The analysis by Bentley University emphasizes the growing demand for hybrid job candidates possessing both hard technical skills and soft skills across various industries, as employers increasingly seek versatile employees. Key findings include a significant demand for skills such as data analysis, business development, and collaboration, which are now critical for roles that historically relied more on soft skills. Organizations are urged to prepare future professionals with a well-rounded skill set combining technical proficiency with the ability to communicate and interpret data effectively.

1. Future-Proof
Your Career
WHY YOU NEED LEFT
AND RIGHT BRAIN
SKILLS FOR
TOMORROW’S JOBS
A Bentley University-commissioned analysis of labor market data

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2016 is the year of
the hybrid job.
Employers are looking for multi-faceted
candidates who boast both hard, technical
skills such as experience with database
technology, coupled with traditional soft
skills like communication and collabora-
tion – a hybrid employee. And they are
looking for them to fill positions that now
often require skills that were not traditionally
associated with that role, i.e., an HR
representative now needs experience with
social media platforms, etc.
Marketing Meets
Science.
One of the fastest growing areas of
expertise is data analysis and visualiza-
tion—and this is true if you are seeking a
job in marketing, IT, accounting or a host
of careers in between. Once associated
with an analyst position, big data skills are
now required across a range of functions
since companies need employees who
can derive insight from the vast amounts of
data available.
Measurement Meets
Performance.
Knowing how to measure and quantify
results in your job is essential today.
Employers want their staff to compile the
most important data, interpret it, and apply
it to their role and the business at large.
OVERVIEW
The future of job skills is not one of hard science versus emotional intelligence.
It’s one where hard and soft skills come together to create the hybrid job.
Bentley University partnered with labor market analytics firm Burning Glass to uncover which skills employers are looking for, what that means
for the future of certain jobs, and how educational institutions should be preparing the next generation of our workforce. Among the findings,
the research showed that:
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OVERVIEW
The Bentley PreparedU Project examined data from 24.5 million
U.S. company job listings from September 2014 to August 2015
and analyzed key jobs and skills across nine industries
representing different business, IT and analytics functions such as
data analysis, marketing, and human resources
While some of the specific skills in high
demand today may be outdated in a few
years, being adept and committed to life-long
learning will position employees well for long-
term career success.
Explore this eBook for more
information on what employers
are looking for in job candidates,
which skills to highlight, and how
to prepare for the career you
really want.
The research showed
that 71% of in-demand
skills are required
across two or more
job categories.
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The 21st-century workplace demands employees be versatile, with a range of skills and experience. But which skills are most important to have
on a resume today and which bring in the highest salaries? Across the nine job functions involved in the analysis, including roles in IT, marketing and
finance, here are three of the top skills (and the average salaries associated with them) that employers are seeking:
Business development. This skill was present across nine
job categories, underscoring the importance of being able to sell,
regardless of industry. Solid strategy, sales and relationship
building skills are critical for business development success.
Employers value staff who can talk passionately about their
products and services and close deals. Salaries in business
development range from $60,000 to more than $98,000.
Employers are seeking employees with big data skills in eight
industries. How those skills are applied (including technology
platforms used) differs by industry, company and even individual
job descriptions. The ability to compile, analyze and apply big
data to everyday business decisions is driving big change. In the IT
space, big data roles have seen a nearly 4,000% jump in demand
with salaries averaging around $123,000.
The increased need for analytics is driving demand for mathematics
skills as well. It is increasingly important for people in non-math-
based roles to be able to crunch numbers, from marketing
professionals setting their quarterly budgets to someone
overseeing overall operations of a small business. Average salaries
range from $46,000 to $87,000.
Soft skills are also in high demand. Employers want to hire people
who can think critically and have strong communications
skills. Collaboration, decision making and
mentoring are sought after skills across industry lines. Demand
for collaboration skills is up 88%, decision-making is up 87% and
mentoring is up 73%. Jobs requiring these skills have salaries
ranging from $76,000 to nearly $93,000.
ImportantToday’s Most Important
Skills
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Previously popular
stand-alone jobs have seen
a decline as these skills
become mainstream and
integrated into other roles.
For instance, postings for social media
strategists have fallen 64% in the last
five years, even as the skill of social media
strategy has risen sharply in human
resource jobs (up 376%), sales jobs (up
150%) and marketing and PR positions
(up 117%).
Skills that are seeing the highest
growth in demand across multiple job
functions include measurement using key
performance indicators (KPIs) with 218%
growth, and social media with
160% growth.
Specialized Skills Go Mainstream

