It's no secret that over the past several years-primarily because of the COVID-19 pandemic-how we work has been forever changed. From the dismantling of workplace norms to the "Great Resignation," numerous health, economic, and geopolitical trends continue to shape the evolving needs of the global labor market. Collaboration among public and private sector organizations is crucial to address these ongoing changes across various industries and geographies, helping to set the stage for future growth.

Earlier this month, I attended  "The Growth Summit: Jobs and Opportunity for All," hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva, Switzerland. The summit brought together more than 400 business, government, union, civil society, and academic leaders working across sectors and geographic boundaries to share valuable insights, develop new ideas, and engage in efforts to shape inclusive, sustainable, and resilient growth. Over two days, there were 60 sessions that addressed the uncertain and disruptive context for growth and proactive measures to advance sustainable economic growth in an inclusive, and resilient manner.

While the summit offered unique insights that pertain to the future cybersecurity workforce, the conversations and subsequent takeaways focused on a broader goal relevant to all industries: how to place people at the heart of faster, more resilient growth.

Workforce Challenges Are Ubiquitous Across Sectors

The cybersecurity talent gap continues to pose a myriad of challenges for organizations around the globe, with 64% of cyber leaders noting that talent recruitment and retention is a key challenge when it comes to managing their enterprise's resilience. The cybersecurity industry is actively addressing the workforce shortage, with many initiatives underway across the public and private sectors to shrink the talent gap.

However, this talent shortage is not unique to cybersecurity, with many summit attendees citing comparable workforce challenges in their respective sectors. While these universal workforce challenges are concerning, they offer a unique opportunity for business leaders to learn from one another as we collectively work to navigate these issues.  

Enterprises Must Prioritize Skills-Based Hiring

During the summit, the Forum released The Future of Jobs Report 2023, which explores how jobs and skills will evolve over the next five years. The report revealed that 23% of all jobs worldwide will be disrupted in some way during that time. Of these, approximately half will increase in demand while the other half will decline. Suzanne Duke, head of Global Public Policy at LinkedIn, shared that 40 of the top 100 fastest-growing jobs on their platform are in the areas of digital transformation and green technology, including roles such as cybersecurity engineers, business analyst managers, and AI engineers.

As socioeconomic and technology trends continue to shape the workforce landscape, we must collectively take a multi-faceted approach to finding and retaining talent to fill increasingly in-demand roles. Public-private partnerships are essential to this strategy, helping organizations bridge the current skills gap and access a broader talent pool.

A common theme throughout the summit was the importance of shifting to a skills-based approach to hiring. Instead of relying solely on degrees as a prerequisite for roles, it is important for hiring managers to consider a candidate's skills and experience alongside their educational background, using degrees as hiring criteria judiciously. Solely seeking candidates with "traditional" backgrounds-such as those with related degrees-isn't sustainable for growing the future workforce. During the summit, Shravan Goli, the COO of Coursera, revealed that a study found that people without degrees are able to learn new job skills in a similar amount of time as those with degrees. This underscores the importance of evaluating a candidate's experience and skills, not just their educational background.

Recruiting and Hiring for Growth Will not Be Sufficient

During the summit, Gilbert Fossoun Houngbo, Director-General of the International Labour Organization, noted that approximately 100 million new technology jobs will be created by 2030, and close to 75 million jobs will be lost. That net gain of 25 million technology jobs, with 3.4 million currently in the cybersecurity sector, will put a significant strain on an already competitive labor market. Embracing skills-based hiring will become increasingly important, but hiring alone will only result in incremental workforce growth. Given the pervasive disruption being predicted across sectors, it is imperative for companies and governments to focus on re-skilling and up-skilling current workers and to provide clear pathways to the most-critical jobs. 

Productivity gains will also be crucial and are becoming more achievable thanks to technologies that can be augmented by automation, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI).

Artificial Intelligence as a Significant Disruptor of the Digital Economy

While productivity gains will come from many sources and across different sectors, summit attendees largely regarded AI as the most significant disruptor. Unsurprisingly, perspectives varied among attendees on the use of AI and the views expressed were far from unanimous. Michael Schwarz, Chief Economist at Microsoft, for example, highlighted that people should be less concerned about AI taking away jobs and more concerned about AI being used by bad actors. And Mihir Shukla, CEO of Automation Anywhere, reminded everyone about the unintended results from deploying AI at scale in social media engagement.

Many attendees expressed that regulations need to be developed for AI immediately. When asked about this, Gevorg Mantashyan, Deputy Minister of High-Tech Industry in Armenia, commented that the role of regulators at the moment should be to listen and be part of the dialogue. Regardless of attendees' opinions, it's clear that AI will continue to impact our economy and the workforce.

Unique Insights to Help Shrink the Cyber Skills Gap

The Growth Summit offered an incredible opportunity to connect with individuals across sectors and geographies as we pursue common goals and address workforce-related challenges. Fortinet continues our commitment to shrinking the cyber skills gap and bridging private and public efforts where there is an opportunity to collaborate. The diverse insights shared at the event gave those of us in the cybersecurity industry more clarity on how we can continue addressing, and ultimately eliminate, the talent gap.

Find out more about how Fortinet's Training Advancement Agenda (TAA) and Training Institute programs-including the NSE Certification program, Academic Partner program, and Education Outreach program-are helping to solve the cyber skills gap and prepare the cybersecurity workforce of tomorrow.