By Sujit Karpe, Co- Founder & CTO, iMocha
The past few years have taught us a critical lesson on the importance of staying prepared amidst uncertainties. Considering the latest technological disruptions, it’s safe to say that another ‘big change’ may be right around the corner, and it’s an excellent time to prepare ourselves for it.
To stay competitive in the ever-evolving digital space, the most important thing that we’ll need are the latest coding skills. According to a report by Udemy, 80% of Talent Acquisition & Talent Development professionals believe that their organisation’s success depends on employees having strong technical skills, especially coding skills.
But what are the coding skills that we’ll need in the near future?
Based on our current trends and analysis report, we identified the top five coding skills that all hiring managers, L&D managers, and recruiters should aim for in the coming future:
1. Java: Java is an extremely popular choice when it comes to enterprise-level development, mobile app development, and building web applications. It is an extremely versatile language and its codes can be run on multiple platforms without any rewrite. Additionally, a lot of legacy systems are also based on Java, making it a priority choice for recruiters and a must-have coding skill for any organisation in the IT or ITeS space.
2. C: C is one of the oldest and the most helpful programming languages, as codes written in C can be compiled on various new and legacy hardware platforms and operating systems. C is very useful for applications that process large amounts of data or run on devices with limited resources and forms the foundation of various other languages. Developers or coders that are proficient in C, can learn other languages, such as C++, Java, and Python faster than others, making C a popular choice for recruiters worldwide.
3. Python: Python is a high-level, open-source interpreted programming language popular for its simplicity and readability. Python is usually known for its scientific computing, machine learning, and data analytics applications and plays a massive role in building web-based applications and back-end systems. It has several popular web frameworks, like Django and Flask that enables developers to build web applications quickly and more efficiently. Additionally, it has a large ecosystem of developers that contribute to its constant development by sharing libraries and resources.
4. C#: C# is an object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft for developing applications and games using a .NET framework. It is a strongly-typed language that offers features such as garbage collection, LINQ (Language Integrated Query), and asynchronous programming. Its object-oriented nature makes it a perfect choice for writing long codes and is hence considered as a go-to language for large-scale applications. C# codes run faster than Python codes and catch error during ‘compile-time’, rather than ‘run-time’.
5. SQLite: SQLite is a lightweight, serverless, self-contained, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) written in C language, that developers embed in their applications. It is widely used for data storage and management. It is highly portable and can run on various operating systems without any compatibility issues. In today’s data-driven market landscape, SQLite is a very popular coding skill amongst TA and TD professionals as it offers accurate and consistent data transactions, that too without any configuration-related hassles.
How to assess coding skills and skills gaps within your organisation?
Skills intelligence and skill-assessment platforms significantly simplify the evaluation of coding skills and skills gaps within the organisation.
These platforms use skill assessment tests to check each candidate’s knowledge of the required/job-specific coding skill and generate detailed and real-time performance reports that highlight proficiency levels and skill gaps. Many of these platforms also offer features such as Live-coding interviews and coding simulators that evaluate coding skills using a pseudo-coding platform.
Additionally, since they make the skill evaluation process metric oriented, they remove any unconscious bias from your assessment processes.
The use of skills intelligence and skills-assessment platforms automates many aspects of coding skill assessment and allows you to make more informed decisions on the basis of the candidate’s overall approach, instead of just the final output.
To summarise, the digital market and technologies are constantly evolving, and to stay competitive, we need to keep track of trending coding skills and ensure our organisations possess them moving forward. If you face issues assessing your workforce’s coding skills and skills gaps, skill assessment platforms can be a good choice. As they’ll allow you to make more data-driven decisions and help you build a workforce of industry-leading and future-ready developers.
