Skills You Need to Stay Competitive in 2019
Randy Wolken, President & CEO

As we move into 2019, it is important to evaluate how competitive our businesses are for the coming year. As new technologies are developed and deployed, it is increasingly clear that it is the talent of our teams that allow our organizations to thrive. I remind my team at MACNY that the most important assets of our member companies and at MACNY go home each night – our teams. As a leader, it is important that I assess just how prepared we are to tackle the future challenges we will face as we serve our members.

Every year, LinkedIn analyzes open roles and the skills connected to those open roles over the last five years. In December, it released its 2018 U.S. Emerging Jobs Report. It listed 10 skills that will get you hired faster than anyone else. They identified the following skills:

• Oral communication: Public speaking, communication, and presentation skills.
• People management: Teamwork, supervisory, and personnel management skills.
• Software development: Java, C++, and Linux.
• Social media: Digital media and social media measurement.
• Business management: Management, strategic planning, and business process improvement.
• Time management: Organization skills and multitasking.
• Leadership: Team leadership and team building.
• Graphic design: Adobe Photoshop, web design, and illustration.
• Data science: Data analysis, forecasting, and statistics.
• Web development: HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

The soft skills such as leadership, oral communication, and time management did not surprise me. Over the span of my career, I have learned that soft skills have become essential to success in any job. The ones that I see as emerging skills needed by all organizations include software development, social media, data science, and web development. Increasingly these are the skills that all employees will need to learn or at least know about.

I have witnessed just how much business has changed in the last two decades. Early in my tenure at MACNY, the Internet of Things (IoT) was just beginning to evolve. Today, it is the driving force behind business growth and development. Every company and organization will need to harness it to thrive. As leaders, what are we doing to ensure our current and future workforce has these skills?

In 2019, I have decided to embark on a journey to learn these new skills myself and to lead my team on a similar journey. The tools to learn these skills exist in so many forms today. To stay competitive, we must help everyone gain knowledge and usage of these emerging skills. Which prompts a host of questions all leaders need to ask themselves today. How we answer them will determine our future success.

• How is your team developing the skills needed to stay competitive?
• Does your team routinely develop its soft skills such as leadership and business management?
• Is your organization helping its staff develop the new skills of web design, social communication, and software development?
• How will you, as a leader, develop your own skills this year in existing areas of expertise and new ones important to our global and internet-driven economy?

Finally, here at MACNY we wish you a happy and prosperous 2019! We look forward to serving you and learning from you.