Skills That Get You Hired (According to LinkedIn)

Picture by katemangostar

What Are Employers Looking For?

In early 2019, LinkedIn released an article stating the soft and hard skills companies list as requirements for their future employees. This list was put together using LinkedIn's data and as an opportunity to promote LinkedIn Learning. Nonetheless, the list proves to be a valid resource to see what recruiters are looking for in their new hires. To contrast how rapidly these "top skills" change, there will be a comparison between the 2019 and the 2020 versions of the same list. Lastly, to see how important marketing is in the business world for industries outside of marketing, I will analyze wich hard skills are directly related to the marketing field.

The Soft Skills

In The Skills Companies Need Most in 2019 – And How to Learn Them article by LinkedIn, the following 5 soft skills were listed as what companies are looking for:

1. Creativity
2. Persuasion
3. Collaboration
4. Adaptability
5. Time Management

A year later, the top 4 soft skills stayed the same. However, time management as been replaced by Emotional Intelligence (of EI). According to The Skills Companies Need Most in 2020—And How to Learn Them, emotional intelligence "underscores the importance of effectively responding to and interacting with our colleagues" thus increasing collaboration, motivation, empathy, reasoning, stress management, and communication. In other words, emotional intelligence increases productivity; therefore, making time-management a secondary skill.

The Hard Skills

In the 2019 list, the following marketing-related skills were listed:

• Mobile Application Development (#6)  - As it affects the distribution of products and services from a traditional medium to online to now mobile apps.
• Video Production (#7) - As video streaming represents 70% of all consumer internet traffic (also affecting distribution)
• Sales Leadership (#8) - Sales falls under the umbrella of Marketing
• Social Media Marketing (#14)
• Digital Marketing (#18)
• Corporate Communications (#25) - Public Relations falls under the umbrella of Marketing as there is a need to address local mistakes before they reach a negative global impact through the widespread of social media information

This concept of the marketing umbrella has expanded since last year. In the list released in early 2020, out of the top 10 hard skills employers are looking for in new hires, the following are related to marketing:

• Affiliate Marketing (#7) - Affiliate marketing leverages company partnerships or  influencers that are hyper-targeted to a particular audience
• Sales (#8)
• Video Production (#10)

Although it looks like there are less hard skills related to marketing in 2020, we can't really know that for certain as the article from 2019 gave a list of 25 skills whereas this year the list was only of 10. What can be concluded is that marketing-related skills are still as important (3 in the top 10 hard skills) in the business world as they were the previous year.

This shift toward a completely digital era has expanded the marketing umbrella to reflect the importance of analytics and influencer relationships. This trend will continue to grow as we move to a fully digital integrated society.