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Jobs of the future: How the right skills will lead you to the right place

Students should develop the right skills for an advanced technologically driven world

Computer science will be a key area for future careers - the five most important skills for this are:

Core technical skills: Computer programming, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and inter-disciplinary knowledge.
Essential business skills: Effective communication, leadership, positive attitude, work ethics, teamwork and tolerance.
Analytical skills: Creativity, critical thinking, data analysis, problem-solving.
Thinking skills: Decision making, thinking outside the box, innovative, resilience.
Self-management and continuous learning: Learning from failure, accepting and managing change, organisational ability, spotting opportunities to contribute

Importance of developing creative and soft skills in a digitally-driven world
The digitally-driven world changes rapidly, so learning only technical skills can lead to an obsolete employee, while core business skills are always useful and allow individuals to learn emerging 'hard' skills quickly. There are always possibilities for digital solution development across disciplines where soft skills will aid collaboration and problem-solving.

Creativity vs robots: The new economy and the future of employment
We believe robots are going to increase their role and prevalence in our daily life, for example, automated manufacturing, assisting surgeons and automated taxis. Their existence will be more of an assistive nature than replacing humans. The human role will become more of a 'manager', 'designer', 'programmer' and 'idea generator' with robots 'executing' the 'programmed' tasks. Robots can 'learn' themselves what task is 'interesting' to do and 'define' the task, but still depend on a designer to define what 'interesting' means in a 'mathematical' way. The prevalence of robots in a fourth industrial revolution will re-define the role of humans, leading to the creation of new jobs much faster than those lost.

Computer Science in Dubai
The role of computer science in Dubai is ever increasing - demonstrated by the massive success of Dubai established souq.com and Careem, which were acquired by Amazon and Uber respectively. The increasing application of computing for solution development in various sectors is realised by the ongoing and rapid emergence of digital solutions in government services, healthcare, Fintech and smart city. Further, the push for artificial intelligence by establishing the world's first Ministry of Artificial Intelligence in the UAE will enhance the intelligent automation of government services for the society.

- Dr. Kashif Rajpoot is Programme Director, Computer Science, University of Birmingham Dubai.