There is a question Anand Shekhar asks himself and anyone who will sit still long enough to hear it: would you do this job if someone stopped paying you?
Not whether you are good at it. Not whether it is in demand. Not whether it shows up clean on a resume. Whether you would do it anyway, because something in you cannot avoid it.
Shekhar is the co-founder of ClaraLearn, a workforce intelligence platform, along with his cousin Ram Iyer. Both come from data science and enterprise technology backgrounds, with careers spanning Deloitte, Icertis, Samsung, and Reliance Industries. When they started talking about what kind of company they wanted to build, the problem they kept circling back to was not a tools problem. It was a clarity problem.
Professionals are drowning in content. Courses multiply. AI tools proliferate. The pressure to upskill comes from every direction. And yet, Shekhar and Iyer kept watching colleagues and peers ask the same question with the same anxiety: where do I even start?
Their answer is ClaraLearn. And their argument is that the global talent crisis is not, at its core, a skills shortage. It is a clarity shortage. Professionals cannot see who they are, where they thrive, or what they actually need to learn. And without that clarity, all the content in the world produces consumption without retention and motion without direction.
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What Actually Sets a Salary
Shekhar spent a weekend thinking through a deceptively simple question: who decides what a job pays?
Break it down, he says, and it reduces to two variables. Skills: what capabilities does this person bring that add value to the work? And scarcity: how many other people have those same capabilities? Those two variables, operating through basic supply and demand, are what determine wages across every labor market in every economy.
Now watch what AI does to both.
On the skills side: AI can now acquire and execute task-based skills. Give it a specific output to produce, a defined task to complete, and it can learn to do that at scale. On the scarcity side: where ten people used to hold a particular capability, AI can effectively democratize it to a thousand. Both variables compress simultaneously.
“The wage goes down,” Shekhar says plainly. “Scarcity gets impacted. And the skills get acquired.”
The response is not to panic. It is to understand what remains. And what remains, he argues, is the consciousness, the cognitive capability, the ability to critically think that AI can surface options for but cannot replace. AI can give you ten different directions. The judgment about which one to take, grounded in domain knowledge and critical thinking, is still yours.
The Identity Problem Nobody Is Solving
One of the more quietly radical ideas in the conversation is Shekhar and Iyer’s critique of how professionals understand themselves in the labor market.
Most people identify with their title. VP of Infrastructure. Sales Engineer. Instructional Designer. And when that title disappears, which is happening faster than most people are prepared for, the identity goes with it. The anxiety is not just economic. It is existential.
ClaraLearn’s approach is to decouple the person from the title entirely. What matters is not the label at the top of your resume. It is the accumulated journey that got you there: the skills acquired, the decisions made, the domains navigated, the behavioral patterns that show up consistently regardless of what the org chart says your role is.
“It’s not a word,” Shekhar says. “It’s a statement. Where you cannot avoid doing that. That’s your professional identity.”
Iyer extends this into the product itself. The platform is built not to tell someone they are a sales engineer but to show them what they are beyond a sales engineer: their trajectory, their behavioral profile, their work style, the industries they are best suited for, and the adjacent opportunities that do not require starting from scratch.
“Even if you want to explore a new profile,” Iyer says, “these are the limited skills you need first to get in. You don’t need to do the whole spectrum. This is how you get started.”
The Retention Problem Everyone Ignores
The second insight that drove Shekhar and Iyer toward building ClaraLearn was watching what actually happens when people try to learn on their own.
They consume. They watch videos. They start courses. They respond to the FOMO that makes every trending topic feel like a survival requirement. And almost none of it sticks.
“There was no level of personalization,” Iyer says. “And how much were we actually retaining? How much were we actually applying in our day-to-day professional career?”
The consumption trap is not a discipline failure. It is a design failure. When content is generic, when recommendations are reactive rather than proactive, when there is no mechanism that connects what someone is learning to who they actually are and where they are actually trying to go, retention becomes almost impossible. The learner gets motion but not momentum.
ClaraLearn’s agentic framework is built to get ahead of this. Rather than updating skill recommendations after a capability becomes obsolete, it tracks which skills are trending upward and which are declining in market value, and surfaces that information before the learner falls behind. The goal is not to react to the market. It is to see around the corner.
What Learning Professionals Do When Content Is Not the Product
The conversation with Jason Gorman takes an interesting turn when it arrives at the question of what learning professionals’ jobs will look like in the future.
