Week Two - Top Skills

LinkedIn’s job search feature has proven to be very useful - and is something that I am rather familiar with. I found the job post for my current internship through LinkedIn and was able to secure the spot. After searching for social media marketing jobs, I was surprised to see how many volunteer positions came up. The other jobs that were posted listed useful information such as salary or hourly range, if benefits were offered, and the location and company of the job. Many social media marketing jobs were looking for a bachelor’s degree plus a few years of experience in the field. LinkedIn also provides helpful features that allow you to narrow down the search by using different filters. 

For the data from 2018 provided by CASA, I was interested to see what kind of skills were most sought after during that year. The type of marketing that was mentioned during this time was SEO/SEM Marketing, and it was nearing the bottom of the list of most valued skills. In 2018, it seems that digital marketing had not evolved to the efficiency it provides today. Although social media marketing did not make the list explicitly, I was interested to see that a lot of the skills listed dealt with computers and online work. The internet has provided many opportunities for companies to expand their reach, and these desired skills attest to that. 

In 2021, digital marketing made the list of top five skills that were considered “hard” and desired. This was not a surprise to me seeing as social media and digital content are arguably a huge part of what makes a company successful nowadays. We live in an era where it is frowned upon or seen as strange if a company doesn’t have any source of social media. There are several great and free platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, that companies can use to advance their business. I also believe that the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on this list. Businesses relied on online advertisements to keep them afloat during such a difficult time.