Three Observations from the LinkedIn 2018 Emerging Jobs Report

Recently, our pals at LinkedIn released their 2018 Emerging Jobs Report, a look at the jobs and skills that have been most in demand from employers on the LinkedIn platform, both in 2018 and over the last few years. it is a really excellent look at activity on the LinkedIn platform, which I am pretty confident in stating is the world's largest professional networking site, and which remains for many organizations one of the most important sourcing and recruiting tools.

I have been a little skeptical or perhaps cynical over the years at these kinds of reports, mainly because they always seemed to skew way towards the jobs and skills that Silicon Valley Tech companies were seeking, and was not terribly illustrative or indicative of the overall US labor market. Said differently, the kinds of jobs that LinkedIn usually reports are 'hot' are the kinds of jobs very few people actually have. Office and administrative support or retail salesperson (two of the most common job categories in the US), never make these lists. And while there remains a little of that kind of 'not the real world' feel to the Emerging Jobs Report, (you will see in a moment what I mean), there are also some pretty interesting and important insights in the report I wanted to highlight. So here goes..

1. As I alluded to above, the top 'emerging job' is one almost no one has

Number one on the LinkedIn list for emerging jobs in 2018 is called 'Blockchain Developer' with 33x growth in activity and interested in 2018. If you are a blockchain developer or are an HR or talent person who is recruiting blockchain developers, well, I probably have nothing else to offer you on this post. Suffice it to say, for 99% of us the next blockchain developer we run into will be the first. But let's keep looking through the report.

2. Number three on the emerging jobs list is actually a job lots of people have, most of us have someone in our lives who has this job, and lots of the HR and talent pros reading this are probably recruiting for - Application Sales Executive

According to LinkedIn, there has been a 8x increase in activity for these roles. This is pretty amazing to me, as there have been Application Sales Executives in just about every tech company for ages. For a mature kind of job type to see that much growth year over year is remarkable and also, hopefully a signal that the pace of innovation, development, and new technology hitting the market will continue in 2019. Sales is no doubt not for everyone, but this data suggests plenty of opportunity for those willing to put in the time and effort.

3. The number one skill that LinkedIn claims employers are having trouble finding has nothing to do with Blockchain, or AI, or software development of any kind.

LinkedIn says that 'Oral Communication' is the skill group with the highest shortage in nearly every major city in the country. Think skills like public speaking, effective communication, presentation skills and the like Maybe it's because we (the societal we) have spent a decade or more trying to convince every kid that he/she needs to learn how to code, that many of us, (especially anyone under 30), has essentially replaced phone calls with text messages, or that the classical liberal arts kind of education and background has over time been diminished in value. Whatever the reason, employers are having trouble finding candidates with quality skills in oral communication. That to me is more interesting than however many more people go chasing blockchain development skills in 2019.

Go check the entire report over on the LinkedIn blog. It is a fascinating look at one (admittedly big) slice of the job market.

Have a great week!

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 304 - LinkedIn, Talent Insights, and Data Science in HR

HR Happy Hour 304 - LinkedIn, Talent Insights, and Data Science in HR

Host: Steve Boese

Guest: Dan Shapero, Vice President of Talent Solutions, LinkedIn

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, we welcome Dan Shapero, Vice President of Talent Solutions at LinkedIn for a discussion about data science, machine learning, and how new tools and technologies are providing information, insights, and value to HR and talent management and acquisition leaders to help them make better talent decisions.

Data is increasingly being leveraged to help employers decide whom to interview and potentially hire for open roles, to have better understanding to answer questions like 'Where should we locate the new offices?', and how to best reward, develop, and manage talent in the organization. 

Enterprise systems are changing - in the past they only stored information. Today modern tools and technologies help organizations better understand that data, glean insights from that data, and make informed decisions as the systems learn more about the data and about the business.

Dan shared ideas on how HR and talent leaders can begin to adopt these new approaches and technologies in their organizations, how to start the process or journey to becoming a 'data-driven' HR function, as well as some of the new technologies and capabilities that LinkedIn has been developing in these areas.

Additionally, we learned that Dan knows recent HR Happy Hour guests Dan Heath and Sjoerd Gehring and that Steve still has not launched his all NBA show Bounding and Astounding.

Listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below:

Thanks to Dan for sharing his time and insights.

And of course, thanks to HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse - learn more at www.virginpulse.com.

Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or your favorite podcast app - just search for 'HR Happy Hour'.

