In the video, the speaker emphasizes the need for agility in the workforce, education systems, and businesses. They address the mismatch between the skills taught in traditional education and what industries require. To fill this gap, they propose a system that updates educational content in real-time based on labor market needs, thus ensuring that people are better prepared for industry changes and employment opportunities. The speaker shares their personal experience of transitioning from the military to the corporate sector, highlighting the importance of recognizing and utilizing transferable skills.

The speaker shares their insight into building 'Skills Vista', a platform designed to link students, job seekers, businesses, and industries. This four-sided platform integrates data into one central database to inform training providers and colleges about current industry needs, aiming to improve professional agility and help individuals smoothly transition across various job roles. The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on employment is also discussed, showing the urgent need for adaptable training systems that cater to changing market demands.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. agile [ˈædʒaɪl] - (adjective) - Able to move quickly and easily; able to think and understand quickly. - Synonyms: (nimble, quick, flexible)

We need the education system to be more agile.

2. curriculum [kəˈrɪkjələm] - (noun) - The subjects comprising a course of study in a school or college. - Synonyms: (syllabus, program, course)

...so that they can update their curriculum in real time.

3. transferable [trænsˈfɜːrəbl] - (adjective) - Capable of being transferred or adapted from one person or situation to another. - Synonyms: (movable, applicable, convertible)

Jason has skills that are transferable from one industry to the other.

4. holistic [həʊˈlɪstɪk] - (adjective) - Relating to or concerned with complete systems rather than with individual parts. - Synonyms: (integrated, comprehensive, complete)

Do we want the more holistic solution?

5. decimated [ˈdesɪmeɪtɪd] - (verb) - To destroy or remove a large portion of something. - Synonyms: (destroyed, devastated, ruined)

Industries were decimated by Covid.

6. empower [ɪmˈpaʊər] - (verb) - To give someone the authority or power to do something. - Synonyms: (enable, authorize, permit)

Platforms like 'Skills Vista' can empower individuals...

7. subsidized [ˈsʌbsɪdaɪzd] - (verb) - To support financially; to pay part of the cost of producing something to reduce prices for the buyer. - Synonyms: (funded, financed, supported)

...government subsidized course to support people...

8. insight [ˈɪnsaɪt] - (noun) - The capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something. - Synonyms: (understanding, perception, awareness)

The speaker shares their insight into building 'Skills Vista'...

9. leverage [ˈlɛvrɪdʒ] - (verb) - To use (something) to maximum advantage. - Synonyms: (use, exploit, utilize)

...technology is critical to leverage this data effectively.

10. deficit [ˈdɛfəsɪt] - (noun) - The amount by which something, especially a sum of money, is too small. - Synonyms: (shortfall, shortage, deficiency)

...a human capital deficit of 85 million people.

Skills tagging and how it can revolutionise talent management - Jason Culloty - TEDxDublin Salon

The organization is only one piece in this big jigsaw. So when I was looking at this, I was going, okay, what do we need? We need people, we need businesses, and we need the education system to be more agile. Okay? So what I mean by that is it's not good enough if the people here in the room and people in general are agile to industry changes. Okay? So I'm willing to move from one job to another job or one industry to another industry. That's great if I can understand it, okay? But an awful lot of people can. Then the next part is, how quickly can we get industry insights or industry information and feed it back into the colleges and training providers so that they can update their curriculum in real time to meet industry's needs? What I mean by that is there's loads of different surveys and studies that are done. Recently, one in the United Kingdom said 60% of actually owners said that graduates that were coming out with engineering qualifications didn't even have the traditional skills. Like, that's starting. I'm not talking about the new skills. I'm talking about traditional. So we're missing. We're missing pieces of jigsaw, okay? And then when they update their curriculum in real time, so when academic counselors say it and they make their changes, how are we communicating this updated content back out in front of the learners and the businesses so they can actually get the most relevant course to meet their needs and requirements.

