The Top 10 Most In-Demand Skills Employers Should Look For

The world of work is changing rapidly, which means that many top global organisations are changing their criteria for recruiting new hires. How? By moving away from assessing candidates experience, and focusing more towards the skills that candidates might bring to an organisation. 

LinkedIn conducted a study in 2019 that analysed hundreds of thousands of job postings to identify the Top 10 soft and hard skills which are most sought after. This research helps identify skills of the future, and the ones L&D professionals in the Middle East should be focusing on. 

This research goes hand-in-hand with The Deloitte 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report, which also stated that forward thinking companies are more biased to developing new skills internally than just hiring externally. 

Check out the Top 10 in-demand Soft and Hard Skills in 2019 and the recommendations in reverse order below. Under each skill we have included the LinkedIn learning recommended courses, and our own 'blended learning' approach, where leaders and individual contributors can leverage technology and learn collaboratively.

The Top 5 in-demand Soft Skills

5. TIME MANAGEMENT 

Biz Group Recommended Options:  

• Mastering Productivity at Work
• Core Project Management

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Tony Schwartz on Managing Your Energy for Sustainable High Performance
• Finding Your Time Management Style
• Time Management for Managers

4. ADAPTABILITY

Biz Group Recommended Options:   

• Apollo Virtual Reality Leadership Lab Challenge
• Gooroo Evaluation on Thinking and Decision-Making Styles
• Agility & Disruption
• Resilience & Mindfulness

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Strategic Agility
• Developing Adaptable Employees
• Developing Adaptability as a Manager

3. COLLABORATION

Biz Group Recommended Options:  

• Apollo Virtual Reality Leadership Lab Challenge
• Building High Performing Teams
• Global Diversity & Inclusion

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Collaboration Principles and Process
• Being an effective team member
• Business Collaboration in the Modern Workplace

2. PERSUASION

Biz Group Recommended Options:  

• Think on Your Feet – communicate with Clarity, Brevity & Impact
• Crucial Conversations 
• Influencing Skills
• Presenting with Passion – learn to deliver like Talk like Ted speakers
• Customer Centricity

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Persuading Others
• Becoming A Thought Leader
• Advanced Consumer Behavior
  
  

Biz Group Recommended Options: 

• ExperienceInnovation™ - a global award winning simulation.
• Gooroo ColourGrid Innovation, Creativity, Entrepreurism evaluation.
• Creativity and innovation

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Creativity Bootcamp
• The Five-Step Creative Process
• Creativity: Generate Ideas in Greater Quantity and Quality

The top 5 in-demand hard skills

5. UX DESIGN

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• UX Foundations: Multidevice Design
• UX Design: 01 Overview
• UX Research for Agile Teams
  
  

4. PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

Biz Group Recommended Options: 

• TRUST – Blanchard award winning program, deliver classically or through a virtual reality experience
• SLII – the core of people management
• Multipliers – for senior leaders a toolkit to access more capability
• Crucial Accountability
• Emotional Intelligence
• Coaching and Developing Others

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Motivating and Engaging Employees
• Managing Team Conflict
• Leading with Purpose
  
  

3. ANALYTICAL REASONING

Biz Group Recommended Options: 

• Gooroo Evaluation on Thinking and Decision-Making Styles
• Problem Solving & Decision Making

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Making Decisions
• Decision Making Strategies
• Executive Decision Making
  
  

2. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Neural Networks
• Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Machine Learning
• Machine Learning and AI Foundations: Classification Modeling
  
  

1. CLOUD COMPUTING

LinkedIn Recommended Courses: 

• Learning Cloud Computing: Networking
• Learning Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Developers
• AWS for Architects: Advanced Security

We would be happy to help you curate LearningJourneys™ that solve your toughest business challenges and get your people ready for the future.

Our LearningJourneys™ involve 3 clear stages:

1. Discover the theory of a particular topic in short online engagement, leveraging tools like LinkedIn, other libraries, or content created by Biz Group for you.
   
   
2. Explore through workshops the practical ways that the concepts can be implemented back in the workplace. From experiential exercises to Virtual Reality, we use award winning learning content and technology to create high levels of engagement, deep learning, and a safe place for real-play.
   
   
3. Apply the learning back in the workplace, with tools to support retention of information, work based assignments, gamification, and proof of Kirkpatrick Level 4 evaluation.

Everything is tracked on our LearningJourneys™ platform. Making it easy to see participation, engagement and completion.

Get in touch with an expert to see how we can help you today. 

Keep learning!

Biz Group