New and Emerging Roles
Our research also explicitly asked respondents about new and emerging job categories and functions that they expect to become critically important to their industry by the year 2020. Two job types stand out due to the frequency and consistency with which they were mentioned across practically all industries and geographies. The first are data analysts, which companies expect will help them make sense and derive insights from the torrent of data generated by technological disruptions. The second are specialized sales representatives, as practically every industry will need to become skilled in commercializing and explaining their offerings to business or government clients and consumers, either due to the innovative technical nature of the products themselves or due to new client targets with which the company is not yet familiar, or both. A particular need is also seen in industries as varied as Energy and Media, Entertainment and Information for a new type of senior manager who will successfully steer companies through the upcoming change and disruption.
Methodology
The Future of Jobs Report’s research framework has been shaped and developed in collaboration with the global Agenda Council on the Future of Jobs and the Global Agenda Council on Gender Parity, including leading experts from academia, international organizations, professional service firms and the heads of human resources of major organizations. Our analysis groups job functions into specific occupations and broader job families, based on a streamlined version of the O*NETlabour market information system used by researchers worldwide.
The dataset that forms the basis of the Report is the result of and extensive survey of CHROs and other senior talent and strategy executives from a total of 371 leading global employers, representing more than 13 million employees across 9 broad industry sectors in 15 major developed and emerging economies and regional economic areas.
Changes in Ease of recruitment
Given the overall disruption industries are experiencing, it is not surprising that, with current trends, competition for talent in in-demand job families such as Computer and Mathematical and Architecture and Engineering and other strategic and specialist roles will be fierce, and funding efficient ways of securing a solid talent pipeline a priority for virtually every industry. Most of these roles across industries, countries and job families are already perceived as hard to recruit for currently and with few exceptions the situation is expected to worsen significantly over the 2015-2020 period.
SKILLS STABILITY
In this new environment, business model change often translates to skill set disruption almost simultaneously and with only a minimal time lag. Our respondents report that a tangible impact of many of these disruptions on the adequacy of employees’ existing skill sets can already be felt in awide range of jobs and industries today.