You will need digital skills to secure your next job – regardless of your profession

Can you understand and drive digital strategies? If not it's time to learn how, because in our increasingly digital lives almost every job now has a digital element to it. That's why digital skills have become a necessity for anyone looking for their next job.

According to Hays, we all live in a digital world and whether we like it or not, most of us now work in digital jobs.

"The digital revolution has touched the lives of virtually every consumer and business around the globe," says Christine Wright, Managing Director of Hays in Asia. "As a result digital strategy – and along with it digital literacy – is growing in importance."

From CEOs assessing the threat of cybercrime to marketers looking for the latest trending platforms, digital skills are now needed at all levels in most job functions.

For example, rather than customer service representatives in call centres, today we see more live chat attendants who will interact with customers online and on social media. And rather than traditional sales forecasts that were based on the intuition of sales reps, today people are using big data to make more precise predictions.

Even today's senior manager needs digital expertise to be able to locate knowledge, assess how valid it is, and then work with others to determine what to do with it.

In recognition of this new digital age, education systems need to adapt. For example, in Autumn 2015 the UK will become the first country in the world to make it compulsory for children to learn coding from the age of five through to 16.

Tips for job seekers
For job seekers to take advantage of this new jobs growth, Hays says it is important to continuously update your digital skills. Regardless of the profession or industry you work in, organisations want to recruit, retain and develop digital skills across their entire business.

All jobs now have a digital element, whether that’s creating an app rather than a PowerPoint presentation for your next talk, generating leads on social media or producing digital content.

Given the fast pace of technological advancement, employers look for candidates who are open to change and can adapt to a constantly evolving digital environment – whether that’s in their marketing, accountancy or logistics department. Digital changes are impacting all aspects of business and candidates today need to show they are digitally proficient, up-to-date with the latest technological advances related to their job function and industry, and possess the ability to lean into the changes of a digital world.

Source by JobsDB (This article was originally published on Hays)

https://hk.jobsdb.com/en-hk/articles/will-need-digital-skills-secure-next-job-regardless-profession