In the last decade, the world has witnessed a massive digital change as social media, smart devices, 4G and 5G internet, cloud, artificial intelligence, and other technologies have permeated the fundamental fabric of how companies conduct business and drive their expansion.

Businesses that have gradually improved their systems and processes in demonstrating agility in adjusting to digital ways are already ahead of the pack and have a competitive edge.

While the digital revolution was gradually making its way into our personal and professional lives, the pandemic struck, altering the world in multiple ways, making digital skills and tools vital components of the job. Many firms shifted to a remote work environment, relying on digital technology to collaborate and stay productive. As a result, businesses realized that the only way to ensure employee productivity in a remote work environment was to have a basic understanding of digital skills and the ability to adapt to new technology quickly. 

The rapid pace of moving toward company digitization has essentially proved that digital skill is an enabler. And that this enabler will assist firms in effectively navigating the digital transformation journey, allowing them to emerge victoriously.

What are Digital Skills?

Digital skills are abilities that, when combined, allow a person to effectively communicate, cooperate, and solve problems using digital devices, applications, and tools for personal and professional fulfillment. They are characterized as “the ability to use information technologies and the Internet to search, assess, utilize, share, and create content.” Any talent that qualifies a person to become digitally literate is a digital skill. Digital skills are everywhere, from calling a cab to ordering meals with a food delivery app, responding to an email or accessing your files on a cloud-based drive. 

There are, however, different levels of digital proficiency.

  • Basic Digital Skills

Functional abilities, such as operating digital devices and accessing apps on your phone, are considered basic digital skills. 

  • Intermediate Digital Skills

Intermediate digital skills are job and industry-specific talents that may include software and technologies to help you perform better in your current position. It could, for example, comprise an organization’s use of a specific CRM software. There is no one-size-fits-all description or list because intermediate digital skills are unique to each business and job role.

  • Advanced Digital Skills

Advanced digital skills are highly specialized talents necessary for certain job responsibilities, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, big data analytics, and other technologies that change how businesses function and perceive themselves.

Which Digital Skills are Necessary For The New Age Workforce?

Businesses are embracing advanced digital capabilities for the workplace. The top digital skills for jobs in the technology, marketing, big data, and product management areas are listed below:

  1. Next-gen coding languages
  2. Artificial intelligence and machine learning
  3. Augmented and virtual reality
  4. Cryptocurrency & blockchain
  5. Cloud and distributed computing
  6. IoT
  7. Network and security
  8. Digital marketing 
  9. SEO analytics
  10. Social media marketing
  11. Content marketing
  12. Marketing automation
  13. UI/UX Design & data visualization
  14. Data Science
  15. Data analytics

Rapid improvements in AI and other emerging technologies occur in ever-shorter cycles, transforming job nature and skills demanded to perform them quickly, resulting in a skill gap. Companies recruiting personnel with digital abilities in demand would be a wonderful way to fill these digital skills gaps. Digital skill assessments are helpful in this regard. They are specialized tests that evaluate a specific digital competency or sub-skill. Given the complexity of digital abilities, no single test can capture them all. Instead, digital abilities can be evaluated based on a role or a talent. 

Discover Assessments, with a pool of experts, create assessments per your organizational needs, allowing you to hire the best-in-class talent that possesses updated skills and capabilities. You can opt from our existing collection of assessments or customize it to your individual needs with its ready framework of digital abilities.

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