What skills does the workforce value most?

LinkedIn Learning used data from its network of over 660+ million professionals and 20+ million jobs to answer this question and to reveal the top soft and hard skills of 2020.

Interestingly, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and analytical reasoning were the first items on LinkedIn’s global list of the most in-demand hard skills last year. They’re there again this year, but a skill we weren’t even looking at a year ago — blockchain — tops the list of most in-demand hard skills for 2020. Blockchain is the most in-demand skill in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Australia. And other tech skills — cloud computing, analytical reasoning, AI, UX design, scientific computing — joined blockchain on the list of in-demand hard skills. As did a handful of other skills — affiliate marketing, sales, and video production — central to sales and marketing.

And in looking for soft skills, companies are focusing on candidates with emotional intelligence. While there are different definitions of it out there, we like the one given by Daniel Goleman, author of the 1995 best-seller Emotional Intelligence, who has defined it as a mix of self-awareness, self-regulation, social skill, empathy, and motivation. Other definitions refer to it as the ability to recognize emotions, your own and those of others, and to use emotional information as fuel for productive thinking and behavior.