Iyer’s answer is direct: learning needs to become infrastructure, not a cost line. Skills will keep changing, accelerating, cycling through in shorter and shorter windows. The organizations that survive that cycle will not be the ones that react fastest with new content. They will be the ones that have built an environment, a system, a culture in which learning is embedded in the daily operation of work rather than delivered as an occasional intervention.
Gorman connects this to a theme running through the season: the shift from episodic content creation toward what Donald Taylor calls the enablement partner or the skills authority. Neither of those roles is primarily about building courses. Both are about building infrastructure.
“Making learning an infrastructure,” Iyer says, “where it cannot be a cost segment- that drive needs to come from learning professionals who have been in this field.”
The Question That Closes the Conversation
The final question in the episode comes from the previous guest, Heather Xu, and it is the kind of question that reveals where a person actually stands: if all your worst fears about AI come true and all your current work disappears, how would you find your value and reinvent yourself?
Shekhar does not hesitate. The answer is the mission statement of the company he is building. Once you know your human potential, the disruptions become navigable. Not easy, but navigable. The person who is genuinely curious, who is learning how to learn, who has done the work of understanding what they cannot avoid doing, is not insulated from chaos. But they have something to stand on when the chaos arrives.
“Regardless of the disruption,” Shekhar says, “regardless of the AI wave, regardless of layoffs, you’re building a self that has strength to go beyond.”
Iyer adds the piece that Shekhar leaves implicit: this is not a solo project. Individuals bear responsibility for their own development. But so do organizations, governments, and the platforms being built to serve professionals in transition. Nobody navigates this alone.
And that, perhaps, is the most honest thing said in the conversation.
Listen to the full conversation with Anand Shekhar & Ram Iyer on The LX Ops Show or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Podcast Transcript– Jason Gorman with Anand Shekhar & Ram Iyer
Jason Gorman (00:02)
Welcome to the Learning Experience Ops Show, where we talk about making learning better that’s future ready. I’m Jason Gorman, the founder and CEO of Jackrabbit Learning Experience. Joining
me today are Anand Shekhar and Ram Iyer, the co-founders of ClaraLearn, a workforce intelligence platform.
Anand spent 15 years building enterprise platforms at companies like Deloitte and Icertis before starting ClaraLearn
with Ram.
whose career includes organizations such as Samsung and Reliance Industries Limited, where he led the design and deployment of AI and machine learning solutions focused on streamlining operations, enhancing decision making, and aligning seamlessly with strategic business goals.
I’m talking with them today because their thesis for Clara Learn runs a little bit against the grain of the field for learning professionals. The global talent crisis, they say,
is not a skills shortage. Professionals are now navigating a system that doesn’t help them see who they are, where they thrive, or how to hold on to what they learn. And without that, critical thinking has nothing to stand on. ClaraLearn is what they are making right now to work on closing that gap. Welcome to the show, Anand and Ram.
Anand Shekhar (01:25)
Thanks Jason.
Jason Gorman (01:27)
All right, let’s just jump into our lightning round questions. This one, I guess, is for you, Anand. What is the 30 second elevator pitch about what you do at ClearLearn?
Anand Shekhar (01:38)
Nice, I’ll try to give it 30 seconds. So we basically envision a world, right? A world where regardless of the market disruption, regardless of the AI wave, regardless of the layoffs, a professional who has realized their human potential can thrive, right? In order to do that, we are building ClaraLearn. ClaraLearn empowers educational institutions
enterprises, workforce boards, government, to be able to help these professionals, aid discover their human potential, explore where they thrive, and help them retain what they learn. So it’s like a end-to-end cycle that focuses on that human professional, human personal, the professional, and their growth. So our motto is like grow deliberately.
Jason Gorman (02:32)
Alright, the next couple questions are really for both of you. Ram, we’ll go to you first. What do you love the most about your work?
Ram (02:40)
I think the learning experience that I’m having of doing something on my own, I think for far too many years working for someone, taking instructions. I still do take instructions from Anand and you know, the other people that I work with, but the journey has been fantastic. It’s been a great learning moving on from technical to other roles like sales, business development. It’s very interesting and
And I’m kind of happy that it has come out very organically for me as well, but I’m still learning.
Anand Shekhar (03:13)
Yeah, mine has been similar to Ram, like born and brought up in various different cultures and countries. And I have grown a period of time. And right now the skill that I’m developing and trying to focus on is learning how to learn. Right. And I think it’s so powerful and like sort of elevating and loving it.
Jason Gorman (03:27)
Mm.
Wonderful, and we’ll stay with you then and what moment inspired you to do this?
