Career Success in the Digital Era: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Yet Exist

Digitization and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are advancing at speeds once thought impossible—revolutionizing the way we live and work, and driving labor needs in a transformed global workforce. Tech skills are in greatest demand, with innovations and breakthroughs occurring daily in nearly every industry.

As COVID-19 continues to accelerate digitization by decades, it’s predicted that up to 80 percent of jobs in 2030 do not yet exist. And while most workers recognize the need to constantly upskill and adapt in order to remain relevant and employable, a recent Monster.com poll indicates that 54 percent of workers already fear they don’t have the skill sets necessary to succeed in today’s “new normal.”

With technology changing so rapidly, and with so many “jobs of tomorrow” not yet existing, how do you know what skills will be valuable five years from now?

In a recent report, Defining the Skills Citizens Will Need in the Future of Work, McKinsey & Company analysts decided to determine future skill demand in a different way: Rather than using labor data to forecast future job creation, they identified fundamental skills essential to current job success regardless of industry, occupation, or decade.

Interviewing more than 18,000 people in 15 countries, researchers ultimately identified three criteria essential to career success across all industries and occupations. Workers must meet all three, and be able to:

Add value beyond what can be done by automated systems and intelligent machines
Operate in a digital environment
Continually adapt to new ways of working and new occupations

Analysts then identified 56 foundational skills over four key areas—digital (technical, specialized, and learned), cognitive, interpersonal, and self-leadership—that are not only essential to success in today’s job market but are imperative in order to adapt and thrive in the future.

The McKinsey report underscores the richness of an MBS education. While it identifies fundamental skills necessary to supplement and complement technical skills in the digital era, these fundamental skills and key areas are the same skills that every MBS student hones through MBS’s required business curricula—no matter their academic concentration,

Especially through courses that focus on essentials such as communications and leadership and comprehensive entrepreneurial skills.

Moreover, MBS students have ample opportunity to hone and apply these skills prior to graduation through experiential learning opportunities that include anchor programs such as the MBS Internships program and the unique Externship Exchange-, as well as executive coaching sessions in which students clearly identify and plan life and career goals.

Below are courses that correlate with the skills and skillsets identified as critical to navigating a future labor market:

Academic Courses

ALL Computer & Information Sciences Concentration Areas

Author(s): Jen Reiseman-Briscoe Published on: 08/04/2021

Career Success in the Digital Era: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Yet Exist

Academic Courses

ALL Computer & Information Sciences Concentration Areas

Academic Courses

Academic Courses

Career Resources and Experiential Programs

Academic Courses

Career Resources & Experiential Programs