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Total demand, growth and salary are solid indicators for the type of positions that employers are trying
to fill and the skills needed to be successful. Our analysis found:
IT, Sales & Finance Top Total
Demand
IT, sales and finance are the largest career
areas in terms of total demand for jobs.
Over the past 12 months, each had more
than 1.5 million job postings.
Data Scientist, It Security
& Emerging Sectors Are
Growing the Fastest
Most of the fastest-growing occupations are
related to data analysis such as data scientist,
information security such as fraud analyst, or
emerging digital technologies such as mobile
application developers. Overall, research and
analysis jobs have grown more than any other
job function at 72% since 2011.
IT Skills Get the Top
Salaries
Another indicator of in-demand skills: salary.
Management and operations, IT and research
and analysis roles command the biggest
pay, with each reporting average salaries
around $70,000. IT roles command three out
of the top four positions. The most lucrative
occupations include high-level finance, big data
and IT which all report starting salaries at an
average of $90,000.
Demand, Growth and Salary
Ranges
Demand, Growth and Salary
Ranges Reveal Today’s Hottest
Career Areas
DEMAND GROWTH SALARY

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Big Data is Driving Big Changes in IT
With the amount of data in the world growing exponentially, it comes as no surprise that
the top four skills by salary and percentage growth in the IT industry that have seen the
biggest growth all relate to big data. Collecting, analyzing and acting upon large data sets is critical for business growth
and innovation. Developing actionable insights about customers and using data to measure business objectives are just two examples of how data can
help businesses thrive. Experience with big data alone saw four-digit growth over the past year.
Jobs in big data, which encompass several skills and is a term that has slightly different meaning depending on the industry, saw the most growth. Since
2011, there has been 695% growth in the number of data scientist jobs available, demand for data analysts is up 121% and data architects is up 55%.
Demand for IT skills grew an impressive 3,977% and is tied to more than 56,000 job openings. Roles requiring big data skills have an average salary of
$123,057, second only to those positions seeking Apache Hadoop (an open source framework) skills.

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broadest
IT isn’t just about the data
though. Employees need to be able to
effectively communicate what the data
means, and explain how it applies to the
big picture business objectives. In addition
to the technical requirements to work in
IT, there is still a strong and growing need
for employees to be able to collaborate
(109% growth) and mentor colleagues
(70% growth).
IT is one of the broadest career
industries, requiring skills including:
• 56,441 openings
• 11% growth
• 102,316 openings
• 76% growth
• NoSQL
• 52,893 openings
• 1,002% growth
• Apache Hadoop
• 59,736 openings
• 704% growth
Accounting MATHEMATICS Knowledge of big
data-related tools

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Data Scientists are a great example of the hybrid IT job. They have to deal with large amounts of data and understand
how to use the right tools to filter, sort and organize data as efficiently as possible. This requires strong technical skills.
The ability to identify patterns in the data is more of an artistic skill but is as critical as technical experience. Understanding
whether a pattern might have an important ramification to the business or is an anomaly requires business acumen.
They also need to communicate what the data means. Having all of these skills allows them to turn data into actionable
information because data on its own isn’t useful. It’s the information and insight that comes from it that matters.”
Adam Stewart
Vice President of Engineering, Autotask
Forward-thinking IT leaders have always pushed their teams to be not just technology experts but business experts
as well. With Big Data, this imperative has become vastly more important. In short, if you are an IT professional who
doesn’t care what the data means for the business, your days are numbered.”
Rama Ramakrishnan
Chief Data Scientist at Demandware
WHAT THIS MEANSWHAT THIS MEANS
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On The Rise
Demand for Technical
Skills in Marketing & PR
On The Rise
The widespread application of big data
and digitization are forcing career areas
traditionally based on soft skills to expand
to include non-traditional hard skills.
This is particularly evident in the field of marketing and PR.
Employers still want employees who can handle customer
relationship management (102% growth) and content
management (131% growth), but they expect them to accomplish
these tasks by applying insights achieved through work with
technology, such as Oracle databases (329% growth), Google
Analytics (232% growth) and the database language Oracle SQL
(58% growth).

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Our analysis also showed that roles requiring the technical skills mentioned above
also demanded the highest salaries. As the use of technology becomes more pervasive in
marketing and PR, soft skills such as the ability to collaborate (128% growth) and be concise (60%
growth) will become even more important as the need for team work and interpretation grow.
To succeed in marketing and PR, employees must be able to design and execute campaigns, but
the real value lies in the ability to measure success and this is underscored by the fact that KPI
demand is up 319% and mathematics is up 66%.