Anand Shekhar (03:39)
So I think both of us come from the data science and technology background. I personally also always wanted to start a business venture someday. luckily I met Ram, who is also my cousin brother, the most humble person I have met as such. And when we started talking about our life, what we want to do, and how do we put our expertise through various different sectors that we have worked on,
and where the AI field is going right now, we felt that we can contribute to this domain and it’s huge. It’s a difficult problem to solve and we are here to solve that difficult problem.
Ram (04:12)
same thing like with our entire kind of motive behind it was professionals are, kind of facing this challenge today that there’s a lot of confusion. Like how do we start? know, are a plethora of courses available, but where does an individual start professionally in terms of upskilling? So that’s a problem that we faced and we saw our colleagues peers face as well. That’s what got into.
Jason Gorman (04:31)
Mm-hmm.
Ram (04:37)
you know, for us to get into Clara Learn where we thought the level of personalization is missing today in the learning world.
Jason Gorman (04:46)
And let’s kind of look at the flip side perhaps of inspiration, which is anxiety. What are you most anxious about for the future, Ram?
Ram (04:56)
So anxious like I would say in a positive way is is AI what it can you know kind of do the efficiency that it can bring about and my suggestion to a lot of professionals is don’t take the anxiety in a negative way but look at it as an opportunity for you to thrive and grow because if AI is know of curtailing certain skills
Jason Gorman (05:15)
Hmm.
Ram (05:24)
At the same point of time, it is going to open up new skills as well. So upskilling should be on top of everyone’s head.
Jason Gorman (05:35)
and curious about your anxiety too for the future.
Anand Shekhar (05:39)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a lot about the future. A, nobody can predict the future. So if I say something that is going to happen, it’s always an estimated guess. But it also ties to what we are trying to do. Clara learn is basically the Clara stands for clarity in learning. And we want to provide clarity as a service. So what I’m anxious about the future is like, it’s going at a very rapid pace.
Jason Gorman (05:56)
Mm-hmm.
Anand Shekhar (06:05)
where it becomes difficult to sit down and think, where is it going? So it’s too complex. So that’s the part. And I’m more anxious about the socioeconomic factors that these transformations brings in. So it trickles down to various levels. And it’s important how enterprises, how institutions, how a government all come together to be able to reduce the anxiety for professionals like us across the board.
Jason Gorman (06:33)
All right, last lightning round question is, doesn’t have to relate to work, but it can if you want to. It could be anything. What is a skill you’re trying to pick up now? We’ll start with you, Annette.
Anand Shekhar (06:45)
Yeah. So I think I sort of touched upon that learning to learn skill. So how do I, how do I be more human? Right? How do I move out of the autopilot and bring up my awareness? How do I be more conscious about what I’m doing? Right? How do I engage with AI or systems and use my critical thinking? How do I sharpen that critical thinking is what I’m more focused on.
Jason Gorman (06:49)
Yeah.
That’s great. And Ram?
Ram (07:09)
For me, it’s I think business development and sales. I think I’ve always been away from that field, but I’m just loving it right now, like learning about it, meeting professionals in that industry to kind of gain more skills in that. I mean, technical skills is one thing, but the communication, the interaction that you have with various individuals, various professionals, it’s exciting, I would say.
So that is one thing I’m working on right now.
Jason Gorman (07:38)
wonderful. And actually, learning how to learn thing, just want to, I’ll take a second here because past guest by the name of Jeff Bergin wrote a terrific book called Already Smarter, Simple Strategies for Effective Learning. It’s a terrific book, like a manual for your own brain about how to learn effectively. So for anybody listening, go read that book. It’s really good.
And so relevant, right? I think that this premium on learning is quite high now. I mean, it’s always been high. We’ve always needed it. But I would say it’s accelerating, which I think is a useful frame for this whole conversation. So next question. You mentioned that you’re cousins. And you spent years in enterprise data and platform work, AI and machine learning, as I mentioned before, at
at different organizations. But I’m curious, what was that conversation like that pulled you both towards this problem and wanting to solve it?
Ram (08:37)
Yeah, I’ll just, so I think this was somewhere around last year, guess, Anand, think we, I think Anand moved to Canada recently, like two years back, and then he was in US and then in India, and I was in Canada for the last eight years. I mean, we’ve been in touch, we’ve been working and then we were always kind of exchanging ideas or talking about each other’s work and
Anand Shekhar (08:35)
Yeah, do you want to take that or?
Yeah, last question,
Ram (09:02)
And one thing that we both noticed was AI kind of started disrupting a lot, like early last year as well. And both of us were kind of into that field. we felt a lot of professionals, a lot of colleagues. We also reached out to us, how do we get started with this? Or how do I begin? What is there? What courses do I need to do? How can I upskill?
