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Year 2030: When Soft Skills Are More Unique than Tech Skills

Year 2030: When Soft Skills Are More Unique than Tech Skills

Predicting an emerging generation’s increased comfortability with technology but decreased emotional intelligence.

Josh Cadorette
September 01, 2022

Howdy from Media, PA,

Welcome to the 3 new subscribers from last week.

I'm wrapping up 2 weeks of vacation in Wyoming, Montana, and Pennsylvania.

Photos from my travels + my essay on trends in skill sets are included below.

Three trends will occur between 2020 and 2030.

Technical skills will become less of an x-factor in job interviews due to 3 emerging trends.

Trend #1. Technical skill education will become more affordable and accessible between 2020-2030 - meaning that the supply of technically skilled professionals will go up.

Trend #2. The rise of Generation Alpha as true digital natives from 2020-2030 will increase the supply of adaptable professionals.

Trend #3. Opportunities to teach soft skills will go down and cause a decrease in the supply of workers with soft skills.

I previously published an essay on these three trends. I'll do a quick rundown on each of them below. Should you find them interesting, click the link to read the essay.

Trend #1 Increased Technical Skill Education

Rapidly updated, off-the-shelf, remote curriculum modules will provide students with access to a wider range of up-to-date curricula than they have ever had before.

This will occur both inside and outside of the classroom.

The increased dissemination of technical skill education will increase the availability of technical skill sets from K-12/higher education to anyone with access to the internet.

Trend #2 The Rise of Digital Natives

The first generation of true digital natives will be Generation Alpha (born after 2010 - the same year that the iPad debuted.)

What are digital natives? People who can comfortably teach themselves a digital experience. It’s intuitive for them - no instructions or guidance needed.

Alpha is not the first generation that has been introduced to technology. They are the first generation whose lives are a holistic, end-to-end digital experience.

Technical skills will become commonplace with the emergence of Generation Alpha because they will no longer be pre-requisite for what they learn but for how they learn.

Trend #3 Decreased Soft Skill Learning Opportunities

Remote education, the same thing that will make technical skills more accessible and affordable, fails to create in-depth, experiential learning opportunities.

Human elements crucial to the long-term success of a team - the ability to listen, empathize, and facilitate group discussion without technology - cannot be taught in a 100% remote environment.

Generation Alpha will be more comfortable ordering takeout through a mobile app than talking on the phone. They’ll be more comfortable talking to customer service via chatbot than facilitating a conversation in-person.

These interpersonal interactions may seem small and insignificant, but compound 1000’s of them over the course of a lifetime and they become fundamental to our development. Without these interactions, soft skill development decreases.

Conclusion

The good news: entry-level professionals in 2030 will be equipped to take technical challenges on.

The bad news: these same professionals will not be as prepared to take on the human element of serving on a team.

2030 entry-level job applicants who are prepared with the ability to listen, empathize, and facilitate group discussion without technology will set themselves apart from their peers.

Call to action: we, the current leaders who shape the institutional and cultural fabric, need to take steps now to ensure that Generation Alpha has opportunities to hone its soft skills over the next couple of decades.

Photos of The Week

Location this past week: Jackson, WY -> Grand Teton National Park -> Yellowstone National Park -> Bozeman, MT --flight--> Philadelphia, PA -> Family Cabin in PA

9-mile hike with 2600ft of elevation gain to get to Delta Lake at the base of the Grand Teton (the tallest Teton at 13,766ft featured in the middle of this picture.) So good that I did the hike twice last week.