21 Most Valuable Career Skills: Career Development, Guidance, Planning

Keeping up with the “technological, economic, and social forces that are transforming so many industries” furnishes the common link behind the 21 most valuable career skills.

The skills give their practitioners as much as 6.1 percent boosts in pay in the case of the top-ranking ability to understand statistical analysis systems (SAS). The last of the skills, new business development through “bringing in partners and brokering revenue-generating deals,” has the possibility of increasing employee paychecks by 3.0 percent. Between the extremes is a series of skills sets that support “making sense of big data,” “managing the bottom line,” thinking strategically and “wrangling new tech.”

Logistics-, marketing- and operations management-related data mining and search engine marketing join contract negotiation for business, finance and management in warranting 5.0 and 5.1 percent raises.

Customer service analysis, financial analysis, sales of complex technology, software development, strategic planning, and strategic project management keep employees eligible for 4.0 to 4.9 percent raises. Business analysis, computer-aided design, forecasting, IT security, lean manufacturing patient education, and risk and systems, applications and products (SAP) management land 3.3 to 3.9 percent raises.

All of the 21 most valuable career skills merge to foster fluency in analyzing data, comprehending and predicting losses and profits, and fine-tuning field-specific information technology. Paul McDonald, Robert Half staffing firm senior executive director, notes a photographer’s advancement by understanding creativity and “the finances and budgeting of the entire” photo agency. Katie Bardaro, PayScale.com’s data analytics vice president, observes that Epic software-fluent health care and Workday-fluent human resources employees respectively earn 8.5 and 9.6 percent higher salaries.

Education through accredited coursework, in-house training and online classes, educational experience through mentorships, and experience through volunteering prod acquiring the 21 most valuable career skills forward. Thirty-five hours of coursework and three years’ experience before passing the $555.00, 200-question Project Management Institute exam qualifies employees for formal credentials conducive to pay raises. CareerBuilder surveys of over 2,300 hiring and human resources managers reveal that employers may offer go-getters free access to Lynda-com’s multi-unit “learning paths” and online tutorials. Samantha Raniere, executive coach in San Francisco, California, states that “deep knowledge of the business” must precede mentorship with “someone who is really good at it.”

Savvy career development, guidance and planning ultimately turn around “understanding the business purpose” served by doing jobs well, according to David Hayes, Boston-area recruiter in Massachusetts.

My special thanks to:

• Talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the Internet;
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

Weisser, Cybele; Renzulli, Kerri Anne; and Leonhardt, Megan. June 2016. “The 21 Most Valuable Career Skills.” Money, Volume 45, Number 5, pp. 42-50.