In October 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report on the world’s vision for the future of jobs. This report provides an overview of the jobs that will be prevalent by 2025. Along with this list of jobs is the list of key skills that will be useful for such jobs.
This report took into account how the world and the various industries have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The experts who penned this report laid down various factors such as the fluctuating economy, the effects of social distancing and lockdown measures, and, of course, the growing reliance on technology.
The third factor, technology, plays a huge part in the future of jobs. Many skills are now rooted in the ability to use tech. These are the top three skills that would be beneficial in the future workforce in the tech industry.
Analytical Thinking and Innovation
The tech industry heavily depends on many things to benefit businesses. It needs equipment such as computers and other machines. It needs various software. It needs the internet. But most of all, it needs data. Without data, it would be unwise to make executive decisions such as product development, targeting a market, etc. And people need to be practiced in analytical thinking in order to understand data.
Analytical thinking is widely used in digital marketing. It’s very data-driven especially when search engine optimization (SEO) is involved. SEO services are crucial to understanding how to attract more people to a business’ website and make a sale.
Analytical thinking is just the first step. You’ll need innovation as well to make use of the data you’ve just analyzed. Your creativity will shine through with how you write content and come up with copies for websites and social media pages.
Reasoning, Problem-solving, and Ideation
After analyzing data and innovating, you can take it up a notch through three things. These are reasoning, problem-solving, and ideation. This is when you really start thinking beyond the data that you’ve gathered.
When trying to develop, say, an app for smartphones, you go through a series of steps. One of the first steps is determining the purpose of your app. What is it for? Is it to help people from all over the world connect with each other? Is it to help them compress data so that they can store more files in their devices?
You have to know and understand first the problem that you’re trying to solve. You’ll start reasoning. And then you’ll start coming up with ideas that will solve that problem.
This may seem like an unnecessary step because it just involves a lot more thinking. But this just proves that the future of work requires more mental exercises.
Tech Design and Programming
All of the mental exercises lead up to the practical part. In this case, it’s tech design and programming. This is when you’ll put your knowledge and skills in tech to test.
These particular skills are seen as essential to the future workforce because of our growing reliance on automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Every year, more and more machines are being developed to help people be more productive, efficient, and effective.
Imagine if there’s a project where people are trying to build a machine that will help doctors perform open-heart surgeries. They’ll need engineers who are highly skilled in tech design and programming to create the machine that would rely on automation.
With the prevalence of gadgets in businesses, the tech industry will just continue to grow in the next few years. This is why it’s crucial to understand the skills that are needed in this industry. These three skills reflect the future workforce that’s more rooted in data analysis, critical thinking, and innovative design.
