What are Hybrid Job Roles?
It wasn’t very long ago that having one skill and utilizing it could get you very far. Especially if that skill was a highly sought after technical skill, such as a social media strategist or a data analyst. But, as the face of the workforce is changing, so is the role of the worker. Excelling in one area isn’t cutting it anymore as employers favour candidates that have a cross-section of skills.
Hybrid jobs are merging two or more distinct skill sets into one position, in particular, hard skills and soft skills. Burning Glass Technologies identified five basic categories that these skills can fall into in their white paper “THE HYBRID JOB ECONOMY How New Skills Are Rewriting the DNA of the Job Market” 2019:
- Big data and analytics
- The intersection of design and development
- Sales and customer service
- Emerging digital technologies
- Evolving compliance and regulatory landscape
Hard Skills
Hard skills are more technical, requiring special training or schooling and are job-specific. Hard skills are generally teachable, and measurable. Employers are looking for people who not only have the hard skills required for the position but are willing to add to them. Continuous learning is integral to hybrid positions as they are more complex and require a level of flexibility to learn, grow, and adapt to newer and better technologies as they come along.
Examples of hard skills:
- Coding
- SQL
- Marketing
- SEO
- Data Analysis
- Welding
- Accounting
- HTML
Having these skills and being able to put them on your resume will certainly get your foot in the door for some companies, but once you are there you will need to WOW them with your array of soft skills if you want to be of value.
Soft Skills
Soft skills are those that do not necessarily apply job-specific. They are the skills that will be valuable to any position and are often seen as coming more “naturally” to some people.
Example of soft skills:
- Leadership
- Collaboration
- Time management
- Organization
- Strong work ethic
What’s great about having these skills, they will often get your foot in the door to a place where you can learn the hard skills needed on the job. For example, a sales manager that is a natural leader with a strong work ethic, and good organizational skills can learn data analysis to help optimize sales strategies.
How to Stay Competitive in a Hybrid Job Market
To be competitive for a hybrid role having a myriad of skills to pull from will help separate you from the rest of the pack who are only able to specialize. Here are a few trends to keep in mind that will help keep you one step ahead:
- Data analysis, interpretation, and the application of the results are becoming necessities for almost every position
- Social media strategy is a skill that is rising in demand for human resource jobs, sales jobs, and marketing PR jobs
- Learning to sell – yourself, and any product or service is necessary for nearly every profession
- Learning a little code never hurt anyone
Do you need assistance in matching your skills with the right position? Contact Marketers on Demand today!