These are the top skills in demand across industries today

(Illustration by Suneesh K.)

As the Covid pandemic eases, some organisations have chosen to resume work from office full time, others continue to operate with work from home/remote work, and a few have taken a hybrid approach marrying the two. But regardless of which model they choose, many organisations are seeing huge demand for certain roles.

In 2021, 286 million skills were added to member profiles on the professional networking platform LinkedIn. Nearly half (45 percent) of recruiters peruse skills data posted on LinkedIn to fill up roles in their organisations, up 13 percent year on year.

Globally, the skill sets needed for jobs have changed by around 25 percent in the past five years and are expected to change by 41 percent by 2025.

Based on the skills data of LinkedIn's 92 million members in India, the ‘Skills Evolution 2022’ report highlights the top 10 skills that have experienced exponential month-on-month growth in 2021.

Additionally, the ‘Future of Skills 2022’ data showcases the top rising skills across popular jobs and industries today, based on skills Indian professionals added to their profiles in 2021.

The top 10 skills in India 

Business Development, Marketing, Sales & Marketing, Engineering, SQL, Sales, Java, Sales Management, Microsoft Azure and Spring Boot were the top 10 skills in India. Of these, excepting Business Development and SQL, all the skills are new compared to the top skills in 2015.

For Corporate Services in India, skills have changed 41.6 percent since 2015. Nine of the top 10 rising skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

Changes in the financial landscape reflect the rise of popularity of jobs requiring knowledge of GST, TDS, Statutory Audit, and Income Tax, compared to 2015, when team and vendor management, recruitment, as well as negotiating skills were popular.

Further, Tally ERP, which holds the second position, has replaced MIS as the accounting software of choice.

Software & IT Services skills have changed an average of 29.9%

For Software & IT Services in India, the report says that the skills have changed 29.9 percent since 2015. Six of the top 10 rising skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

These additions include knowledge of new tools (Spring Boot), software (Jenkins), languages (Python, C) and cloud computing platforms (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services). Manual Testing also features as an up-and-coming skill in the IT sector.

Six of the top 10 skills in Media & Communications are new 

For Media & Communications in India, skills have changed 26.1 percent since 2015. Six of the top 10 rising skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

As media goes online, skills such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Web Content Writing, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Blogging, Social Media Optimisation (SMO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) dominate the list.

Hindi features at number five on the list, opening avenues for non-English speaking professionals in the industry.

Tally ERP tops in Consumer Goods

Skills in the Consumer Goods industry have changed 34.4 percent since 2015. Nine of the top 10 skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

Tally ERP (#1) features alongside Management Information Systems (#9) among the rising software skills in the industry. Distributed team management (#7) and GST (#2) have also come to the fore post-pandemic.

Pharmacovigilance among the newest additions in healthcare  

For Healthcare in India, skills have changed 30.2 percent since 2015. Five of the top 10 rising skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

Pharmacovigilance (#2) and Good Clinical Practices (#7) feature among the newest additions to the list, indicating a growing consideration for safety, integrity and well-being in the industry. Clinical Research (#3) has gone up 4 ranks from #7 in 2015.

Manufacturing skills have changed an average of 25.8 percent

In the manufacturing industry, skills have changed 25.8 percent since 2015. Six of the top 10 skills in the industry are new compared to 2015. They include software skills such as SOLIDWORKS (#10) and AutoCAD (#9); and process improvement skills such as Production Planning (#8), 7QC Tools (#7), PPAP (#6) and 5S (#5).

Telecom tops in Hardware & Networking

In the hardware & networking sector, skills have changed 32.5 percent since 2015 — slightly higher than the country average (29 percent). Eight of the top 10 skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

Telecommunications tops the pecking order. Further, the top three languages to feature on the list are Python (#6), Core Java (#3) and C (#2). Linux (#8) and Kubernetes (#5) have replaced Unix as the Operating System of choice.

Finance skills have changed an average of 28.4 percent 

In the finance sector, skills have changed 28.4 percent since 2015. Seven of the top 10 rising skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

Branch Banking and Branch Operations feature among the new skills, indicating a focus on offline services. Finacle (#8) is the newest and only banking software skill to feature on this year’s list.

Top skills in the Education industry remain tech-heavy 

In the education field, skills have changed 33.5 percent since 2015. Seven of the top 10 rising skills in the industry are new compared to 2015.

Interestingly, most top skills in the industry remain tech-heavy. Programming language skills C++ (#3), Python (#2) and C (#1) occupy the top three slots.

Other languages such as HTML (#10), CSS (#8), and Java (#7) feature newly added skills. Machine Learning (#9) is a new skill in demand as interest in AI grows across industries.