Getting in demand skills and looking to upskill in your career has never paid-off more like in this era. Moreover, big tech players like Microsoft have married these emerging organizational needs with scenario specific skills by introducing what they call Microsoft Applied skills.

6 days ago, 25th October, 2023 to be precise, this announcement was made public by the Vice President of Microsoft Worldwide Learning, Laura Longcore. At first It did not sound new to me. I mean it felt like another batch of online certified courses with a fresh touch of hands-on activities, but no, I was wrong.

So basically Microsoft is trying to help hiring managers, human resource managers, project managers and sorts to streamline their skill validation metrics by introducing a verifiable digital credential. You can earn this credential only when you

Take on any of the Microsoft applied skills hands-on. In fact they consider them highly in demand skills and relevant to emerging technology related projects, say AI, cloud computing, and the likes
Pass an interactive lab-based assessment

Now note the difference between this scenario-specific skills and the regular online tech courses.

The new Microsoft applied skill credential only validates specific skills. For example, you are a data analyst, you are literally proficient in excel, google sheet, SQL, Tableau and all the visualization tools. With all these, you are qualified with a role-based job on a regular day. But you see, the applied skill is strictly project-based. It means that you just need to only be very proficient with Tableau, for instance so that organizations can hire you for just a particular stage in a project that requires a Tableau expert.

So in order to ensure that you truly know your onions, you have to pass the skill assessment and own a credential that is verifiable only by Microsoft.

What does this mean for emerging techies and tech professionals?

For techies who are already professionals and perhaps thought leaders in their niche, this might seem like an unnecessary drama twist. But it has become clear that demand influences supply largely. If as a cyber security guy, the industry need is tilting towards cloud security or say endpoint security, it does not matter if you already know these things, you could acquire the credential through the required procedure to position yourself for projects and organizations who need to contract your services.

From another lens, scenario-specific skills make a wizard out of a professional. Your services will be needed to execute specific stages in key projects, not to take on a full role in an organization.

For emerging techies, this might just be an opportunity to focus on that area of your career you seem to love most and become an expert in it. This can save you stress of taking a full course in a certain field by helping you design your scope of expertise in that field and master that specific skill.

What does this mean for Hiring Parties?

In this sense, it includes hiring managers, project managers, collaborators and even organizations. This applied skill model of growing in demand skills positions Microsoft as applied skill validator through the credential you shall be issued upon completion of the interactive lab-based assessment.

This also implies that these hiring parties will look forward to verifying applicant’s level of expertise through the new Microsoft credential.

Call to Action

This is not news, it is a call to what is new in the industry and perhaps a glimpse of the future of work. This is an emerging full stack freelancing model probably designed to cut out role-based work ethic and hiring models while introducing one-off project based work models or contractual ones. See how this helps and join the train.