And at that point of time, I was learning AI through a lot of courses, through a lot of channels as well. And for me, it was kind of, I won’t say easy, but it was still something that I could relate to because I did come from that field and I was able to grasp it faster. But I saw a lot of my peers, my colleagues, and even Anand also spoke about it like,
So there was no level of personalization which we felt and Anand also had this idea of how we can build something where we can get that level of personalization for professionals who want to learn. And Anand will speak about it a lot more but he kind of touched upon this concept of retention of knowledge because at that point of time
Jason Gorman (09:59)
Mm-hmm.
Ram (10:25)
both of us or almost all of us were just consuming knowledge, consuming, consuming, consuming. But how much of it were we actually kind of retaining? How much of it we were actually applying in our day to day kind of professional career as well? So that we felt was lacking. again, this is our biasness towards technology because we both come from that background. And we thought that with AI,
Jason Gorman (10:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ram (10:53)
we started thinking a little bit because I did work with other sectors apart from technology and I felt that this could actually be used, this personalization can be brought about for other sectors apart from technology. So that’s where we got talking and then started building on a roadmap, what we need to have, et cetera. I’ll kind of pass it on to Anand to have his thoughts as well.
Anand Shekhar (11:18)
Yeah, thanks, Ram. I mean, you cover really well. Basically, mean, from my perspective, I’ve been obsessed with clarity, right? I have always felt that once, I mean, to begin anything, you need clarity and clarity sort of helps you then get into direction. So I have always been trying to, I’ll write down what I want to do, how my future would look like five years down, and then keep cross checking, okay, have I reached there? Where do I go? And so on, right? So clarity was one.
Jason Gorman (11:39)
Mm. Mm.
Anand Shekhar (11:46)
Second aspect was, as Ram mentioned, was the retention of information, right? So there are so many videos coming in when we were also talking internally through peers and colleagues. It was more about jumping on like, I want to do AI or I want to do this, we are doing just because someone else is doing is like more of a FOMO and it’s more of an anxiety, right? But my thought process was like, instead of like we going and doing something just for the sake of doing, why not see whether it’s even required, right?
Do I even need to learn that? Maybe you can do something without the AI. There is other route that you can take, right? So that’s where it sort of came out like, okay, how do you first explore what you want to really do? Then if I actually want to learn something, how do I retain that knowledge? Because there’s so much of content out there. So that aspect got us talking and then we built a prototype. We spoke to lot of people and sort of showcase that what, would it be if you have something like this, right?
So we got those motivation and encouragement. We met Andrea, who has been a great cheerleader for us. He has spoken to her. And talking to such beautiful people who encouraged us to go in this direction, we felt, yes, I think this is what we want.
Jason Gorman (12:59)
In the past in past conversations we’ve had you have said that value in the labor market has always been the function of two things skills and scarcity And now you’re saying that AI is collapsing both of these things at the same time So I’m wondering if you could walk us through What this means? What do you mean by skills and scarcity and how is it collapsing?
Anand Shekhar (13:23)
Absolutely. So, and this is coming from like, I actually sat down and was like, took a weekend to think through this, right? Where, what does even a wage mean? Right? Like if I earn, let’s say I’m a digital applications manager in let’s say Canada or somewhere else, let’s say I earn 80k to 100k, like who decides that 80k and what decides that 80k or 100k, right? So if you actually try to break it down at a very high level, it will boil down to two aspects.
One is, what skills does this human have that would add value to the work that we are doing? And two is the scarcity, like how many people out there have the same skill set, right? And that will dictate its end of the day demand and supply, right? That would dictate the ways that you have, right? So that’s one. The other aspect that we want to look at is, now, if you look at the modern AI and the AI agents that we have,
AI system, the way we are building that in the sense the community is building it is AI can now acquire those certain skills, right? So these are, and when I say these skills, I’m specifically talking about task-based skills. So there’s a difference where there are certain task-based skills and there’s an outcome based. So I’m talking about task-based skills where it can extract, learn those skills and produce a certain outcome for that specific task, right? So
When you do it, you are basically now elevating the scale. So instead of, let’s say, were 10 people who had a particular skill set to do a particular job. Now you could have AI that democratizes that. And instead of 10, now you have 1,000. So automatically, the wage goes down. So in this era where you have the scarcity, in a way, getting impacted. And the other side, you have the skills getting acquired.
Jason Gorman (15:03)
Hmm.
