As technology torpedos through our lives faster than the speed of light, it has become a reality that many professions may become obsolete within the next decade. Here are three in-demand soft and hard skills of the near future to hone now, that will assist in ensuring you remain employable after graduation, and not face the dreaded axe.
Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing
Sure, you have heard it being thrown around quite a bit in the office and during meetings, but do you really know the mechanics behind it? Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are different but each rely heavily on each other to achieve one main goal - make a website more relevant and user-friendly to the target audience.
Why are they important? As all companies are slowly but surely going online for business or to gain networks, they need to be able to be searched for easily and have a strong online presence. If it is an e-commerce company, implementing SEO and SEM would also most likely mean more sales, due to higher click through rate from being searchable. Having knowledge in this area will give you an edge when working on projects, and will make anything you put online more receptive to your target audience.
Learning to Learn
Learning to learn is an actual skill. In essence, learnability is the one skill that will ensure you innovate, integrate and familiarise yourself with newer systems and programmes currently or soon-to-be employed in the workforce - and by that logic remain employable.
This is not to be confused with adaptability, for it just means being comfortable with changes, while learnability means to actually learn a system and operate it with ease. Many end up facing the axe because they are unable to learn new systems and use them efficiently to save man-hours without assistance. With technology itself evolving, so must we learn how to be comfortable enough to evolve with it. As the saying goes, “The only constant is change”.
Cognitive and Critical Thinking
Cognitive and critical thinking is much needed in the workplace - not to say that it is not needed now. With the information so easily attained on the Internet and its sheer magnitude at which it comes in, unreliable information needs to be watchfully sieved from the reliable.
As jobs are being streamlined and merged with similar roles, more cognitive and critical thinking are needed to ensure things run smoothly and on time. This much needed skill will help you challenge the status quo when roles are merged and things seem foreign, as it is only then that you can innovate and succeed in a role.