Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Teens Needs Digital Skills But They're Not Getting Them
A recent study by Accenture found that 65% of teens felt that they weren’t being equipped with digital skills for the future.
Are teenagers being robbed of the digital skills that they need to survive in the world today and tomorrow?
Are schools lacking the understanding of what the future job market looks like?
It seems that the teachers maybe, a Virgin Media Business survey found that only 15% of teachers considered themselves completely computer savvy!
How can teenagers be taught crucial digital skills by teachers who are unable to teach digital?
This means that for our future generation to succeed something needs to happen very fast, changes need to be put in place immediately!
It’s worrying to think that for a student starting a four year technical programme, half of what they learn in the first year will be outdated by the third year, teaching obviously needs to become agile.
Businesses need people fully equipped with digital skills, social skills and the understanding of online behavior, as well as online responsibilities, there’s a problem though, because there’s a huge shortage of these skills. You would think that many school leavers would come to job market place with the right skills required to match the businesses, but they’re not, it seems many schools are letting them down. Ideally students should be equipped with the skills that businesses are crying out for. Some savvy teenagers realise what skills they’re lacking and are turning to online courses to prepare them, some are just jumping in and feeling their own way round the digital & social arena.
Many teenagers do not even consider what they do online as a skill and would not think about mentioning it because to them it’s “just what they do”. We need to show them that what they do online can be transferred into the business world, so instead of chatting to friends on Twitter they need to be shown how to chat to customers on Twitter.
For example when I speak in schools and colleges and tell them that they can get paid to chat on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc their jaws drop open because that’s something they can do, but no-one is showing them how to transfer their skill into a business world.
I always have a wow moment with the students, there’s always someone who will tell me about one of the others in the class who’s a brilliant podcaster, blogger or youtuber and when we take a look it’s always such a “wow” that it blows your socks off! There's always hidden talent hiding in our classrooms which can be used in businesses but many teachers don't know what they're looking for or what type of jobs those skills would be suitable for.
So what types of jobs should our students be obtaining digital skills for?
App Developer
Ethical hacker
Forensic computer analyst
Data analyst
Creative director
Digital editor
Software programmer
Gamification specialist
Videographer
Multimedia production assistant
Social media strategist
Conversion optimisation specialist
Digital architect
Data scientists
Cloud computing technologist
User experience adviser
Audio visual engineers
Waste data handler
These are just a few and there’s many more new jobs being created everyday which students need to be aware of.
If you know someone who’s not currently not getting the right training to break into any of these listed positions then give them a word of advice .. It's probably best to make it happen and not wait around for someone to teach you the skills.
Here’s some places online where extra training can done, much of it for free.
JOIN Jobhop and spread the word.
Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk
In:
- Digital