Podcasts

Specialized digital skills are becoming increasingly important and yet jobs are not becoming hypertechnical. Instead, they are becoming increasingly hybrid, mixing human and technical skills—and employers and workers alike are still struggling to keep up. For example, job postings are cropping up with qualifications in data analytics, project management and critical thinking. But those same postings are also requiring excellent communication skills, problem solving and time management. How do you balance the hard with the soft?

Specialized digital skills are becoming increasingly important and yet jobs are not becoming hypertechnical. Instead, they are becoming increasingly hybrid, mixing human and technical skills—and employers and workers alike are still struggling to keep up. For example, job postings are cropping up with qualifications in data analytics, project management and critical thinking. But those same postings are also requiring excellent communication skills, problem solving and time management. How do you balance the hard with the soft?

AI and automation are making some jobs obsolete or creating new jobs. We’re also witnessing the great resignation, brought on by myriad reasons. In a McKinsey Global Institute report, “In the United States, we project there are about 17 million people in jobs that may see less demand. Over the eight countries we study in our report, 100 million people may need skills to perform different occupations in growing fields.” So if you’re thinking about or perhaps in the midst of a career change, you need to get up to speed quickly.

The World Economic Forum recently declared a reskilling emergency as the world faces more than one billion jobs transformed by technology. No longer an ideal but an expectation, executives and employees must continually refresh their skills to keep up. To do so, continuous professional education is the key. But are you learning with intent?

If anything positive can come out of this COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that the importance of health care professionals is seen as paramount—especially those who were furiously working to develop a vaccine. From understanding how the virus worked, how to mitigate its transmission and how to protect our global population against it, the biologists in the labs became the unknown celebrities of 2021. Their behind-the-scenes work quickly became front-page headlines. And with that flux of attention came a surge of open positions in the biological sector.

According to recent McKinsey research, women-held positions in tech has largely declined in the U.S. during the past 25 years. And yet, companies are reporting a shortage in tech skills as businesses across the spectrum are ramping up their tech capabilities. So what can companies do to not only fill empty positions, but fill them with women and women of color.