Top 10 jobs in India: LinkedIn

With almost five million youth expected to join the workforce annually, it is high time India works on its ability to adapt to change. New jobs are evolving at an extraordinary pace in the country’s swiftly-growing economy.

LinkedIn, the online professional network, which has over 50 million members in India, today released the Top 10 Emerging Jobs in India report. It identifies the fastest growing and promising jobs that have seen the maximum growth in frequency from 2013 to 2017. This is the first India edition of the report, which also details the skills required for each role, where the talent has come from, and where it exists presently.

The Top 10 Emerging Jobs in India are that of:
1. Machine learning engineer
2. Application development analyst
3. Back-end developer
4. Full-stack engineer
5. Data scientist
6. Customer success manager
7. Digital marketing specialist
8. Big data developer
9. Sales recruiter
10. Python developer

While technology roles dominate the list, the report also reveals that these roles are no longer limited to tech companies. Today, tech jobs are in demand across sectors—from pharma to banking and retail—and companies in the various industries see a high demand for talent in these roles. For example, the role of machine learning engineer has seen a 43x rate of growth in this five-year-period, and the application development analyst’s role has seen a 32x rate of growth.

In this day and age, soft skills are amongst the skills with a very high demand. In fact, in this technology-dominated age, success cannot be achieved without soft skills. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the job of ‘customer success manager” (CSM) occupies the sixth rank as the most emerging job in India. CSMs are a must for organisations—both tech and non-tech—when it comes to onboarding, influencing, and retaining customers. Soft skills, such as communications and relationship-building are essential for ensuring success of customers.

According to Feon Ang, VP-Asia Pacific, LinkedIn Talent and Learning Solutions, the country’s local tech talent has been responsible for the success of many global tech giants. Therefore, the fact that the top five emerging jobs are all technology-related does not come as a surprise. Interestingly, soft skills, such as relationship building and customer management are very significant jobs for the future. The upsurge in the job of CSM in the Asia-Pacific region is proof enough.

Now that India is all set to witness its youngest workforce in 2020, all recruitments made on the basis of skills instead of past job titles will be more advantageous. CHROs should focus on upskilling so as to ready their talent for tomorrow.

The report also offers an insight into where this talent exists today, and where it has come from over in the past five years. Awareness regarding the supply/demand balance in a location can help companies make decisions related to whether to search for talent in a particular area or opt for talent that is open to moving or migrating.

The explosion of data has resulted in a demand for data scientists across cities, with the maximum competition for these jobs in Mumbai and NCR.

India is the largest supplier of data scientists and cyber security specialists to Singapore. Twenty two per cent of all data scientists who have migrated to Singapore are from India.

Mumbai has a much larger population of mid-career talent as compared to Bengaluru. Hence, the former will be a preferred choice for organisations wishing to open new branches or offices.

With the growing demand for these emerging roles, the lines between various specialist roles are also becoming blurred. The focus should be to upskill talent and hire employees who are skilled, instead of their job titles. Transferable skills are indispensable for adapting to a changing workforce. Success can only be ensured if there are soft skills present in abundance and if the employees possess the ability to adapt, be flexible and enterprising.