LinkedIn Adds New ‘Future of Skills’ Data Tool to Highlight Key Industry Trends

This is interesting – this week, LinkedIn has launched a new ‘Future of Skills’ interactive tool, which enables you to dig into the latest skills trends for any job role, in order to glean more insight into what employers are looking for, and what people are listing on their LinkedIn profiles for each position.

As you can see here, the new tool, which you can try out for yourself here, enables you to select a country, industry and job title, each of which can be searched by entering keywords into the respective field.

You can then get an overview of key skills trends for each, based on how LinkedIn members have listed such on their profile.

The tool also enables you to more easily view each trend, and check out similar skills which may have changed name, by hovering over any listed skill, which will then indicate how it’s changed over time.

It’s worth noting that the skills listed are based on what LinkedIn members display on their profiles, not on job listings, so it’s not necessarily a direct indicator of what’s ‘in demand’ as such. But then again, you would assume that those in each industry would also be updating their profiles over time, so the overall trends should reflect industry shifts either way, even if this isn’t an exact representation of what businesses are looking for in their job ads.

It could be a handy research tool, not just for job seekers, but also for marketers and those conducting audience research, as it could highlight potential new opportunities in each sector, based on shifts.

For example, if you’re marketing to artists, you can get an idea of key skill trends in that sector, which could highlight new opportunities to reach these consumers with more focused campaigns – like a tutorial on Adobe Lightroom, or insights on product photography to boost supplementary income.

There’s a range of opportunities here – you can check out LinkedIn’s new ‘Future of Skills’ tool here.