Top Skills In Demand By Canadian Employers
The competition for talent, for some talent at least, is heating up around the globe. According to research conducted by LinkedIn, organizations in Canada are frequently competing with organizations around the world for employees with the same skills.
In a recent analysis of the hiring and recruiting activities of recruiters and organizations looking for talent on LinkedIn, LinkedIn identified the top 25 skills employers from around the globe were searching for. Across the globe there were more similarities than differences when it came to searching for skills on LinkedIn.
These top 25 skills Canadian employers are looking for:
| 1 Statistical Analysis and Data Mining | 2. Middleware and Integration Software |
| 3. Storage Systems and Management | 4. Software Revisions and Control Systems |
| 5. Web Architecture and Development Framework | 6. Mobile Development |
| 7. Network and Information Security | 8. Mac, Linus, and Unix Systems |
| 9. Data Engineering and Data Warehousing | 10. Java Development |
| 11 . User Interface Design | 12. Perl/Python/Ruby |
| 13. Shell Scripting Languages | 14. SAP ERP Systems |
| 15 Materials Engineering | 16. Electronic and Electrical Engineering |
| 17. Software Modeling | 18. Software QA and User Testing |
| 19. Algorithm Design | 20. Business Intelligence |
| 21. Microsoft Application Development | 22. Integrated Circuit (IC) Design |
| 23. Computer Graphics and Animation | 24. Economics |
| 25. C/C++ |
The # 1 skill globally did not even make Canada’s list of the top 25
According to LinkedIn, Canadian employers deviated only slightly from the rest of the world in the skills they were looking for. The top skill employers around the Globe were searching for (at least on LinkedIn) and Canadian employers were not included:
At # 1 Cloud and Distributed Computing
At # 3 Marketing Campaign Management
At #16 Channel Marketing
At # 21 Database Management and Software
At #25 Corporate Law and Governance
What did not stay in the top 25 in 2015
Some interesting insights from the LinkedIn data mining activity include the skills that dropped off the top skills list in 2015. Some of the more interesting ones included
- Game Development
- Digital and Online Marketing
- SAP ERP Systems
- Computer Graphics and Animation
- Integrated Circuit Design
- Recruiting
These skills remained in demand; they just were not as ‘in demand’ in 2015 as they were in 2014.
Organizations continue to increase their appetite for people who can mine and understand statistics and data or program software. In all countries researched the only skills to remain in the top 4 in each country was Statistical Analysis and Data Mining. It would appear that organizations are increasingly seeking employees who can gather, store, retrieve and analyse data.
What Does Workopolis Say About The Top Skills In Demand In Canada?
As they have for many years, Workopolis Canada’s surveyed Canadian employers to discover what skills employers say they are looking for in employees. Workopolis’s list produced a few different results compared to LinkedIn. The top 10 skills in demand according to Workopolis were:
- HTML5
- Social media platforms
- Big data
- nosql
- jQuery
- Tableau
- MongoDB
- Google Analytics
- JSON
- Revit
Over at IT World Canada, Canada needs to fill over 182,000 of these types of roles by 2019:
- Information systems analysts and consultants
- Computer and network operators and web technicians
- Computer programmers and interactive media developers
- Software engineers
- Graphic designers and illustrators
- Computer and information systems managers
- Database analysts and data administrators
What Does This Data Mean To Your Organization?
Your organization will be touched by the skills in demand in more ways than one. To keep your place in the market you will need to ensure you are finding, attracting and retaining employees who can meet the changing needs of your industry. Your organization may not develop software or design integrated circuit boards but the odds are the top skills in demand will play a role in how you do business.
Here are 3 ways to use this information to your advantage
- Identify which of these skills will have a short term and long term impact on your industry or business. You may not need a Python programmer but you may need something a Python programmer can give you so stop and ask yourself what may be on your agenda in one way or another for talent in the near future.
- Identify which of your employees has or is working on obtaining the latest skills in demand. If you do not have an employee ready or getting ready then consider the costs of finding a new employee vs. training an existing employee vs. hiring a short term contractor.
- Cultivate relationships with potential employees including, students (consider an internship or co-op placement), new immigrants, foreign workers seeking to come to Canada (check out Canada’s new Express Entry program for potential skills matches), staffing agencies and/or micro-businesses to partner up with.
The face of your workforce may be changing, try to ensure the new faces have the skill sets you need to remain competitive in an ever-changing market.