On World Youth Skills Day, speakers at a virtual roundtable discussed the need to reassess employment in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the expanding skillset necessary to meet the changing needs of employers.
The virtual roundtable of industry experts was arranged by the Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC) on Tuesday evening. The program was moderated by Ejaj Ahmed, founder and president of BYLC, and Dhaka Tribune Editor and Governing BYLC Board Member BYLC Zafar Sobhan.
Delivering the opening speech, Dhaka Tribune Editor Zafar Sobhan said: “The biggest challenge Bangladesh will face in the 21st century is finding jobs for young men and women. We have 2 million new entrants to the job market every year, which is a big challenge even without the Covid-19 crisis."
“There has been massive economic advancement, massive social advancement and massive educational attainment by young Bangladeshis. We have a lot to be proud of and few could have predicted our improvement over the last 50 years. Nevertheless, what has worked for the past 50 years may not work for the next 50 years,” he added.
“The simple fact remains that for a country of 160 million people with a small land area, creating jobs for people coming out of school through universities remains a huge challenge. There is talk of how Covid-19 can serve as grand reset, letting us reassess how we look at doing business, as well as priorities both inside Bangladesh and the world in general. As we try to reset, perhaps one of the focuses should be employment,” the editor further said.
Newcomer to the job market Maisoon Binte Tariq, merchandising executive at Unilever, said: “Since the beginning of my studies at North South University, I focused on preparing myself with the skills needed for my career and not just academics. My first target was aligning my courses with my career ambitions."
“Leadership quality is crucial, whether it is in the job description or not. I did many things to prepare, built experience through an internship in Grameenphone and then joined Unilever,” she added.
Munzareen Shahid, head of Human Resource at Robi 10minute School, said: “If we think for next few years, organizations will be looking for those people who can run the company even if the economy shutdown, those who have skills such as digital marketing, web developing and graphics design.”
‘Skill set is changing very quickly’
Yasir Azman, chief executive officer (CEO) of Grameenphone, said: “The skill set necessary for the job market is changing very quickly. We are observing a situation with more unemployment. From the telecom market, we have learned that we have to learn digital marketing, data analysis, AI, ML, block chain etc. There is a new skill developed every three months. If you cannot learn these skills and how to use technology, you can never sustain in the job market.”
Maliha Qadir, founding managing director at Shohoz, said: “Learning to use the technology is the most critical skill which we need to develop. Technology is changing across the whole world, it is not just tech start-ups or telcos. Every industry is adapting to technology. It is a big revolution we all are facing. One has to be really flexible in the way of being able to navigate ambiguity.”
“The world is setting up more numerical data as goals – understanding numbers is becoming more and more important. Moreover, programming should be learnt during the childhood because after a certain age people are afraid and think that it will be hard for them to learn or math becomes difficult,” Maliha added.
She also said: “ We really need those who want to build a technological product or work for a company. However, people are not learning to the depth of the things. Software architects are very difficult to find in Bangladesh.”
Maliha also discussed the challenges in managing cloud based servers, lack of good web developers, difficulty in finding product managers in Bangladesh. She also said that they had bitter experience regarding lack of communication skills among their hired resources.
Sylvana Quader Sinha, the founder, chairman and chief operating officer (CEO) at Praava Health, discussed many challenges in the country’s health sector.
She said in most of the countries of the world, resources are distributed pyramidically -- technicians are at the bottom of the pyramid, then nurses and at the top, smalls numbers, are the doctors. However, in Bangladesh it is the opposite – doctors are the most in numbers, then nurses and then technicians -- which she think is one of the major challenges the country face.
“Unfortunately in our country, culturally in many cases we treat nurses like maid. But in fact they have very important skills, what they can do in many cases is better than that a doctor does,” Sylvana added.
Dr Syed Farhat Anwar, director and professor at the Institute of Business Administration at the University of Dhaka, said: “All of us have to come out of the mediocrity mentality. We have to come out of the idea of doing the job in any way."
"We are providing foundation training at the university. It is difficult to understand the next level practicality if anyone does not have the foundation training. From my point of view, right now Bangladeshis have to achieve four skills -- technological, communication including English language, human values and the skill of cooperation in business. Somethings have to be learned through the self-learning system, not all will be taught at the university.”
The professor also said: “Not only in the health or technological sector but in other sectors like garments, many foreigners are working because they have the necessary skills better than us. Who is responsible for this failure? The answer is the academia. We have to stop the way of gathering knowledge by memorising at all stages of educational level.”
Md Aminul Islam Khan, secretary of the Technical and Madrasha Education Division at Ministry of Education, said: “We are reviewing and revising our curriculum of technical education. Online technical education is still continuing in a limited manner, as our facility is not much developed and we cannot reach all our students with the existing infrastructure."
“However, we are trying to use cable television to broadcast the recorded version but laboratory based practical education has become a challenge now.”
Nahim Razzak, member of parliament for Shariatpur-3 constituency, said: “Over the last eight years we have adapted a three tier education system, replicating the system that exist in Singapore. But of course we have n not been able to replicate in terms of the quality that we were provided.”
“Since the education reform in 2012, it is high time we must be flexible in terms of reviewing and adapting different trades. So when we talk about the whole tier system, it has to start from the primary education all the way up to the higher education. We need to promote the trades in all the tiers,” he added.
Nahim also said: “We need to create an image that the positions with the trades could be of high value. Our existing education system is very complicated -- we have too many authorities, segmented approaches and there is no coordination.”
“We have a talent pool of individuals and the youth but unfortunately we are not fast enough to guide them in the right direction,” he added.
