WIP Matt Sigelman (1)

These 4 in-demand skills are spreading so fast, they’re becoming foundational

A conversation with Matt Sigelman, president, The Burning Glass Institute
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In this episode of Work in Progress, Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, joins me to discuss the how changing skills are disrupting the way we work, and what every job seeker and employer should do next.

In a report released December 1, How Skills are Disrupting Work, the Burning Glass Institute looks at how fast-emerging skills are disrupting the labor market. “These four skills – AI / machine learning, cloud computing, product management, and social media – are now required in 1 in 8 job postings representing 5 million job openings just over the last year,” according the the research.

“What we were interested in looking at is the skills that are doing the most to disrupt work,” Sigelman tells me. “These skills – by virtue of the fact that they’re spreading so fast – are coming to be foundational.”

These skills are growing the fastest and spreading the widest, says Sigelman, and that has the potential to be disruptive.

“Those sets of skills are where we see surging demand, where we predict continued surge in demand, and where we’re seeing them spread across sectors, across geographies. Those are the sets of skills where we probably already don’t have enough supply of talent and it’s going to get worse.

“That’s where you wind up upending the apple cart. These sets of skills are coming to define a set of jobs. Those jobs are hard to fill and they’re gonna get harder to fill.”

What does this mean for employers and workers?

“These are skills that are spreading from Silicon Valley to Main Street. If you’re an employer, this says you better be building that pipeline of talent, particularly if you’re an employer in a industry where maybe you actually don’t need this talent yet. They’re moving from the tech industry to every industry. Coming soon to theater near you, right? You need to be developing that pipeline today.”

“F or workers, this is an opportunity to put yourself in the cat bird seat in your career to be able to say, okay, where is the market going? What are the sets of skills that offer me not only the greatest value, the greatest pay premiums, and so forth, but what are the skills that are most likely to move me up.”

Sigelman and I dive deeper into the skills that are becoming fundamental and foundational, discussing how each applies in today’s job market.

You can listen to the entire podcast here, or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 253: Matt Sigelman, President, Burning Glass Institute
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.