Anand Shekhar (15:18)
How do you elevate yourself? I’d rather look at it as an opportunity, right? So the opportunity over here is what is core to a human being and the core is the consciousness. The core is your cognitive capability and the core is your ability to critically think. AI can give you 10 different options, but, and that 10 different options can go into 10 different directions, right? But now what we have unique to us is like, how do you decide which one is the best wave forward for us?
So those are the skills and that’s where domain knowledge comes in. That’s where learning comes in. That’s where critical thinking comes in. And that’s where the ability to be able to like practice that comes in.
Jason Gorman (15:59)
It makes perfect sense to me. I although you know, critical thinking domain knowledge Critical thinking in particular certainly is certainly a skill and a certain a certain kind of durable a durable skill and I’m curious how do we What is the what’s the rubric we should be using to kind of parse out the kinds of skills That not only remain relevant but become more relevant right critical thinking is one of those things
and other skills like recording a podcast. don’t know where it becomes less. I mean, frankly, this platform that we’re makes this process pretty easy. I did a podcast 10 episodes in the pandemic. Technology was different. It was a lot harder. I had to be more skilled to do it. And as a result, I stopped because it was more work than I could handle. It’s a different reality now. AI is actually making
Anand Shekhar (16:30)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Jason Gorman (16:53)
this easier. So I don’t know, how do we think about skills that will become more important versus skills that will be devalued?
Anand Shekhar (17:02)
Totally, I can take that and pass it to Rama as well. He can talk more on the scale and the taxonomy as such. the idea, and that’s where our discover comes into play, right? When we say that we need to discover ourselves. there are things that, I mean, so the way I would look at it is like, if even someone doesn’t pay me to do a certain job, will I do that? Right? So that’s my core strength. Like, regardless of you telling me or not, I’ll go into that space.
Jason Gorman (17:22)
Mm-hmm.
Anand Shekhar (17:29)
I’ll spiral into that space. And that’s where we first want to identify, like, where do I fit in? And that is adding value to another human being with that skill. So that’s one. Second aspect, when you go through that, you will find various different skill set that is associated to that. And you then start acquiring those. That’s one. Second aspect is, like, we be more cognizant of what’s going out there in the market.
Jason Gorman (17:48)
Mm-hmm.
Anand Shekhar (17:53)
which require a certain skill and then go behind acquiring those skills one by one, which is aligned to your core strengths, right? In the sense, core value for that matter, right? So that’s the part. And yes, the other tricky thing, right? These skills are going to like changes inevitable. It has always been inevitable and it’s going to spiral now as well, right? So how do you be more resilient where if a certain skill sort of gets dropped, how do you go into the
Jason Gorman (18:13)
Hmm. Yeah.
Anand Shekhar (18:21)
other skill set and pick it up, like guiding through your fundamentals of what you truly want to do. So that’s the part I would sort of comment on.
Jason Gorman (18:34)
I mean, that’s great. Actually, I was going to ask the next question was really about in your model. As I understand it, the first step for somebody in your technology is to build their own professional identity profile to help them understand what they’re going to need for the future, to understand their baseline, where they are now, how that compares to the kind of career they are interested for themselves.
I kind of want to dig into this professional identity piece. What does it mean to know who you are professionally?
Anand Shekhar (19:09)
So when we say professional identity, right? So what happens today is many of us identify as ourselves with title. Let’s say I’m VP of infrastructure, I don’t know, enterprise. But then what happens if that title goes away, right? So we then start to like get, we start to get the anxiety, we feel, oh, this is going, but that’s not true. Like VP of, let’s say enterprise is just one,
Jason Gorman (19:21)
Mm-hmm.
Anand Shekhar (19:38)
title, but behind that, the whole journey that took you to get there is essentially so many acquisitions of various different skills that forms your professional identity. So it’s not a word, but it’s more like a statement, right? Where I come back to that point where you cannot avoid doing that. That’s something that that’s your professional identity, where you cannot avoid doing. As an example, I cannot avoid doing research. I cannot avoid
Jason Gorman (19:39)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Anand Shekhar (20:07)
identifying ideas, cannot avoid talking. So that’s the professional identity that one needs to discover. So it’s more of a spectrum than a point in that spectrum is what I would say.
Ram (20:22)
It’s like a combination of one is your skills like what we see like products outside like if I speak purely from a product perspective and the identity part is to be very honest, it’s not something new that we are working on. Even LinkedIn has been working on it for quite a while. But unfortunately, how organizations work is they have a contract agreement through resumes today.
Jason Gorman (20:26)
Mm-hmm.
