Interesting research from Salesforce around the need for digital skills today. 

Picking up some highlights. 

Quick take: Salesforce’s new digital skills survey shows that the vast majority of global workers think skills are more important than education qualifications or career background. Most people leaders (98%) believe the shift to skills-based hiring provides business benefits.

  • 84% of global workers consider skills-based experience more important than a degree when trying to land a job in today’s market.
  • However, there’s a disconnect between the skills companies are hiring for and those currently used by the workforce. While 4 in 5 global workers report using digital skills in their day-to-day work, few report skills beyond collaboration technology, digital administration, and digital project management.

It is certainly what we are seeing out there.

We put this mismatch as to ignorance as to what "digital skills" are, this has because the word "digital" has been added to so many words to make processes sound modern.

Digital marketing for example, which is often seen as email marketing, which is 1990s technology and and digital advertising, where research shows that people just ignore it.  Afterall advertising was invented nearly 100 years ago in 1930s.

We had a client that employed somebody with 25 years digital marketing skills only to fire the person after six months as that person was qualified to work today. 

If you look at the employees who work for Salesforce, the authors of this report, very few are digital and very few have modern digital skills. In fact Salesforce, where one of the businesses that made layoffs only a few months ago which is an admission that things are not working.  

"The good news? There appears to be less fear — and more excitement — among workers about the potential of emerging technologies to transform the jobs of the future. This, paired with workers’ reported desire to learn new skills, suggests that companies can help close the digital skills gap by providing continuous, skills-based training to their employees.

Many, 2 in 5, cite digital skills as the most important candidate attribute — an indication of the growing weight of these skills in today’s workforce.

Again, we find that when employees are given proper, change based training and coaching they respond. And the workforce are desperate for skills.  We get people banging on our door, week after week, asking for the skills they need today. 


Want to understand the changes that have taken place through digital and what that means for business and the employee then check out my new book 

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.