How to identify the skills you need to upskill for 2025 (and beyond)

Every year there are reports about the skills needed to get ahead, climb ladders, change careers, and generally succeed in professional life. Which is great. Lifelong learning and continuous improvement are how we stay sharp (and stay employable). 88% of employers find it hard to get employees with the necessary skills, and 49% of them look to hire new talent when approaching skills shortages within their organisation. In other words, the broader your skillset, the more options you’ll have.  

But how exactly can you identify areas for upskilling? What direction should you take? How can we identify our professional weaknesses? And what’s the best place to start?  

Assess your current skills 

As in most cases, we start by assessing what we’ve got already. Our skills, talents and areas of expertise. There are a few ways to do this. Online skills framework tools, like SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age) can help you map your current skills against industry benchmarks, to help you see how you measure up. There are plenty of online assessment platforms in areas like coding, data analysis and cybersecurity, too, if you’re after sector-specific evaluation. Lastly, there’s old-school SWOT analysis, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. SWOTs are good for all sorts of things, but you can also use them to map out your own career path. 

Research industry trends 

There are two main factors when it comes to upskilling into a new area: do you like it, and is it in-demand? Spending a lot of time, energy and money to upskill into a dyeing field can be frustrating, so do your research first. Look at LinkedIn’s emerging jobs reports, look at the World Economic Forum’s annual Future of Jobs, talk to people in the industry to get a sense of pay rates, attrition rates, growth opportunities and so on. In short, when it comes to upskilling, there’s no such thing as too much information.  

Ask for feedback 

People often forget this step, which is simply asking your colleagues and managers for feedback. These should be detailed, 360-degree reviews, or one-on-one sessions, to pinpoint your specific strengths, as well as areas in which you need to improve. Multi-rater feedback from multiple sources is the most valuable. Try to go into these sessions with an open mind, too. The idea isn’t to criticize your skill gaps, but to identify pathways for growth. If you’re lucky enough to work for a large organisation, chat to other departments to see which skills they think are most valued or missing in their current team.  

Find a skills pathway 

Once you’ve researched your field and gathered personal feedback, your choices should have narrowed and condensed. Instead of the whole world of skills to learn, you might have identified two, or even one, which will be the most valuable for your career pathway. Now it’s time to find certification or training that fits your lifestyle. RMIT Online has various courses, certificates, diplomas and degrees in emerging fields. From climate-related financial reporting to business admin and cyber security. These are conducted online, with flexible delivery, so it’s easy to balance learning with your full-time commitments. 

Some areas to think about 

Stuck for inspiration? Or just feeling stuck all together? Here are a few industries with excellence growth and great career prospects.  

Green Technology 

The Green Economy, as it’s known, is one of the fastest-growing sectors on the planet. Renewable energy, sustainability, environmental management, ecology, environmental health and safety – the possibilities are almost limitless. From wind turbine technicians to solar consultants, the number of jobs requiring green skills increased 22.4% between 2022 and 2023. And those numbers are only going to increase. And the best news? Green skills are at a premium.  

“Trillions of dollars are being invested every year and will be for the foreseeable future. The efforts around climate are increasing exponentially. With all that effort comes a lot of hiring,” says Allen Blue, co-founder of LinkedIn. 

“You need to be able to hire people to improve your grid. You need to be able to hire people in order to be able to change your supply chain. And that growth is far outstripping the people who actually have those skills.” 

Data Analytics 

Data science and data analytics are at an interesting moment. On the one hand, it’s an industry that’s staring down the barrel of automation, particularly from AI, but on the other, the data job market is expected to grow from $7.03 billion in 2023 to $303.4 billion by 2030. That’s an outrageous CAGR of 27.6%. And the sharpest areas of growth, unsurprisingly, are coming from predictive analytics.  

Data analytics is a great example of an industry where it pays to embrace new technologies, rather than fight against them. Traditional data skills like SQL, Excel and Python are still leading the way, but data visualisation tools like Tableau and Power BI are also in high-demand.  

Cybersecurity 

Cybersecurity is that perfect storm of industry growth and talent shortage, leading to great employment prospects and premium salaries for jobhunters. The global cyber workforce grew by 12.6% between 2022 and 2023, and the global market is expected to hit $298.5 billion by 2028. And with that stratospheric growth, there’s currently a major cyber skills shortage, with an estimated 4 million new workers needed worldwide.  

So, what skills will you need for a career in cyber? Technical skills (C, C++, Python, JavaScript, PHP etc), analytical skills, attention to detail and risk analysis are all high on the list. Check out RMIT Online’s cybersecurity pathways for more information.