Globally, large enterprises and banks are struggling with technology shifts that require their applications built for desktops to be accessible on smartphones as well.
This is making them approach outsourcing vendors to stitch applications built on legacy code<\/a> to newer applications written on HTML5, Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iOS.
Also, according to recruitment consultants, honing skills in new technology areas such as machine learning, data analytics, AI and internet of things is difficult without a foundation in the older programming languages.
“All our clients are on a transformation journey. We are helping them optimise their core application, develop new capabilities to unlock potential in legacy systems, and help unleash digital for them.
All these segments require traditional IT skills like Cobol, Java or C++ in addition to the new skills,” said Chaitanya N Sreenivas, head of human resources at IBM<\/a> India.
He does not consider these software languages as legacy skills yet.
“Globally, some of our large clients run on mainframes, and Cobol is not something we would say is a legacy skill. It is a skill we will continue to need,” Sreenivas said.
“However, (employees) will need to also continuously up-skill as our clients transform. Java is still core from a programming language perspective.”
While most companies in India are digitally transforming their business units, there is still a lot of demand for old skills, said Manish Gupta, senior director and general manager, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell EMC India. “We prefer candidates who have a mix of talent of old and newer skills because although there are requirements that include emerging technologies, older skills are still quite relevant.”
At a time when courses on data science and machine learning are seeing sweeping demand, the top five traditional skills required by tech services companies in large numbers are Java, Cobol, Sybase, C++, and Fortran.
“Digital enablement projects require full-stack professionals with awide spectrum of skills across the entire stack. From knowing mainstays like Java, ASP.NET or NodeJS on the server side, to AngularJS or ReactJS on the front...,” said Vinil Menon, chief technology officer, CitiusTech. “We are also seeing strong demand in a number of emerging areas such as cloud computing (Lift and Shift Models, Microsoft Azure, AWS), Big data (Spark, Storm, Hive), Containerization (Docker and Kubernetes), DevOps (Chef, Puppet, PowerShell).”
Even so, over the past year, India’s technology services industry registered nearly 55,000 job losses primarily as employees struggled to gain skills in new technologies, according to estimates by recruitment agencies. In fact, the top five Indian IT<\/a> services companies, keep aside the multinational companies, are seeing faster growth in digital technology-based services with the share of revenue ranging between 26% and 28%. Kamal Karanth, founder of HR consulting firm Xpheno, believes a combination of old and new persists in the industry with 70% of the requirements for old skills. “While newer skills can give more colour to a resume, fundamental knowledge of older skills is almost mandatory,” said Karanth.
Rituparna Chakraborty, president of Indian Staffing Federation, sees a cultural shift across companies that is making non-cognitive skills important alongside a combination of old and new technology skill-sets.
“What we look in candidates today is adaptability, flexibility and the ability to learn. Being a team-player is as important today as a strong technology background,” said Chakraborty, also a cofounder of staffing firm Teamlease.
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