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Marketing has become a technology-powered discipline, and therefore marketing organizations must infuse technical
capabilities into their DNA. Today’s marketing landscape has been hit by a perfect storm of marketing technology due
to a number of factors including the high-velocity economics of software innovation and the shift from old to new media
demanding demonstrable ROI. As a result, there’s a surge in demand for some of the hottest jobs in our industry:
marketing technologists and marketing CTOs.“
Scott Brinker
Co-founder and CTO, ion interactive and Editor, ChiefMartec.com
What is necessary now is for colleges and universities to develop a community of students with a set of skills uniquely
positioned for both left and right brain thinking. Graduates need to know data analytics and possess critical marketing
skills but they also need to be able to create connections, communicate and tell a good story. If you can’t tell a story with
the data it just remains as data.”
Ian Cross
Lecturer and Director of the Center for Marketing Technology, Bentley University
“ WHAT THIS MEANS
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WHAT THIS MEANS

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More Than Math
Success isn’t just about the numbers. Rather, it’s
about reading the market and finding opportunities. One way to do that is to stay
on top of business needs. The job market in finance, banking and accounting
reflects current market conditions. For instance, the rise and fall of the housing
market impacted the need for risk managers and financial advisors versus
bank managers.
Jobs are on the rise that require critical thinking skills, such as fraud analyst
(137% growth), merger and acquisition specialist (126% growth), and
financial aid and loan counselor (86% growth). To be successful in these
fields, employers need to understand human behavior and its impact on risk
and investments.
Employers are seeking professionals who can think critically, communicate what
the numbers mean and apply that reasoning to business decisions, whether it is
setting the fiscal year budget or identifying strategic investment
opportunities. The need for data analysis skills grew 104% and the need for
strong decision-making abilities is up 100%. Being able to do the math is no
longer enough to get ahead.
Finance and Accounting:
More Than Math
Finance and Accounting:

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Accounting positions and skills
are still in highest demand with
709,544 current job openings.
Employers want employees who still understand the
basics such as Pivot Tables (205% growth) and not
surprising either is the fact that positions that require tax
planning skills top the charts when it comes to average
salaries reported at $96,590.
Thanks to technological advances, businesses are inundated with data and increasingly challenged as to how to
organize that data, interpret what it means and use it to drive competitive advantage. To be successful in this changing
environment students need hands-on training in the latest technology, need to know how to glean insights and search
for patterns in a broad data set and how to effectively communicate those findings to colleagues to drive decisions.
As educators, we need to move away from ensuring students merely know how to calculate a formula or memorize a
chapter or an arcane theory from a textbook. Employers today look for students having hands-on interaction with the
actual presentation and modeling tools that are being used in the real world.”
Kristina Minnick
Finance Professor, Bentley University
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To be successful in sales, it’s more
important than ever to be well-versed in
all the technical aspects of a particular
industry. According to Daniel Pink, in his book To Sell
is Human, some companies may be losing as much as 40%
of their sales talent going into 2016 due to attrition, which
will contribute to the creation of two million new sales jobs
by 2020. This generational change in the industry highlights
the importance of effective knowledge transfer from retiring
workers to new employees in the critical onboarding process.
To make the knowledge transfer successful, sales
professionals must keep pace with industry-specific
technology advancements which require knowledge of both
technology platforms and their application. The area for
highest growth in sales skills is with Oracle (382% growth).
Knowledge of customer relationship management technology
platforms such as Salesforce (292% growth) is also in high
demand. While technical skills are critical, there is still a clear
need for universities to teach courses that address
negotiating, effective selling techniques, sales strategy and
interpersonal relations in management. Management training
saw an increase in demand by 321%.
Master
the Art
of Selling
By Industry

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Buyers today have more information available at their fingertips than ever before, which means they engage with
salespeople much later in the buying process. Good sales professionals, no matter what industry, must be able to
quickly diagnose the unknown, underlying issues and offer solutions to issues the buyer might not realize they have.
And that’s not enough. A successful sales professional will turn into a buyer’s trusted advisor by constantly consuming
relevant industry information and curating that information so they focus the buyer’s attention on the pieces of
information that will best serve their needs.”
Jim Pouliopoulos
Founding Director of the Professional Sales Program, Bentley University
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Human resources is a key driver for attracting
and retaining talent for an organization.
HR reps are often a job candidate’s first exposure to a company and
can set the tone for the entire experience. As expected, the demand for
versatile skills in HR has increased and given rise to a hybrid job where
HR professionals are expected to have a diverse range of skills from
onboarding to social media to business development.
For skills on the rise, our analysis found the following were in highest
demand for HR: recruitment processing and outsourcing (RPO) which
grew 993%. In fact, all recruiting skills saw an increase of more than
100%. Social media grew 376%, which is not surprising given the
increased use of LinkedIn and other social media properties used to
find suitable job candidates. In an HR role, the perfect pairing of hard
and soft skills is critical to help navigate corporate culture, employee
relations, training, onboarding, as well as contract management and
benefits administration.
HR: Demand for Versatile
Skills on the Rise

