According to a recent report published by LinkedIn in 2019 the top skills required were hard skills in cloud computing, AI, analytical reasoning, and again this year but one skill that wasn’t on the list last year and tops the list this year is blockchain.
As per the report, the top 10 most in-demand hard skills globally are Blockchain, Cloud computing, analytical reasoning, AI, UX Design, business analysis, affiliate marketing, sales, scientific computing and video production.
The promise of blockchain — essentially a shared digital ledger — is huge. Advocates see it as a secure, decentralized, and cost- and time-efficient way to transparently track shipments and transactions of all kinds. Skeptics, and there are many, raise concerns about the lack of standardized protocols, scalability, and excessive energy use (Bitcoin alone consumes as much energy as the nation of Switzerland).
The business world, however, is voting with its jobs, and companies seem to be saying that the potential is worth the gamble. Blockchain has become a line of business for a who’s who of the corporate world — IBM, Oracle, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft (LinkedIn’s parent company), Amazon, and American Express, to name just a few. Blockchain is now being used in industries ranging from shipping to healthcare, from farming and food safety to entertainment and gaming.
Blockchain, for example, is the most in-demand skill in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Australia. Other tech skills — cloud computing, analytical reasoning, AI, UX design, scientific computing — joined blockchain on the list of in-demand hard skills. As did a handful of other skills — affiliate marketing, sales, and video production — central to sales and marketing.
In addition in a piece on the National Allen Blue, Co-Founder of LInkedIn stated, ” Men not women will take jobs in Blockchain, AI and data because they dont have the same access to these networks like men do.” he added “If we look forward and those are in fact the jobs of the future, who will have those jobs, we know for sure that if things don’t change men are going to have those jobs and women are not,” Allen Blue told The National on Friday in Davos at the World Economic Forum annual meeting.
The next generation of “great jobs” are in software engineering, AI, blockchain, machine learning, data science and cloud computing, said Mr Blue. LinkedIn research shows that women account for about 30 per cent of these tech-related jobs.
