We recently touched on the top programming skills/languages that will get you behind a desk in Zimbabwe in 2019. Whilst this last was great for people looking to add new skills to their existing skillset or picking a career path, we didn’t touch on those who are looking further than being employed locally. Maybe you’re tired of Zimbabwe or you feel you would fit in better outside what are the skills that are all the rage in 2019?
The skills compiled by LinkedIn were split into two categories; soft skills and hard skills. The soft skills are more like personality traits whilst the hard skills are the more tangible skills (For lack of a better term).
Soft skill
Apparently, 57% of leaders today believe that soft skills are more important than hard skills, which means though you may think these skills are avoidable, it seems you might be better suited to have them on your side if you’re going to climb up the proverbial corporate ladder. So what are the 5 critical soft skills you need to have?
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Creativity
Whilst robots are going to come and take over the repetitive jobs, society still needs creative genius’ who will map out the way for these robots and for the rest of the people who are less creative.
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Persuasion
You’ve ever seen people who seem to have great concepts but they can’t convince you or investors that the idea is great. Well, those guys are not persuasive and that’s a big deal if you’re going to make the cut. I think apart from being a critical skill for 2019, I think this will be critical until people can gather and rely on data to the point that they no longer trust their gut feeling. Until then, the more persuasive guys/gals will keep winning, for better and for worse.
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Collaboration
Gone are the days, you would hold onto your idea like a madman instead of sharing it and watching it grow. I mean, if you can execute the whole thing by yourself that’s cool as well but most times, two heads are indeed better than one. This is why one needs to be a good team member, and at the bare minimum have some tolerable social skills.
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Adaptability
We go back to everyone’s favourite topic; robots!!! I mean we’ve heard it all, the robots are coming to take all the repetitive tasks from us and if we don’t adapt we are dying! I know it sounds dramatic, and that’s probably because it will be a dramatic shift from the way we’ve been doing things all along. This also ties back to that creativity we talked about. If you’re not integrating the more creative processes in your workflow the more at risk you are.
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Time Management
I mean what can I say about this one? Time finite and because it’s finite, this skill will ALWAYS be in-demand. Unless of course, someone comes up with a time machine, and then we can disregard time.
Hard Skill
These skills are more in-line with the skills you’re accustomed to acquiring. The ones we get from school and our degrees or online courses nowadays. But anyway there are plenty more of these than there are hard skills.
- Cloud computing
- Artificial Intelligence
- Analytical Reasoning
- People Management
- UX Design
- Mobile App development
- Video Production
- Sales Leadership
- Translation
- Audio Production
- Natural Language Processing
- Scientific Computing
- Game Developments
- Social Media Marketing
- Animation
- Business Analysis
- Journalism
- Digital Marketing
- Industrial Design
- Competitive Strategies
- Customer Service Systems
- Software Testing
- Data Science
- Computer Graphics
- Corporate Communications
There are some entries that surprised me more than others, like Translation for example but I guess AI hasn’t evolved enough to make machines effective translators. I’m not sure how long that will remain part of the in-demand langauges but for now it’s there. Are there any skills you think they missed?
