world today needs an education system able to overhaul itself, and that continuously realigns with the altering demands of the industry.

However, this emerging education trend is not only significant at entry-level jobs. The World Economic Forum (WEF) report documents this trend of skill mismatch is vital for lateral hires as well. According to the WEF report, 35 percent of the skills demanded across industry verticals will change by 2020.

Though, the skill sets of the workforce are becoming out-dated faster than ever before, so continuous learning may become inevitable of survival for today’s workforce. Currently, talent acquisition comprises acquisition through job portal, social media, mobile apps, video resume, cloud storage et al. These are a number of talent acquisition modes that can also be used for keeping data safe of a prospect candidate.

Access to skilled talent is becoming a bottleneck for businesses in navigating through the challenges of digital transformation. Earlier, traditional job boards serve well because there was an adequate talent pool available with germane skills, but time is changing now. There is a lack of skilled talent in the marketplace. And the lateral talent needs to be re-skilled and fresh talent needs to be skilled for the industry.

Though, these challenges resulted in companies to turn toward e-learning platforms for their hiring needs. Acquiring skilled talent from these platforms serves as the perfect symbiotic relationship for everyone. The online school trains the talent to make them employable for the current industry demands. And it saves precious time and training costs for hiring companies by providing skilled candidates from this pool.

E-learning can assist hiring companies by pre-assessing candidates to find top talent; offering free online training courses; using training simulations to test practical knowledge; and creating skill-focused online certification programs.

So, it will be interesting to see how e-learning becomes the next wave for talent acquisition in years to come, and how it will disrupt the hiring industry.