LinkedIn Research Reveals the Top 10 Skills Employers Are Seeking

“Skills are the most important factor when it comes to landing a job right now,” Blair Heitmann, LinkedIn career expert tells CNBC Make It . Hard skills get us in the door, but 93% of employers say soft skills also play a major role in hiring decisions, especially when facing difficult times . This is why more employers today are using skills to search for candidates and increase their likelihood of finding successful hires.

But the most in-demand skills are constantly changing. Top skills employers sought have changed by 25% since 2015 and are expected to double by 2027. That’s why LinkedIn announced the launch of new networking tools to identify potential jobs, virtual events, and free LinkedIn Learning courses for the month of September to build skills and help future-proof careers.?

LinkedIn’s top 10 skills decoded:

1. Customer service?

As the world of work shifts and evolves, so does the way in which we interact with customers. Be prepared with solid solutions that prioritize safety and customers hand-in-hand, and understand how to operate under new guidelines and changing customer needs.?

2. Sales?

The best salespeople work to solve their customer’s problems. To understand those problems, we need to ask great questions . By understanding the world through the lens of our customers, we create deeper connections, drive credibility, increase urgency, and clarify value.

3. Accounting?

Accountants play a critical role in understanding business drivers that maximize capacity and improve the bottom line. Their lean thinking focused on what adds value to customers can remove waste and free up capacity for use elsewhere.

4. Business development?

Instead of chasing after every idea at full speed, slow down. Growing a business takes strategic planning . By taking the time to know what we want and making a plan to get there, we waste less time and resources developing more business faster.?

5. Marketing?

Marketing is fundamental to every business but requires a clear understanding of the customer’s journey on their path to purchase. Knowing the marketing funnel and improving at each stage — awareness, interest, desire, and action — results in more prospects converted into buyers.?

6. Leadership?

Leadership is a soft skill that encompasses a broad range of abilities, but two key indicators of a good leader are mindfulness and intentionality. Leaders don’t have to be perfect, but when they can stay mindful it shows others they are present and listening, and being intentional shows they are genuinely trying.

7. Communication?

There’s a reason that 45% of all LinkedIn Premium jobs mentioned communication as an in-demand skill within the past three months. Effective teams produce better outcomes than individuals or uncoordinated groups. As Malcolm Gladwell put it , even plane crashes result from poor teamwork and a lack of communication.?

8. Digital marketing?

Digital marketing changes quickly. Sending the right message to the right person at the right time through the right channel is complicated. New tools, tactics, and trends are constantly emerging to collect more data points and predict more consumer behavior. The more of this data we collect, the better we are at persuading people to take action.

9. Sales management??

An effective sales team needs effective sales leadership. To know precisely what sales reps need to do to be effective, which customers to call on, the right products and services to sell, and how to sell them, managers need the right tools and frameworks for recruiting, motivating, deploying, and measuring productivity.

10. Problem-solving?

The secret to better decisions is to stop holding on too tightly to the things we’ve built, lived experiences, and acquired assets. Clinging to these in the face of making decisions gets us stuck in dead ends and regrets. Making good decisions requires an openness to seeing the information given instead of focusing on what has brought results in the past.??

Once we identify the skills we have, lean into them. Don’t discount accomplishments, contributions, and results: Emphasize them. By sharpening these high-demand skills in ourselves, we increase the value we bring to any company and our chances of landing a job.?

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Tom Popomaronis is Executive Vice President of Innovation at Massive Alliance, a global executive branding agency. Tom co-founded Massive's Executive Leadership Branding program – which transforms world-class executives into contributing authors at leading publications.

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