COVID-19, the biggest crisis witnessed by the millennials. None of us ever thought that we will ever experience such a period which will disrupt each tangent of our life, be it personal or professional. The impact of this crisis has been severe, and it has tested resilience of each process, system, organization, economy and challenged us to adopt new ways of working. 

Overall, job loss is the greatest direct impact of COVID-19 crisis which will bear long term effect on the economy, leading to slow growth. This phenomenon is global, not limited to just one country.

As the pandemic has stretched and we are now staring at an infinitely longer period, corporate boards are required to reassess business models and skills required to deliver on the mandates of a revised strategy. Workforce is one of the most significant factors which determines an organization’s competitiveness.

Knowledge, competency, creativity, innovation, and leadership are some of the key ingredients required to meet the demands of this turbulent environment.

Enterprises need to adapt to this change by means of targeted measures to retain and create jobs and keep upskilling on track to stay relevant.

Enterprises which take advantage of opportunities arising from this crisis will be unscathed and will be much better placed to retain talent and attract people when the situation stabilizes. And, those which fail will be laggards and will expose their employees to amplified risks of financial distress due to layoffs and closures.

So, how has the future of work been transformed? Let’s understand. In my view, the following jobs will see a greater demand in times to come and will be unaffected by the future market and economic disruptions. The most interesting thing is, all these jobs are sector agnostic and will be in demand across all verticals. These are:

Risk Analyst

A Risk Analyst is responsible for assessing and analysing overall potential risk threatening the success of an organization. This role also entails designing/ modelling pseudo scenarios and creating a mitigation strategy in an event the organization witness’s disruption. The pandemic has brought larger focus on such roles as companies which earlier had limited appetite to understand risk are now fully aware of cost of failure.

Data Scientist / Analyst

As we know, Data science involves review of large sets of data with an aim to identify a potential, a trend or a problem using techniques and theories drawn from many fields within the context of mathematics, statistics, computing, and domain knowledge.

The rapid spread and global impacts of COVID, made organizations crave for what’s next and this is where Data Science plays a pivotal role.

Data Visualization Expert

Did you see a jazzy graph in today’s newspaper? Big bubbles, uneven boxes, and other geometrical shapes which can perhaps also be used for a refresher course of geometry. Thanks to advent of several new data visualization tools driven by the increasing need of data audience to have the ability to read large volume of data with ease, data visualization has undoubtedly emerged as the star of pandemic coverage.

AI & Machine Learning Expert

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has and will continue to play an important role in combating the pandemic as these are all about application of technological innovation to large volumes of data to gain insights. Thanks to AI and ML experts, there has been a significant improvement in identifying the right medication, prediction, screening, forecasting, contact tracing, and vaccine development.

Cybersecurity & Cloud Computing Analyst

An aftermath of lockdown, enterprises now have greater interest in digitization, which means greater demand for cloud based ready-to-use solutions. While there are strong positives to adoption of digital transformation, unfortunately it is complemented with cyber-attacks, hacking, identity theft and phishing attacks. This has brought in the demand for more professionals in the cloud security and cybersecurity domain.

Internet of Things (IoT) Expert

We can limit the spread of the virus by acting decisively and responsibly to implement IoT based solutions. This technology has found several new applications viz; detecting fever at access points, remote health monitoring and smart parking.

With more and more machine-to-machine communication, it has become important to analyze data real-time, and that’s where the role of IoT analytics and engineers will also gain traction.

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) Expert

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is an accepted technology, understood as recession-proof. RPA implementation across numerous sectors during the pandemic has led to an upsurge in demand for RPA experts. The biggest benefit of RPA is the ability to offer business continuity with least dependency on an employee.

To conclude, it is not just technical skills which one would need to acquire for sustenance in the post pandemic era, there is also a need to polish several soft skills, without which future success may not be easy. These are logical reasoning, agile ways of working, continuous learning, persuasive communication, storytelling and most importantly, adaptability to change.

The pandemic has led employers to repurpose the roles and make them more meaningful, build a culture of creativity and make the entire organization more productive. So, will the job market be the same? Most of you would quickly say 'no'. Well, how are you going to respond swiftly to this norm? It's the law of evolution: survival is dependent on the ability to adapt.