Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom SHRM Conference Recap Solving the Applied Technology Skills Gap

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom SHRM Conference Recap Solving the Applied Technology Skills Gap Recently, DeVry University’s Career Advisory Board presented a session on the applied technology skills gap at theSociety for Human Resource Management’sAnnual Conference in Chicago. As defined inDeVry University’s Career Advisory Board’s 2017 JPI survey, applied technology skills (ATS) are skills needed by employees to leverage the right technology to do their jobs. When an individual has ATS, they have the ability to integrate people, processes, data, and devices to effectively inform business strategy and plan for and react to unanticipated shifts in direction. TheJPI studyconfirmed that ATS are on hiring manager’s radars. Nearly 69% of JPI survey respondents agreed with this statement: “When I interview a prospective candidate, the presence of applied technology skills and experience is a competitive differentiator.” And, the desire for leaders to have these skills is even greater â€" 76 percent of managers who hire senior-level candidates agreed. Why are ATS so important? As a workforce author and consultant, I believe that it’s helpful for anyone working in business today to leverage technology to sharpen their skills in critical thinking, decision-making and problem-solving, draw inferences from a variety of data sources, and understand overall digital infrastructure and how it can drive process efficiency and improvement. Bringing ATS On Board Training employees in these skills, however, can be a bit of a challenge. Also, technology is evolving more quickly than in the past, so skill acquisition can’t happen all at once and must be frequently revisited. Fortunately, in our recent JPI study, we found that most hiring manager respondents are continuously training and retraining on ATS through internal courses and trainings (78 percent), tuition reimbursement (35 percent) and external courses and trainings (31 percent). Only 25 percent said their organizations are taking no action to develop the ATS skillset. For the rest of the recap, head over to the DeVryWORKS site.