At the moment, we're missing a. We're missing two parts of that chipsaw. In my mind, you have a lot of big companies, and they can have a system for employees, but we're lacking a system for everyone. Okay. If you take my own personal experience. So, back in 2016, I got approached to run a consultancy company by two gentlemen. They were looking for someone with a HR background, learning and development and project management. I was in the military, right? Normally, when someone looks in the military, you see counter eyes uniform using guns and bullets. But what they saw was they saw a person that had a business degree, Hr. A person had a certain learning development and had done learning development at various different levels of a large organization. And they saw a person that had managed a number of different projects. So what they realized very quickly was, Jason has skills that are transferable from one industry to the other. So very quickly, I found myself on site in mainland Europe working for a medical device company. What the two owners realized, though, was I needed a small bit of upskilling. I needed some industry specific training. And by doing that industry specific training, it gave me the professional agility that was needed to move from one industry to the other. That was great that they saw that. But the vast majority of us actually don't see those type of opportunities.

Four years ago this October. So four years ago in October, I woke up at 03:00 in the morning and we had 480,000 people in pandemic unemployment payment in this country. And we weren't alone. You could see it across the globe. Industries were decimated by Covid. New people with mortgages, with families, with kids, nieces, nephews, etcetera. All of a sudden, you know, their industry had been absolutely decimated by Covid. But where were they going to go next? There was no system that was going to show Jason was on pandemic on a prominent payment where the opportunities were. If I had a skills gap, what training then would actually plug directly in to show me where, what, what course I could do in order to be able to compete for that job? So when that happened, I said, I need to do something about this. And I started building skills Vista and I've been building this for the last four years. And now we have a four sided platform that looks at students, job seekers, businesses and industries. And we're pooling all that data into one and one central database and we can inform colleges, trained providers, etc. Of industry's needs. For me, for professional agility, everything needs to work backwards from what the labour market needs, not what academics think they need. So, like, if you're going on a course, why do we go on a course for me? Unless you're extremely privileged, you go on a course in order to get the job you want, in order to get a quality of life, to be able to provide for your future wife, your future husband, your kids. So unless it's directly connected in with a job, again, I think we're missing a trick.

So just show of hands here. Actually, like who thinks professional agility is really important? Just put your hands on. Okay, you're looking at 90% of people who broke their hands. Super. Thank you. The next thing is how big is the problem? So on the left hand side of the screen, you're going to see some stats that, that actually pertain to Ireland. I attended the national skills bulletin last year by solace. So solace coordinates 1 billion of them of our training fund every year towards supporting people upskilling. On the top left, you can see they have said that 1.5 million people will need upskilling by 2035. I actually think that's conservative, right? Because Gartner's talent lens. In a recent survey, and they said 33% of skills used three years ago are now no longer valid. So, basically, technically, if you look at that, you multiply it by three. In nine years time, all the skills would have been reduced. So, realistically speaking, I think that's a conservative number. And in the second number that you see up there at 650,000, they anticipate that 650,000 new jobs are going to be created in the next eleven years. How are we going to fill them? What did it look like? How can I move from eight to be an antisea? At the moment, we're actually. We're not showing people how that leads. That transition is going to be on the right hand side. Sorry.

On the bottom left of the screen, you can see a study that was done by the charter Institute, professional development. They interviewed all of a large portion of businesses and 85% said that they're struggling to recruit him up. Skilled again. Professional ingenuity is critical to that. On the top right, you can see a staff that's actually to do with corn ferry. So we talk about artificial intelligence. There's nearly fear mongering going on that look, it's going to take all our jobs. Cornfury did a recent study that said that even if we fully embrace artificial intelligence, by 2030, we're going to have a human capital deficit of 85 million people. So companies are going to be screaming out and crying for people to fill roads, and they're going to be missing an opportunity. It's going to have an impact on their turnover and it's going to have a massive impact on the global economy. The OECD have done a study. 1.1 billion people need up skinny in the next ten years. But in what areas? Again, everything needs to work backwards. In my mind, from the labour market, few figures. The first figure is the number of students that actually sat and leave and served in Ireland this year.