Ram (20:51)
and it still works that way. So what what what we feel is now with AI resumes might become obsolete over a period of time because some professionals have gained the system, they know how to build their resumes and they can get into certain roles, you know, with those correct wordings, etc. Right? So how do we go beyond that? So that’s where I think identity will play a
Jason Gorman (21:00)
Mm-hmm.
you
Yeah.
Ram (21:18)
social role over here. So it will be beyond your skills. What skills will play an important role, but it also your things like your trajectory like Anand mentioned, how did you get into that role? What are your behavioral aspects that we can understand from your professional identity? What is the nature of your work? Which industry is your well suited for? What’s your work style? Like how
Jason Gorman (21:36)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Ram (21:47)
how do you communicate, etc. So these are some aspects that we have kind of again speaking about our product, have neatly kind of built into it so that it doesn’t tell an individual that you know, they are a sales engineer, for example, like that’s just a job profile, but it also tells them what they are beyond a sales engineer.
Jason Gorman (22:04)
Yeah.
Yep, I see. So it’s decoupling the knowledge and skills they have from specific titles, presumably because those titles are becoming obsolete really fast, or maybe make no sense, or maybe never did. I I think that this is not a totally new problem. I think that you can have two job titles that are identical, but are totally different jobs in two different organizations.
Ram (22:34)
near.
Jason Gorman (22:35)
And I that’s probably only accelerating and I think what you’re saying is that it is only accelerating so once a person understands their personal profile What is their path? After that, how how do they think about? Moving forward. How do they move forward? Once they understand their profile
Ram (22:57)
So the exploration part, what we have done over here is there are there are different ways an individual can grow. like either they want to advance in their own profile itself. Like how do I get to the next level? So even in the system that we have built,
we are not, we are consciously not running after job titles. We are looking at how you can elevate your skills. Say you are at this proficiency, for example, today, how do I elevate myself to a level up from there to reach to the next level in my own profile? So that’s one way of exploring, which is again built around your skills, built around your identity.
and how you will match into those roles, what are the other skills? And again, in our system, what we try to do is we’ve tried to complement roles, both from a technical as well as soft skill perspective, because as you elevate, you also need good amount of soft skills. And our skills that we like recommend also is very agnostic to any technological or any any disruptions. Right. So
what happens in a lot of products what we have seen is they’re very reactive to recommending skills that is once it has become obsolete then they make a change and then you are told about it but since we have an agentic framework it actually tells you which of these skills are actually going down which of the skills are coming up so it the exploration part actually helps you identify in your own profile how you can move the second part is how you can transition into new roles like someone
Jason Gorman (24:42)
Mm-hmm
Ram (24:43)
from a sales, if they want to move into a product manager role, do they need to start fresh? Do they need to go to Coursera and Udemy, do a boot camp and only then are they eligible? How can they complement their existing skills and move forward? So that is something we felt that, you know, which actually kind of motivates individuals, right? Rather than, you know, scaring them or
creating that anxious situation for them where they feel, oh, and I need to start everything right from scratch. I’m not able to understand these things. But what we tell them, even the exploration is even if you want to explore into a new profile, these are the limited skills that you need first to get into a profile. Right. So you don’t need to do the whole spectrum of skills. This is how you get started. And then you slowly build on that. And the third part is like, you know,
Jason Gorman (25:29)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Ram (25:41)
even if they want to explore roles within their domain, for example, like it’s like if you are in a marketing domain and you just want to do something which is very adjacent to it. So it’s like a it’s like a knowledge graph that we have built around it, the skills, your profiles, your behavioral aspects and how you actually fit into those rules. That’s what we talk about in terms of exploration.
Jason Gorman (26:11)
Obviously thought a lot about skills learning careers Just from a individual personal standpoint What is the most practical thing somebody’s listening to this? What is the practical thing that they can do this week? to improve their understanding of where they are right now and understand the gaps between where they are and where they want to go and not just
with your technology, but just in general, with your way of thinking, you’ve built a kind of mode of thinking. What have you learned about how somebody moves from current state to a desired future state?
Anand Shekhar (26:48)
Yeah, so I mean, if I were that person, what I would do, and I typically do that, is I would just sit down and answer this question to myself, where if you’re already working, then wherever you’re working, would you do the same job if someone doesn’t pay you? Yes, there is a survival aspect, and there is an aspect that gives you some kind of what do call?
Jason Gorman (27:06)
Hmm.
Anand Shekhar (27:12)
purpose as some kind of happiness in a way. So find that part. Would you do if not, then figure out you would definitely get something that give you give you that joy and then go and find what is a market cap. So many times what happens is like people with career do not necessarily and when I speak to students, especially, and I sort of suggest that that think of it like a business like you need to see the market cap as well. So let’s say you have like immense potential and you have that what you call growth.
