The Skills Most Likely To Land You A Job In 2015 | HuffPost

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Digital literacy is becoming essential for most jobs. Keeping up with the trends and technologies of how people communicate and share information is also essential for career success. Once upon a time, reading and writing were considered the basic skills for most jobs. Digital literacy has become the new literacy.

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Career and marketing expert, Peter Harris has served as chief editor @ Workopolis, Yahoo!, Sympatico, MSN & Monster. Co-founder of Yackler, a content marketing start-up.

Career and marketing expert, Peter Harris has served as chief editor @ Workopolis, Yahoo!, Sympatico, MSN & Monster. Co-founder of Yackler, a content marketing start-up.

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The month of December is a good time to look back at the trends that shaped 2015. The team at Workopolis analysed the content of millions of online job postings to determine what Canadian employers were looking for this year. We've come up with the most frequently requested skills in job ads, emerging skillsets that are trending upwards in demand and the hot sectors for hiring.

The top 10 most common skills listed in Canadian job descriptions:

Communication skills

Writing

Customer relations

Sales

Organizational skills

Microsoft Office

Policy analysis

Supervisory skills/leadership

Problem solving

Teamwork

Digital literacy is becoming essential for most jobs

Keeping up with the trends and technologies of how people communicate and share information is also essential for career success. Once upon a time, reading and writing were considered the basic skills for most jobs. Digital literacy has become the new literacy.

Along with those soft skills we can see a high level of demand for digital literacy and computer skills. This is particularly true in the areas of document production, filing and sharing. Among the top skills sought after in job postings are the following collection:

Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, PowerPoint

Microsoft Works

Reports

Documentation

Computer use

Digital literacy is evolving to include more advanced computer skills as well, as among the hottest of the up-and-coming skill requirements appearing in job postings are coding and social media savvy.

Social media skills are becoming essential for an increasingly wide range of roles beyond community managers, including human resources; sales; designers and developers; and, of course, marketing.

Hot skills 2015

These are the skills that have been appearing with the greatest increased frequency through 2014 to the present. The fastest-rising demand for skills tends to be in the technology, data analytics and health care sectors -- indicating increased hiring in these industries.

The top ten skills for rising demand in 2015

HTML5

Social media platforms

Big data

nosql

jQuery

Tableau

MongoDB

Google Analytics

JSON

Revit

While not quite making the top 10 list, other fast-emerging skills in job postings include such health-related terms as pharmacy, patient care, therapy and health informatics.

What were employers looking for in 2015? Canadian employers want candidates with demonstrated work ethic plus communications, customer relations and teamwork abilities who can use computers to create and share documents and spreadsheets, and who keep up with the latest technologies. Highlighting these in your resume and during job interviews can be the key to breaking into the job market.

Get all the latest career opportunities, insights and advice on Workopolis.com.

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