Top Ten Skills for 2020

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has released The Future of Jobs report revealing the top 10 skills you’ll need by 2020.

The world of work is changing and adapting at speed to catch up with the rapid and continuous advances being made in technology. We are transitioning into an era that has been dubbed ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (known as Industry 4.0). The Technological Age is squeezing out manual labour and it is predicted that by 2020 over five million jobs will be replaced by automated machines.

This is a daunting prospect for many but it doesn't need to be bad news; like previous industrial revolutions many jobs will be sacrificed but many new jobs will also be created. A lot of these new jobs can’t even be imagined right now. According to a report issued by theWEF almost 65% of the jobs primary school students will be doing in the future do not even exist yet. Both the workforce and our knowledge base are rapidly evolving.

So what can you do to safeguard your future as an employee? Think of the skills that cannot be automated. What sets us apart from a robot? If you consider some sci-fi movies from the past such as AI: Artificial Intelligence, Blade Runner and more recently Her, all these films explored the rise of the robot and how they threatened the human race. But in all the films the robots ultimately failed. They were inferior because technology could not replicate human qualities, both cognitive and emotional. So think of soft skills, what you can’t teach a computer to do, these are the skills you need to focus on. If you can’t think of any, fear not the WEF have identified them for us as revealed in the infographic below this article.

Cognitive Functioning Skills

These skills include complex problem solving, critical thinking and creativity. The transition will bring disruption to industry and challenges that require managers to ‘think outside the box’ to find creative solutions. The digital age is creating an abundance of data. Analytical skills are required to make sense of this information to make important decisions.

Human Connections

Rapid change creates challenges and makes big demands of managers and employees. Leaders require good people management skills and strengths in judgement and decision making to co-ordinate their team. Collaborative work on agile teams will be the way forward. All these changes will require workers to have self awareness and good emotional intelligence. Soft skills so far cannot be replicated by machines so it is in the interest of jobseekers to nurture these crucial skills. The good news is that soft skills aren’t built into your personality, emotional intelligence can be developed. Unlike IQ which is believed to be static your EQ grows with you. So the more practice you get the greater empathy and understanding you can bring to your relationships. Robots aren’t empathic so exploit your emotional intelligence to ride out this revolution.

Notably the 10 Skills of the Future cited by the WEF are all transferable skills so can be used in many roles. Working on these skills now will prepare you for the changes coming down the line. It is never too early (or too late) to start working on identifying and developing your skills.

Thousands of second-level students engage in work experience to get their first taste of the world of work. CareersPortal invites students to identify the skills they utilised in their work placement and be in with a chance of winning a MacBook Air and €1,000 for their school. This exciting competition promotes the importance of Career Skills and encourages the value of career research. It gives students the chance to reflect on the skills they developed during their work experience, and how those skills can help them in their future career.

To find out more about this competition click here.

The CareersPortal Team