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Technical and scientific progress, along with the development of AI, lead us to the digitalization of various processes in our lives. As a result, digital skills have become one of the most important sets of skills in the workplace. If ten years ago, some businesses wanted to go digital to try something new, companies have to correspond the digital trends to exist and be competitive.
According to the UNESCO definition, digital skills are the abilities of a person to use digital gadgets, applications, and networks to access and manage information. Therefore, basic digital skills nowadays are a significant component of literacy in reading or writing.
After the whole world went online, new possibilities for work emerged. Along with them appeared new problems and challenges. Jobseekers can solve them if they understand and acquire key digital skills. If you want to invest in your professional development, digital skills are a priority. The number of skills a person needs to build a career online is enormous, so let’s dwell on the essential ones.
Time Management & Communications
The organization of working processes can only be done with digital tools nowadays. It doesn’t matter if you’re a team lead or a specialist – all workers should know how to manage their time and tasks during the working day. Making a schedule and a list of tasks in a notebook will not work. It is more effective to do it with special tools and software.
Many organizations use Google Spreadsheets and Notion to arrange the work processes. Workers from Skill hub use Trello for these purposes. Others prefer JIRA or Monday. In all these tools, you can assign a task to the person (tag him), attach files, specify the due date and leave comments. Besides daily tasks, it’s also necessary to sustain the schedule of work calls. Google Calendar might be very helpful in this case.
Digital tools facilitate communication at the workplace too. For example, after the lockdown in 2020, more companies switched to the remote working mode or the hybrid one (when you have free time to work remotely or not). That is why sustaining all employees’ communication in one messenger is essential. One of the most popular messengers for business is Slack – it has 12+ million active users now.
2. Behaving Safely and Legally Online
Without knowing the basics of cybersecurity, a person puts at stake her privacy and the private information of the company he’s working for. It means everyone who wants to build a successful career in 2022 should follow the rules of information hygiene. For instance, please don’t click on suspicious links, block unknown pop-ups, clean cookies regularly, create reliable passwords, and change them occasionally.
These actions help to avoid considerable online damage, like private information leakage or identity theft. Stats prove that nearly 78% of data leaks happen because of the staff’s careless behavior. Workers that don’t know the basics of working with corporate data put the whole business in danger.
A manager with basic cybersecurity skills will never insert an unknown flash drive into the corporate computer. He wouldn’t open an email with “You won a million” on its title and won’t click on a pop-up advertisement on a suspicious website. All these things are very significant to preserve a reputation of a reliable company and sustain the smooth operation of all the systems that affect the performance of the business.
3. Information Research
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It’s basic and general, but many people search for information online and fail to find it. Or they fail to distinguish a good resource from the bad one and don’t use the tools they have at their maximum. People in the digital industry always have tasks involving online research.
A person should find a suitable keyword to find a trustworthy and useful source online. A keyword that will get you to the relevant resources should be specific. It means that it has to consist of 2-3 words.
The next critical approach of digital research is the ability of a person to distinguish true information from facts. The person should compare facts from different resources, study other points of view, and detect fakes.
Search engines are one of many ways to look for information online. However, not all webpages are included in the database of search engines, especially if we talk about social media platforms and digital libraries. That is why, to fulfill your request, you must try different search techniques.
4. Work With Text Data
No matter what your job is, you will have to work with text documents for sure. Accountants, developers, and marketers – all use texts in their daily work. It can be reports, results of the research, or materials for presentations. Therefore, knowing how to manage text files and keep all necessary data organized and in access is essential.
If you don’t want to lose useful articles and tutorials, upload the webpages to the could and archive them. Use apps for notes, like Google Keep or Evernote, to write down your ideas or anything you find significant. You can use both of these services on different devices and synchronize them.
5. Master the Tools Relevant To Your Job
People pursuing a career in digital marketing or information technologies must be ready to answer the question, “What tools software do you use in work?” Some specialists cannot work without special software; for example, motion designers must be proficient in Adobe After Effects and Blender.
There is a range of tools without which marketers can’t do their job:
- Hootsuite – a website where a specialist can manage all his social media accounts from various platforms;
- Hotjar – a tool that reveals the online behavior of the users;
- Ahrefs – powerful SEO analytics tool;
- SimilarWeb – the tool to monitor competitors of the website;
- Meta Business Suite – a free tool that centralizes Facebook, Instagram, and messaging tools in one place;
- Photoshop, Canvas, and Snapseed – effective photo editing tools for visual content.
Final Thoughts
Jobseekers should master basic digital skills to build a successful career and business in 2022. They need to:
- Have cybersecurity awareness.
- Know how to research and present information.
- Be able to work the text data.
- Learn how to use specific tools for their position and be proficient at time management tools.