REMINDER: LinkedIn is still not the real world

In what has become an annual tradition on the blog, as beloved as the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, the running of the bulls in Pamplona, or me passing out on the sofa in a turkey/stuffing coma each Thanksgiving, I wanted to offer my quick reminder that the world of LinkedIn has only a partial, if not passing, resemblance to the real world of work, workplaces, and the kinds of jobs most people have.

What prompts this regular reflection and reminder? As in years past, (here is what I wrote about this last winter), LinkedIn has released what they call 'The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017', based on their data set of member profiles, job posting activity, and their assessment of the candidate skills that were more likely to generate recruiter interest and hiring activity. They publish this list of 'top' skills both globally, and for a selection of countries and more or less the narrative that follows is something along the lines of 'If you want to get hired next year, you should try to acquire one (or more) of these skills.'

Here is the list of these 'top' skills for the USA for 2017, per LinkedIn:

As has been the case in the last couple of years, these 'hot' skills are dominated by the latest in IT trends and innovations. Cloud computing, user interface, algorithm design, etc., are all skills (and roles), that have certainly seen an increase in employer demand, and is often reported, can be difficult to find in candidates. So simple supply (which is not enough), and demand, (which continues to increase), for these skills naturally make them 'hot' and the folks that possess them remaining in demand.

Makes sense. Good to know. Interesting to think about if you are just starting your career and want to have at least some level of comfort about your chances of employment.

But as I like to point out, and did the last time LinkedIn shared with us what was 'hot',  these skills, or said slightly differently, the kinds of jobs that require these skills, still make up a really, really small percentage of overall employment in the USA, and are not the ones that the vast majority of people are doing.

Here's the latest data that is available from our pals at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on 'Major Occupational Groups as a Percentage of Employment', (from 2015):

Did you see the grouping for 'Computer and Mathematical', where the majority of jobs that required most of the 2017 LinkedIn 'hot' skills would typically reside?

It is down towards the bottom of the graph just after 'Personal care and service' and before 'Healthcare support'. If you go to the actual BLS data, 'Computer and Mathematical' makes up 2.9% of all jobs in the USA, about the same as it has been the last couple of years.

Even allowing for the fact that some of the 'hot' skills would be in demand in other general employment categories, is still stands to reason that just about all of the jobs where these skills are being sought out for represent, still, a sliver of the US labor market, and do not reflect the jobs that the vast majority of people are actually doing, (and will be doing for some time).

Sure, it is trendy to think that the LinkedIn skills represent the future of work, and perhaps they probably do, and I would encourage anyone, especially younger folks to think about pursuing them,  but these skills don't really represent the 'present' of work, not in a substantial way anyway.

LinkedIn is a fantastic business, a staggering success, and not at all like the real world where the overwhelming majority of workers reside.

Have a fantastic weekend And don't spend so much time on LinkedIn.

The obligatory Microsoft - LinkedIn take

If you regularly write or otherwise opine about technology, HR, HR tech, recruiting, or pretty much anything to do with enterprise technology, then Al Gore and the rest of the creators of the internet have decreed that you must have some kind of a take, any kind at all really, about this week's big news of Microsoft announcing its plans to acquire LinkedIn for $26B large.

So while EVERYONE else has probably weighed in on this a couple of days ago and the immediate window for 'newsy' analysis is past, I am going to direct my take in a slightly different direction.

Aside - before getting to my point I just have to laugh (once again), at all the experts and analysts and pundits who within hours of this announcement somehow were able to crank out 1,000 words explaining to the rest of us what this news really meant. No one, I mean NO ONE, was thinking about Microsoft making this move before it was announced, then to suddenly act as if you have it all worked out within an hour is laughable. And also a little insulting. And like this take, everyone will forget what you wrote after the fact. Tell us it's going to happen BEFORE it happens sometime and you will impress us. All of us can wax profound after the fact. Ok, rant over.

There was one slide in the official Microsoft public presentation and announcement on Monday that really caught my attention and that of all of this, might be the most interesting aspect of this deal in the coming years. Here's the slide from MSFT, then some free-range, organic, farm-raised comments from me.

Since the quality of the image isn't all that great, I want to repeat the key part of the text on the left side of the slide - "There is no one source of truth for an individual (that's me and you by the way), profile... In the future, a professionals profile will be unified..."

Those are the lines that I noticed the most in the entire announcement, and here's why I think they are interesting and potentially troubling for MSFT, for your organization, and for all of us as professionals.

