Five Essential Skills to Learn to Advance Your Career

Have you ever asked yourself where you might be in your career in 2030? Do you know the skills you need to stand out in your industry’s highly competitive landscape? As our digital world evolves and moves forward at full speed, you need to figure out how to prepare for the future. 

The rise of digital technologies means you’re going to need to be able to handle all the opportunities and challenges that come with them, and the skills of the future are essential to learn in order to do this. In this article, True Digital Park will take you through all the skills necessary to work and succeed in the digital age.

What are the skills of the future?

A future skill is one that is expected to be in higher demand in the future based on the current direction of technology, the economy, and society, as well as other related factors. Developing essential skills for the future, either by refining your existing skills or learning new skills, is crucial. If you can do this, you’ll have more opportunities to succeed in your career. But first, you need to know how these skills are divided.

Hard skills

Hard skills are skills that an individual uses in their work and that can be evaluated. They include skills in areas like programming, reading and writing, drawing, researching, and so on. Simply put, hard skills are professional skills. 

Soft skills

On the other hand, soft skills are more difficult to assess. These skills include interpersonal skills, adaptability, creativity, time-management, leadership, and so on. As opposed to hard skills, which are seen as professional skills, soft skills can be thought of as personality skills.

The Five Most Essential Skills to Learn

Although there is no manual that spells out exactly what future skills entrepreneurs in 2030 will want people to have, according to various studies and analyses of data from leading universities, here are the top skills that will likely be needed in the future:

1. Cognitive abilities and adaptability

In this digital age, new technologies are constantly emerging and evolving in order to make our lives easier and faster. However, to be able to make the most of those technologies, you’ll need to learn and understand how they work quickly while also putting that knowledge into practice.

Ask yourself if you have the ability to adapt to the rapid changes that are coming and whether you can handle multiple complex issues at once. This is one of the top essential skills of the future that your company, boss, and colleagues will be looking for. 

2. Digital literacy and computational thinking skills

Currently, various tools are used for programming, database management, and anything that requires advanced skills to operate, which has led to a higher demand for people with those advanced digital skills.

Although you may have heard of STEM, you may not have heard of SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud). This is useful to keep in mind to help you develop your digital literacy skills and better understand emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the Internet of Things (IOT), and other data science-related topics. 

3. Leadership skills and decision-making abilities

Although artificial intelligence and automation will play a significant role in replacing humans in many areas, such as computation and data analysis, humans are still managing the data and deciding what to do with it. 

As we near the end of the fourth industrial revolution, humans are still an essential part of taking these numbers and using them to point projects in the right direction. Therefore, it is important to have strong decision-making abilities and leadership skills in order to lead teams into a successful future.

4. Emotional intelligence and social skills

A popular belief is that everything will be replaced by digital technology and artificial intelligence in the near future. However, no matter how advanced technology gets, it won’t be able to replace the emotional intelligence and social capacity of humans, which is one of the special skills that sets us apart from other animals.

Emotional intelligence and social skills are incredibly important in a variety of jobs, such as healthcare, and their importance is being recognized more each year. In every job, you are required to work with others, which means compassion, communication, and understanding are essential to collaborating seamlessly with other people to get the job done.

5. Creativity and innovative thinking skills

The World Economic Forum released a report in 2018 that stated that autonomous robots will be more productive in various jobs than humans. However, that shouldn’t worry you if you have creative skills for innovation. 

As well as having excellent social skills, being creative remains one of the most important and irreplaceable skills. Since it allows individuals to think outside of the box, it can lead to new ways of improving or optimizing products or even businesses as a whole. 

Develop the Skills of the Future at the House of Digital Academy at True Digital Park

Whether you’re part of an organization, a public or private company, a startup, or just self-employed, these skills of the future are essential for growth and success. With our digital world constantly evolving and changing, existing jobs may be replaced by various automated technologies and robots, and you don’t want to be left behind because you lack the necessary qualities for the future.

Our experts at House of Digital Academy at True Digital Park offer courses for anyone interested in developing themselves, whether they’re upskilling or reskilling. Our courses are designed to help empower the next generation of Thais to have the essential skills that will be required in the competitive markets of the 4.0 era and beyond.