Keeping our Jobs safe against AI and Automations
After AI was introduced one of the biggest fear people have is to think if they will lose their jobs or not. Recently many layoffs were happening in many MNC companies. Many companies are very strict these days in their recruitment of additional resources. They are choosing new resources that can add a lot of value to their company. Maybe this trend will change but the focus is more on getting the most of out of AI or automation to achieve things.
This is going to be the case in the future as well. There will be new ways to find aid from AI to complete tasks. When computers were introduced a similar revolution happened where many people doing manual activities lost their jobs. This is a very common thing and we have to be safe by keeping ourselves up to date so that we can go with the flow and keep our jobs safe.
Skill enhancement
It is always better to rely on skills than the company we work for. Companies may not need us and send us home but if we have unique skills that cannot be replaced, it will always be hard for the companies to send people out easily. Doing an assessment regularly to check what skills we have and work on enhancing those skills is important. This way we can also look for highly demanding skills right now in the market and equip ourselves with that skill. This way we are not dependent on the company but on our skills.
Up to date with technology
Technology will indeed keep updating every day or every year. We will not be able to continue working on old technology for several years. We might have started our career with the knowledge of some old technology but we cannot continue with just that knowledge alone. At least during our career, we have to stay up to date with the technology. This way if something is new in the market, we will at least know what it is even though we don't learn it thoroughly.
Sometimes a new technology can also provide us with a great interest and we can switch domains to start working on a new technology that is more attractive to us compared to the current job that we are doing. To do that, first, we shouldn't be convinced that the work that we are currently doing is our ultimate thing. That's how we will start exploring new technologies and stay up to date.
Understand the company's vision
As I said earlier, the company's vision can be different and we will need our company but our company may not need us. A simple thing is to create a dependency on us so that the company will always need us and it should always be challenging for the company to replace us. Sometimes there is a high possibility that the company can decide to introduce some kind of Automation or AI that can shut down the entire team. It is quite possible and even in that case, we should have other places to go and that's where skills matter.
Self-assessment once every 6 months
I always tell this to my team members. Whenever I get a chance to talk to them, I ask them to do a self-assessment to see if they have learned anything new in the last 6 months and if they have anything new to add to their resume. It is not that we are going to be searching for a new job, but it is good to have a new learning every 6 months that can decorate our resume so that we can also grow our skills and at the same time make sure we are not stagnating or stuck in our current role.