Jason Gorman (27:15)
Yeah.
Anand Shekhar (27:40)
trajectory, but your cap is, let’s say 60 K or 70 K. You’re not going to go about it because that industry never pays beyond that. Right. So after let’s say six years, seven years, you spending time, then you realize, this, mean, I like this job, but it doesn’t pay me. It doesn’t suit me. So you think about it. Where do I go? Right. So you might want to think about those aspects. Like if money is something that matters to you, look at that cap. If, that environment, like Ram mentioned the environment, the work style, because every industry is different.
Jason Gorman (27:47)
Yeah, yeah.
Anand Shekhar (28:08)
every what you call domain is different and every domain has a different work style. So look at that work style, study that and see where do you align. So it’s about finding yourself and aligning to that and then doing that research. as you do that, then pick and choose which one you want to go and explore. And also it depends on what career stage you are in. Especially people who are starting their careers between age 20 to 30, exploration is the thing.
Jason Gorman (28:18)
Hmm.
Anand Shekhar (28:36)
do mistakes, go here and then keep moving around. And then it’s not that you cannot do beyond that. It definitely can. I have quit my job and started business myself. The risk just gets higher, right? So you’re open to take risks. So what matters to you is what you want to do. So just to summarize, long story short, write down what truly matters to you and then do some research on it as to what is the market cap.
Jason Gorman (28:48)
Yeah.
Anand Shekhar (29:03)
and talk to other people, build network and so on.
Jason Gorman (29:02)
Mm-hmm.
the people who this podcast is made for are learning professionals. So they’re responsible for thinking about pathways within a company or within a community or a school, university. They’re building learning experiences for people.
I think all of us understand in this field that things will change for us. Whatever our jobs have been in the past, they are going to be different in the future. And it feels like this thing that you are really keyed in on around the value of skills and how those are shaping and how to map where you are presently against the future is certainly critical for everybody who is in our field one way or the other.
And I know this is not, you haven’t, your backgrounds are different than mine, right? So you came from a technology background, but based on what you’ve been doing and learning about skills and careers, what do you think the future is for people who listen to this podcast? So if somebody who’s in the job of facilitating this for people, what do our future jobs look like, do you think?
Ram (30:19)
think for us, I think it’s a great opportunity for them to be in right now because like like like we’ve been saying upskilling is no longer an option today. It is mandatory and it is mandatory across professionals across all age groups. So I think Anand spoke more about, you know, the 20 to 30 and we would recommend doing the same thing for professionals higher above as well. So today if you were
if you are if you want to make yourself relevant, sorry to be a little bit harsh, you need to upscale, right? Because otherwise, it will be very tough for you to be in that. And when we see learning providers or learning professionals will play a very key role in this. Because now with AI, the scalability will be very high. So so the thing is they would
Jason Gorman (30:55)
Mm-hmm.
Ram (31:15)
the reach would be much more higher. So upskilling more professionals would become less expensive, more easier to do that. And where we feel that, you know, learning professionals will have a crucial role to play here is making learning as an infrastructure.
Jason Gorman (31:36)
Mm.
Ram (31:38)
it cannot be a cost segment. So that’s where we feel that that drive needs to come. Enterprises need to build an appetite for learning, it has to be part of their infrastructure. And this will come from learning professionals who have been in this field, and who kind of make that next move towards the enterprises of building it as an infrastructure because
Jason Gorman (31:41)
Hmm.
Ram (32:03)
there will be skills which will come out, come and go, come and go. But how do you kind of democratize or pass on that information to professionals? It’s very, very important. And I think that’s where learning professionals will play an important role because every time generic courses or generic content may not always work. We need we need experts. We need personalization so that they can kind of
actually apply it into their day to day work as well.
Jason Gorman (32:36)
You know something that I have been thinking about a lot lately is that the work from you know K-12 environments to higher-ed to career prep and professional development while you’re on in a job have been sort of similar in many ways for a long time because it’s been about creating courses or educational experiences, right?
that are interventions, right? It’s content. I wonder if there is a divergence that’s happening. So when you’re talking about infrastructure, that sounds to me like, with other people that I’ve talked to on this show, like thinking of Donald Taylor in particular, he names three potential models for learning and development. None of those include creating content. They are all about building a certain kind of infrastructure. However,
in a place like K-12 or higher education still need courses. But building the infrastructure might mean something else, right? It can’t just be little events that help a person learn the basics of math or help them learn economics from the ground up, right? You need a lot of content. It needs to be structured. But I do believe the infrastructure shifts. I think there’s a…
It’s just an interesting crossroads. This notion of what we do as providing infrastructure is interesting because it’s more systems-based, it’s broader, it’s less episodic, and it’s less about creating content. It’s more about creating an environment for people to learn. It’s very, very interesting. So I have one last question. This is from the last person I interviewed. And it is actually a
quite a good question for you particularly. I actually, at the end of this podcast, I’ll ask you a question to share with my next guest. This one I think is quite suitable for you. This comes from Heather Xu, and she asks, if all of our worst fears about AI come true, and all of your current work goes away, how would you find your value and reinvent yourself?
