Data expertise is now the most sought after skill among global enterprises, with demand for courses tripling since 2019, according to a new study.
Digital skills online training provider Circus Street has released data that suggests how skills training priorities for businesses have changed before, during and after the pandemic.
Its analysis showed that in 2019, businesses favoured a range of marketing skills including performance, social media, mobile, as well as general ecommerce skills, what the firm described as “a mix of training that had largely remained unchanged in previous years”.
Interestingly, many of the training priorities before the pandemic have not reemerged” – Richard Townsend, QA
The company, whose clients include Coca-Cola, Nike, GM, Pfizer, and Nestlé, looked at the most popular skills courses from 2019-2022, covering 388 companies and 755,000 employees.
It said that as the pandemic hit in 2020, customer experience and ecommerce skills soared in popularity as businesses were forced to acquire new expertise in response to lockdowns. A quarter of training in 2020 was related to customer experience and ecommerce, falling to 8% in 2022.
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However, 2021 showed a clear shift to focus on digital transformation with 27% of courses taken focusing on these skills, up from 7% in 2020. Digital transformation training then fell to 13% in 2022 as data skills training gained in popularity.
In 2019, just 9% of training was dedicated to data skills, before falling to 7% in 2021. But by the end of 2022, four of the five most popular courses taken throughout the year were data-related, accounting for 33% of all training. Last year also saw renewed interest in agile project management training – up from 8% in 2021 to 14% in 2022.
Richard Townsend, CEO of QA – the owner of Circus Street, said many of the training priorities from before the pandemic had not resurface: “Before the pandemic there was a much wider mix of skills being acquired, that varied slightly year to year. We then see lockdowns causing a huge surge in ecommerce training and then, as many businesses realised they had not adequately digitalised their operations, a real push to acquire more digital transformation skills.
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“There’s no denying that data skills are now the most sought after expertise from businesses right across the world. In 2019 it accounted for a small percentage of training, now over a third of all courses are data related. Interestingly, many of the training priorities before the pandemic have not reemerged. Mobile and social marketing are no longer priorities, and skills such as SEO are also declining in popularity. This could indicate that the pandemic may have had a permanent impact on business priorities.”
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