Why? Three reasons...

1. While just about all of us have come to a reluctant realization that we probably should and do have a reasonably complete professional profile and history on LinkedIn, that realization comes from years of consideration about LinkedIn, and what LinkedIn was doing with our data. We may not love the fact that LinkedIn became a $26B company largely on the value of our profile information we supplied (for free), but we came to decide the personal value to us was at least worth the tradeoff that has now made lots of LinkedIn investors rich.

But will we be ok making those same kinds of tradeoffs knowing 'our' data and profiles are now owned by Microsoft? Will the 400M or so users be readily willing to give Microsoft the same kind of pass that we gave LinkedIn, given the perceived value to us? I am not so sure. Or at least I am not that sure it's a given that people already on LinkedIn won't be too bothered by this. And I know it is not a given that people who ar not yet on LinkedIn won't be given at least some pause turning over their profiles and history to an even more gigantic company in Microsoft.

2. From an organizational standpoint, just how excited are you as an HR or business leader with Microsoft's plan to make its (LinkedIn/Office/Skype/Whatever else they have) data become the "unified" professional profile for your employees? Aren't you at least a little bit concerned by having more and more of your employee's data about what they are working on and who they are collaborating with becoming at least potentially part of some LinkedIn-based unified and possibly public profile? Are you sure that this won't be even more of a competitive issue for you and your organization? There are still companies and leaders that would prefer their employees not be on LinkedIn at all - so they are not as likely to be recruited away by a competitor. 

3. Finally, from a personal angle how much do most professionals want their current organization to be even more aware of what an employee is doing on LinkedIn? Would you somehow get 'red flagged' as a flight risk if Microsoft's big data engine spots and alerts your organization's management that you recently looked at an external job posting or have just connected with two or three third-party recruiters? I know some of what all of us do on LinkedIn is potentially visible to our current management and company, but an even more embedded and universal profile (LinkedIn based), that in theory becomes the de facto internal corporate identity as well just exposes more and more of your LinkedIn actions to your employer, whether or not you want that exposure or not.

Ok, that's it for me, let me know what you think - am I wrong to not be leading the cheers for this acquisition?

Your annual reminder that LinkedIn is not where most people live and work

Recently, LinkedIn released its list of The 25 Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2016, their assessment based on recruiter, jobseeker, and LinkedIn member activity and profile updates of the 'hottest' skills that their data suggest will be the ones that offer workers the best chance of getting hired or promoted in 2016. Here is the list of these 'hottest' skills as per our pals at LinkedIn:

Pretty impressive set of skills indeed. From Data Mining to Cloud Computing to Mobile Development and User Experience Design - the list hits just about all of the current and certainly 'hot' trends in technology and business in the last few years. And as LinkedIn rightly state in their analysis of this data, these skills are likely to remain in demand for some time, at least a few years for sure.

But as I wrote on this blog about 12 months ago when LinkedIn published their list of 'hot' skills for 2015, it is pretty easy to be beguiled by these kinds of lists, particularly when juxtaposing the LinkedIn set of hot skills with the Bureau of Labor Statistics data about what kinds of jobs people actually do, (at least in the USA).

From our pals at the BLS, here is a chart from May 2014, (the latest period when this data is available), which shows occupations with the largest employment in the USA. Take a look at the data, then a few quick FREE comments from me after the chart.

Did you catch some differences between what gets people hired, at least people who are on LinkedIn, and the kinds of jobs that are held by the largest numbers of people in the USA? These Top 10 occupations make up about 21% of overall US employment, in case you were wondering, down only 1% from last year in case you were wondering.

Wonder how far down on the BLS list (and you can check the full list of occupations as defined by the BLS here), you have to go before you run in to 'Cloud and Distributed Computing' and 'Statistical Analysis and Data Mining', the top 'hot' skills for 2016 as per LinkedIn?  

I will save you a click and let you know that all the occupations that the BLS rolls up into 'Computer and Mathematical Operations', (where most of LinkedIn's Top Hot skills would likely map), account for about 3.8M workers, that is just under 3% of all the jobs in the country, just about the same as it was last year. Sure, it is trendy to think that the LinkedIn skills represent the future of work, and perhaps they probably do, but they don't really represent the 'present' of work, not in a substantial way anyway.

LinkedIn is a fantastic business, a staggering success, and not at all like the real world where the overwhelming majority of workers reside.

Have a fantastic day. And don't spend so much time on LinkedIn.