As digital technologies and strategies evolve, the skills people need at entry-level and as experienced professionals are constantly changing.
To ensure your educational offerings are aligned with the needs of the booming job market, those in charge of reviewing and updating portfolios at colleges, universities, and training providers need to know what skills tomorrow’s workers need.
In this article, we explore six roles gaining importance in organizations across industries that educators need to cater to attract students and ensure long-term business success in 2018 and beyond…
Experience Officers
Skills needed: Customer engagement, social media expertise, social listening skills, digital technology know-how
By 2020, 40% of Chief Digital Officers will report to Chief Experience Officers (CXOs) because consumers are more empowered and demand a superior digital experience.
The Experience Officer is responsible for ensuring positive interactions with an organization’s external customers by leveraging many platforms or technologies – and it’s a role that’s fast replacing the Customer Officer.
Developing a wide range of skills within marketing and technology is vital to understanding the evolution of customer experiences. Managing the full experience that customers enjoy with brands also requires an unwavering focus on individuals plus the ability to identify how a brand can enrich or offer genuine value to their lives.
Sales Enablement Specialists
Skills needed: Social app skills, CRM experience, client management, digital research, relationship building
According to Forrester, sales enablement is a strategic, continuous process that equips all client-facing staff to spark valuable conversations with the right set of customer stakeholders consistently. And the most efficient sales enablement specialists will be able to do so at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return on investment of the selling system.
Now a critical role in any business looking to connect with their clients in the digital realm, sellers skilled in sales enablement management can turn prospects effectively into customers. Sellers can connect with a broader range of clients using platforms such as Savo and report a year-on-year growth higher than many leading Fortune 500 companies.
Valuable sales enablement specialists must bridge the skills gap between digital marketing and traditional sales techniques.
Growth Hacker
Skills needed: Analytics, big data, digital strategy and planning, programming, advanced research
One of the fastest-growing roles in the digital age is growth hacking. An individual with a passion and focus on pushing a metric using a testable and scalable methodology, a growth hacker role typically lives in a place where marketing and product development meet and hone in on customer and user acquisition, activation, retention, and upsell.
One of the key aspects of any growth hacker, whatever their background, is their passion for, dependence upon, and understanding of analytics. Traditional marketers can morph into their role by narrowing their focus and deepening their skillset.
One of the greatest modern-day growth hacking success stories belongs to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn grew its customer base by implementing a growth hacking campaign that allowed users to create public profiles. This move was brilliant as it ensured that user profiles showed up organically in search results (a metric it could track and build upon with ease), expanding the network’s reach and boosting brand awareness.
With a mix of innovation and data-driven actions, LinkedIn managed to grow from 2 to 200 million users in a matter of years – a big driver for that is growth hacking.
Specialists
57% of B2B marketers stated that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) generates more leads than any other marketing initiative. And today, more people search on their mobiles than on computers.
As a result, search engine optimization has been the cornerstone of almost every online business for over a decade. While there’s no clear-cut academic route to becoming a technical SEO specialist, one of the most valuable skill sets one can have is adapting to constant change and upskilling continuously.
With every Google algorithm change or new best practice guidelines, an SEO specialist must evolve, and agencies tend to grow their talent, passing on the secret of their SEO audit to fresh generations.
The ability to optimize content across various digital mediums and engage audiences on a personal level while using ethical, technical techniques to perform well in organic search results is a must if your graduates want to compete in 2018 and beyond.
Digital Sales Leaders
Skills needed: Social media expertise, social listening, digital research, content curation, CRM experience, data analysis
Since the dawn of the commercial age, brands and businesses have needed sales professionals to close deals and push their products. But, sales teams are no longer what they used to be – now, a certain level of digital sophistication is required.
With digital technologies presenting various opportunities to engage with customers at crucial times of the buying cycle, digital sales leaders must lead sellers into the digital age to encourage loyalty and drive conversions.
According to a recent study, 75% of B2B leaders regularly use social media to make decisions. So, of course, in today’s world, the ability to leverage various social media channels to engage with a target audience is essential.
In addition, the modern digital sales leader must make robust data-driven decisions, have the confidence to take risks, possess the vision to reorganize their team to encourage communication and collaboration and deliver commercial initiatives quickly.