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We believe that the game is changing for the HR profession and that great HR practitioners have a blend of harder
business skills coupled with the softer skills that allow them to work with teams to build engaging corporate cultures.
Versatile skills are required, starting with good business basics like the ability to understand key business metrics and
aggregate data, coupled with marketing/brand knowledge and goal setting/ project management skills to drive results.
HR is a key driver for building the corporate culture resulting in powerful programs that create employee engagement,
enhanced productivity, and a powerful employer brand/reputation.”
Laura Kerekes
Chief Knowledge Officer, ThinkHR
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With the rise of big data, it should be no surprise that careers in the area of research and analysis are at the forefront of big data skills adoption.
There is a significant increase in the need for knowledge in big data platforms and coding languages such as Tableau and Python, which allow
companies to better visualize and analyze data. Analysis showed a 1,582% growth in the need for Tableau and 456% growth in the need for
Python. Roles requiring Python also have the highest average salary, coming in at $119,794.
Analyzing the data is not enough though.
Employees need to be able to apply it to
make informed, strategic business
decisions (66% growth). Employers
want research and analysis professionals
who can lead and mentor other
employees (52% growth), as well as the
ability to understand the risks associated
with their decisions, and manage and
mitigate those risks appropriately
(74% growth).
Understanding How to Apply
Data through Research and
Analysis
through Research and
Analysis

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In a rapidly changing job market, students and job seekers need be fluent in the technical skills that matter today and they
need to continue learning in order to keep up with the skills of tomorrow. They must also remember to hone the skills that
will never become obsolete such as how to ask probing analysis questions, how to make meaning out of data, and how
to communicate effectively with colleagues.”
Dan Restuccia
Chief Analytics Officer, Burning Glass
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Moving Beyond the BasicsMoving Beyond the Basics
with Management and
Operations
Management and operations is a broad career category encompassing roles and skills from
contract management (29% growth) to enterprise resource planning (70% growth) to technical
support (65% growth). To be relevant, employees on a management/operations career path
must diversify their skill sets and take on more non-traditional management tasks.
The largest growth area for management and
operations is succession planning (381%
growth). Other top areas for growth include
project management (the use of Scrum
saw a 260% growth), record keeping
(250% growth), results measurement
(KPIs saw a 232% growth) and asset
protection (205% growth). Roles that require
more technical skills come with the highest
salaries. For instance, positions requiring
JAVA have an average salary of $103,026.

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To differentiate themselves, students and job seekers looking to pursue a management career must have a solid
combination of both hard and soft skills. For example, in some of my classes, I use a case simulation tool that requires
students to work in teams where they must assess key performance indicators using technical skills. However, to make
effective decisions and accomplish their goals as group, they must also sharpen their communication and
collaboration skills.”
Jill Brown
Associate Professor of Management, Bentley University
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Design and Web Development:
The rise of the hybrid job has impacted design and web development. While traditional design skills such as those used in Photoshop are still
required in more than 34,000 job openings, there has been exponential growth in web skills associated with new programming languages,
platforms, etc. A qualified candidate must be a “jack of all trades.” In fact, the skill that saw the biggest growth was knowledge of Node.js,
a platform used to develop web applications, with demand up by 2,493%.
People on this career path are also typically early
adopters of new technology and are instrumental
in identifying which new tools are available and
which ones can benefit their industry. To
succeed, individuals need to be at the forefront
of technological developments and how they
can be applied to branding strategy, data
visualization (i.e., big data), mobile apps and
UI/UX (user interface/user experience).
Design and Web Development:
Early Adopters of New Technology

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In today’s market, design is no longer just for the web – it’s everywhere. From mobile, to industrial, to architectural, and
beyond, designers today must be more creative and sophisticated in their thinking and know that successful products
are no longer just about function or appearance but about user experience. Employers are looking for a candidate who
can bring that experience to light by properly conducting an interview, administering a survey, and gaining insight from
that data. In addition to learning the latest in technical design skills, students in our program gain a deep understanding
of human behavior, which is the key to developing an immersive product experience.”
Bill Gribbons
Director of the Masters in Human Factors in Information Design, Bentley University
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