And so this is actually a question for you personally, which I would love to hear that answer, but I would also love to hear how you think about that in the context of your
Anand Shekhar (34:54)
I think it sort of ties so closely to what Clara Learn believes in. It’s about realizing the human potential, right? So our vision is like to turn human potential into economic mobility, right? And the way you can do that is by realizing that human potential. And it’s only you who can realize that. There would be platforms, there would be people who can provide all of these, but only I can realize what my human potential is and how can I sort of skyrocket that.
Jason Gorman (35:19)
Hmm.
Anand Shekhar (35:21)
Right. So, and that once, once we realize that potential, then we don’t have to necessarily worry about what there would be disruptions happening. I am a believer of entropy, entropy when there is like, there is chaos, there is also innovation that’s happening. Right. So it’s looking at opportunities at those areas. Right. So, and if you, if we are able to build a self, which is curious, a build a cell, which is like,
Jason Gorman (35:21)
Mm.
Anand Shekhar (35:48)
More critically thinking about like how do I acquire this knowledge? How do I your more knowledge seeking then automatically? Regardless of that disruption regardless of the AI way regardless of layoff you’re building a self that has even will it be very easy? Of course not it will be difficult But it will give you that strength to go beyond and you know what maybe if you would have gone through a normal trajectory You might not have landed somewhere big but going through this you might you might land up. So
The long answer is knowing that human potential.
Jason Gorman (36:21)
Good, I’m curious to hear what you think, Ram.
Ram (36:24)
So my thing is like, like I’ve been saying, I think it’s an opportunity rather than being anxious. I would, I feel that and I understand like a lot of professionals, you know, can be bounded by, you know, financial pressure or, you know, other aspects where they might not have the risk appetite. it’s not, it’s easy for us to say that, you know, professional
Jason Gorman (36:47)
Mm.
Ram (36:52)
can get into an entrepreneurial role like me and Anand have done, but there is an immense amount of risk also behind it. So although it is there, but I think this is the right time for like Anand said, like realizing your human potential, taking this as an opportunity to grow. And one thing that I can say is that you’re not the only one going through this grind. The whole world is going through that. So rather than, you know, kind of
Jason Gorman (37:16)
Mm-hmm.
Ram (37:22)
you know, kind of inflicting some kind of on yourself rather kind of embrace it, talk to people around you and see how you can kind of grow from there. Yes, there are roles which are going to get obsolete. It’s inevitable, but I feel there are lot more roles which will open up. if there are say Anand and me talk about it a lot, I feel that if there are 100 enterprises today,
Jason Gorman (37:26)
Yeah.
Ram (37:50)
AI is actually going to help individuals where it can scale up to 1,000 enterprises tomorrow. So you could have professionals who have always been working in corporate can start up something on their own. So it’s a great opportunity. I’m not advising everyone to go the entrepreneurial journey, but you need to embrace new skills. I think we’ve seen this disruption.
Jason Gorman (37:56)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Ram (38:16)
from the industrial revolution to different technology revolution, even the last two or three decades. people have always kind of adopted. But I think one more aspect that I want to add is just because someone is falling behind, then the society needs to take certain steps as well, we both of us strongly feel that government society needs to step in over here.
Jason Gorman (38:35)
Mm-hmm.
Ram (38:41)
where people are empowered, people have, you know, kind of are able to, you know, acquire these skills. It doesn’t put too much of pressure on them as well. So as a society, even as an AI society, as a government, I think we all need to do something collaboratively so that, you know, individuals feel comfortable, you know, even while acquiring these.
Jason Gorman (39:05)
Really appreciate this conversation. It’s nice to end on a hopeful note. Thank you so much for joining, Ram, and Anand. It’s really been nice talking with you.
Ram (39:09)
Yeah.
Anand Shekhar (39:14)
Have a pleasure.
Ram (39:15)
Thank you for
having us Jason. It’s been a pleasure.