Skill Bill

TCS's decision to lay off 12,000 mid- and senior-level employees brings skilling into focus. Are seasoned professionals ready to adapt?

- By ANUBHUTI MATTA

As a general manager handling talent acquisition at Plum Benefits, a B2B startup in the health insurance and employee benefits space, Geetanjali Kumar used to frequently field requests from hiring managers for real-time updates on their candidates.

To reduce the time spent on such repetitive tasks and ensure that stakeholders have visibility at all times, she created a dashboard using artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Lovable for everyday use.

The dashboard took two weeks and about five iterations to complete, but it has enabled Kumar’s team to work on projects in her absence sans any manual intervention. Most importantly, it fosters greater accountability for her team. "In a different world, this would have taken the team at least a month to build and would require considerable bandwidth from the engineering teams," says Priya Sunil, the company's vice president of people success.

It’s no secret that more and more companies are now embracing AI to streamline operations. But, as TCS’s recent decision to lay off 12,000 mid- and senior-level employees has shown, it’s a different question that confronts them: Are the professionals ready to upskill and adapt?

SKILLING SO FAR

TCS’s move to prune 2 percent of its workforce comes at a time when the demand for mid- and senior-level roles in tech and IT services has shrunk marginally. Over the past year, these roles have reduced by about 6 and 5 percent, respectively, says Sashi Kumar, head of sales at Indeed India, a global job hiring platform.

The shift is symptomatic of a larger trend: The shelf life of skills is shrinking rapidly first due to the pandemic-driven digital transformation, and now the GenAI boom. Which means professionals need to constantly update their skill stack to stay relevant, says Ashutosh Gupta, managing director-India and Asia-Pacific, Coursera, an upskilling platform.