At the June 22nd Future of Work event at the University of Rochester, Joe Testani’s keynote speech focused on job trends for the coming years. One of them was a list of the top 15 skills needed in 2025, as identified by the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Future of Jobs report:
Analytical thinking and innovation
Active learning and learning strategies
Complex problem solving
Critical thinking and analysis
Creativity, originality and initiative
Leadership and social influence
Technology use, monitoring and control
Technology design and programming
Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
Reasoning, problem-soling and ideation
Emotional intelligence
Troubleshooting and user experience
Service orientation
Systems analysis and evaluation
Persuasion and negotiation
Compare these to the top job skills of 2015:
Complex problem soling
Coordinating with others
People management
Critical thinking
Negotiation
Quality control
Service orientation
Judgement and decision making
Active listening
Creativity
There’s a lot to unpack here. Looking at the transition from the 2015 to 2025 skills, it looks like there’s a lot less focus on simply maintaining a product, selling it, and managing people and a transition towards skill acquisition, a growth mindset, personal entrepreneurship, thinking through new situations, and a deep understanding of people. In many ways these 2025 skills look like they’re important in the present.
How do these skills relate to your current professional trajectory? How might you acquire these skills in order to build your career over the next few years? Leave a comment with your thoughts.
(Image courtesy of Markus Spiske on Unsplash)