The second number is the number of students that went on to third level education in 2022. Approximately 66%. The next number is almost 120,000. That's the number of people we currently have unemployed in Ireland. If you go on to. Indeed, you can see there's about 35,000 open rolls, but for 120,000, how did it fill those 35,000 open rolls? What course do they need to do? Who's providing the course? How much is the course going to cost? So, in the last week, we've actually plugged seven and a half thousand courses into skids vista that are directly connected in with education, training, boards and micro credentials so that we'd be in a position to recommend the most cost effective and government subsidized course to, to support people, to get, sorry. To be able to compete for the job that they want. Like that, to me, is valuable. The other thing, when you look at like two and a half million people, it's when you start looking at 650,000 new jobs, two and a half million people, they're probably going to transition to different roles. How did it transition, you know, what's important within that? Like, how often have we all sat down and tried to understand how, like, what course we need to do? Or even for your kids, your nieces and nephews, like, how are we going to educate the next generation to be agile enough to get the jobs? If a job, next thing you know, you want to become redundant.

How can you make, how can you take everything that you've learned, all the courses and expertise, onto the next job and immediately be able to see what the difference is and then see the right course? So I want to ask everyone to put up their hands, right? So can everyone just prop your hands to begin with and then lower your hand if you've had less than one job? So can you just take up your hands, please? Right, lower your hand now. If you've had one job or less, okay, no one's put down. No one's put down your hand. If you've had three jobs or less, five jobs or less. Okay, few of the hands are going down. The reason I'm asking that question is if you look at the number of average jobs that we're actually currently having in a career, it's gone up considerably. In 1950, it was four jobs in a career. In 2020, in the United States, it was actually twelve jobs. And in Canada, they recently analyzed 7 million cv's and the average is 15. How are we actually supporting people to make those jumps, to go from one job to another? At the moment it's nearly, if you're in HR, you're stoked by during HR, you can't move across to maybe logistics or across to technology. Technology.

But how can we obviously break down those barriers? You'll have to excuse my skills with regards to PowerPoint in Canberra. Right. I was told, don't make it too nice. So this is basically someone in the start point of their career journey. And if you look at each mountain, each mountain can represent, I suppose, a different business function, behavior or supply chain or whatever it is, okay, so you start off, you go to college, you realize that it's actually not for you. You do your four years, what do you want? What do you have to do at the moment? You really have to come back down that mountain or hill and then start the bottom of the river and go up again. But imagine if there was actually a connection across. There was a cable car, which shows you the course, or there was a heli. We pick you up and we'll actually drop you on to the next one. That's how simple it should be. Right? And we're talking about AI enhancement. So then I put the same kind of criteria into chat GPT, and it gave me a far nicer visual than the one I created.

But again, with AI, AI can only enhance the persons actually sitting across from us, right? So its about the information you put in, its about understanding the data. Its about then utilizing the data in a more meaningful way. When I put it in then into the system, when I said, please give me a vision with regards to the current setup, you know, thousands of courses, number of different routes and options, this is what came up. So this is actually how complex it is for the vast majority of people trying to understand where they are and what's happening to me. That's not good enough for me. This is what actually should happen. The path should be clearly laid out on the left of the screen. You can see that there's different options. If you go left, it's traditional. You go senior developer, developer team lead manager vp technology. If you go right, it could be a quicker way. You might get involved with a startup, another tech company. You might become a senior developer, CTO, etcetera, very quickly. But then on the right you can see that there's an awful lot of action, businesses and industries that have that role, and you can transition from one to the other. You may need a small bit of training and then we're going to be able to show you what that training looks like. The next thing then is, you know, with regards to understanding. Like a civil engineer five months ago to civil engineers wrote today, with a good system like ours, you'll be able to compare the skills profile from one to the other, see what the skills gap is, and then be able to inform colleges and train providers to update their curriculum. That to me is critical.

So do we want the more holistic solution is the question I'm asking? I think so. We've been building it for the last four years. So for me, technology is critical to this. Companies and people need a holistic tech solution and we need to connect the dots and AI will help us to do that. Thank you so much.

Education, Innovation, Technology, Skills Development, Professional Agility, Labor Market, Tedx Talks