Over the years, we have seen the most sought-after hard skills within the technology industry evolve. Skills such as software development, programming and application-integration have been, and still are, considered the most fundamental requirement of a candidate’s ability to successfully fulfil a role. As such candidates spend lots of time and money ensuring their hard skills are current in the constantly changing technology space. But as recent LinkedIn research has pointed out, soft skills are an equally crucial determinant in how well a candidate successfully fills a role—and the one companies have the most difficulty assessing. Here are three interesting key findings from LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends Report published this year.
1. Creativity is going to be increasingly in demand, even in tech
According to the report, creativity is the most in-demand soft skill in short supply. While many people only associate creativity with art or design, it is a skill that is applicable to almost any role. Creativity is simply solving problems in original ways—a skill that machines can’t easily replicate. This trend will likely continue: a recent McKinsey study predicts that as automation transforms the skills companies need, demand for creativity will rise sharply by 2030.
2. Most hiring and firing comes down to soft skills
A programmer needs coding skills and a translator needs language skills to succeed at the most basic level of their jobs. But since there are often clear, consistent ways to evaluate these hard skills, there is less of a chance that someone without them could accidently get hired. Identifying poor soft skills however is much harder, which is why people without soft skills are often hired when they shouldn’t be. Bad hires are almost never a matter of hard skills alone. Experienced tech recruiters know this, which is why they prioritise soft skills alongside hard skills during the hiring process.
3. The normal assessment methods aren’t good enough
Despite the importance of soft skills, the most common ways to measure them haven’t changed over the past few decades. Companies overwhelmingly rely on asking interview questions and observing candidates’ body language. While behavioural and situational questions can be effective if applied consistently, they are susceptible to bias and often elicit well-rehearsed answers. Other methods that go beyond the interview aren’t as popular yet, but could lead to less biased assessments. For example, by giving the candidate a group project you could see their soft skills in action. Or you could try a tech-based assessment like Koru and Pymetrics, which use AI to measure candidates’ soft skills more systematically.
What are the most desired hard and soft skills by organisations this year? According to the LinkedIn report they are as follows:
The most in-demand hard skills
Cloud Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Analytical Reasoning
People Management
UX Design
Mobile Application Development
Video Production
Sales Leadership
Translation
Audio Production
Natural Language Processing
Scientific Computing
Game Development
Social Media Marketing
Animation
Business Analysis
Journalism
Digital Marketing
Industrial Design
Competitive Strategies
Customer Service Systems
Software Testing
Data Science
Computer Graphics
Corporate Communications
The most in-demand soft skills
Creativity
Persuasion
Collaboration
Adaptability
Time Management
Unsurprisingly, tech skills dominate the hard skills list. But even candidates with exceptional hard skills need soft skills in order to stand out and succeed in any of the above roles. The most experienced programmer in the world will be ineffective if he/she is unable to collaborate and communicate well with the rest of the team. As such the best candidates are determined though balanced recruitment approach that effectively assesses hard skills and soft skills alike.
About Oliver Parks
Oliver Parks Consulting offers search-based recruitment solutions to the technology sector, specialising in the ERP, CRM, CMS, ECM, BI and Open Source Technology spaces. The firm’s multilingual consultants operate in narrowly-defined niche market segments, enabling them to gain extensive knowledge of the people and companies operating in each technology. Oliver Parks has a proven track-record with more than 100,000 candidates worldwide and more than 300 clients globally.