Top Skills Employers Want in 2025

In this case, technical doesn’t mean the ability to code in new languages or frameworks, but relates to learning new approaches, techniques and the use of valuable tools, applying these skills to a given situation to improve outcomes for employers.

Here are some of the most common trending skills.

Use of AI-Driven Project Management Tools and Automation

There are many tools that claim to be AI-driven, but tend to leave lacklustre results. That said, having experience with useful AI project delivery tools can give you an advantage by improving workload efficiency and reducing the time spent on more mundane tasks.

Some of the most popular AI-Driven tools that are known to actually work include:

• Asana: Uses AI to help with creating timelines, resource planning, task management, content writing, answering project-related queries.

• Jira: Summarising text, automating repetitive tasks, such as breaking down larger tasks into small pieces of work, accessing enterprise project information and making better sense of this information on-demand.

• Notion: Generating documentation, bringing together and creating reasoning from information via Notion Docs and other integrated applications e.g. Google Drive.

• ClickUp: AI Assistant feature providing data-driven insights, predicting potential issues so they can be resolved more proactively and resource optimisation.

Data analytics and Data Management

The ability to analyse and manipulate data to help inform targeted actions such as feature priority, is becoming increasingly in demand.

I see the logic in this demand, due to the benefits of data analytics, such as the ability to understand user behaviours better so that products can be more targeted. Here are some key tools that could help delivery professionals stand out.

Microsoft Power BI

• Features: Provides data visualisation and reporting in digestible and actionable formats.

• How to acquire skills: You can complete Microsoft’s official Power BI courses and practice with sample data.

Tableau

• Features: Part of the Salesforce family, Tableau provides interactive data visualisation and business intelligence.

• How to acquire skills: Enrol on Tableau’s free training videos, take part in their community forums, gain the Tableau Desktop Specialist certification.

Excel

Yes, in the world of newer more advance data analysis tools, Excel still has its place. Between Microsofts’s Excel, Google Sheets or Apple’s Numbers, the majority of the world has some exposure to spreadsheets and still rely heavily on them.

But whilst most people can do the spreadsheet basics, there are many more analytical features that most individuals don’t have the knowledge to take advantage of.

• Features: Spreadsheet analysis, pivot tables and basic level data visualisation

• How to acquire skills: There are many Excel courses on LinkedIn and great tutorials on YouTube. You can also take a step further and achieve Microsoft Office Specialist Certification.

SQL

• Features: Database management and querying

• How to acquire skills: Take SQL courses on platforms such as Udemy. Practice writing queries on sample databases. Eventually you could gain SWL certifications form Oracle or Microsoft.

Cloud Computing Knowledge

Having some working knowledge of what cloud computing providers offer, and how that impacts software products, will give leaders in this arena an edge over less informed counterparts.

How to acquire skills: There are many free courses from the main cloud computing service providers including AWS Cloud Computing series, Microsoft Azure Fundamentals courses, Google Cloud Platform courses, CompTIA Cloud courses.

Cybersecurity Awareness

This is an industry area that is in high demand. Similarly to cloud computing, it takes extensive learning and experience to become a practitioner in this area, however, as a project leader or team member, gaining an appreciation for cyber security as a subject area enables a greater appreciation for what must be considered when implementing new products to users.

How to acquire skills: Familiarising with terminology such as learning the key themes, types of cyber threats and mitigations. There are also free or paid courses from beginner to expert levels on platform such as Udemy.

Agile and Hybrid Delivery

There isn’t much to say here other than, if you’re in a delivery role and have solely focussed on waterfall delivery methods, increasing exposure to more agile methods improves marketability and adaptability to changing environments.

Such examples include Scrum, Kanban and scaled frameworks such as SAFe.

The gold standard of business news

Morning Brew is transforming the way working professionals consume business news.

They skip the jargon and lengthy stories, and instead serve up the news impacting your life and career with a hint of wit and humor. This way, you’ll actually enjoy reading the news—and the information sticks.

Best part? Morning Brew’s newsletter is completely free. Sign up in just 10 seconds and if you realize that you prefer long, dense, and boring business news—you can always go back to it.

Join 4.3 Million Readers Now

Aside from the more technical skills, employers are still looking for individuals with “softer” skills, to give them an extra edge and set them apart from the rest of the pack. This makes sense, as whilst hard skills such as the ability to understand data analytics, can help you become productive and valuable against a standard, it’s the softer skills that enable individuals to showcase value that is more unique.

Whilst soft skills can be acquired with practice, I’ve found from my own experiences that such skills are largely seen as more unique to a specific person, and therefore might create a greater impetus to hire, promote or keep working with that person.

I’ve heard statements similar to the below in the past, which shows that softer skills are often attributed to individuals as something only they can provide, therefore allowing outsized value to be placed on that individual.

• “I really want Steve in that meeting as he knows exactly how to navigate tricky customers in this industry segment”.

• “I recommend asking Sara to develop our strategy as she really thinks differently about how to maximise return on investment”.

Strategic Thinking and Vision

Strategic thinking refers to the ability to see beyond immediate tasks and consider long-term impacts to the business, organisation or team. It also involves connecting relevant patterns, alongside the ability to make sound decisions based on this understanding.

Employers value this type of thinking as it helps them ensure projects and departmental plans align with where the overall organisation is heading, ensure risks are mitigated more appropriately and decisions are made more clearly.

It also helps with prioritisation, for example, a Product Manager with excellent strategic thinking and vision will be able to influence a winning product roadmap, and prioritise work more effectively than one that has a narrower mindset.

How to acquire skills:

• Formal training and workshops.

• Practicing critical analysis.

• keeping informed with industry trends.

• Set aside dedicated time without interruption for strategic reflection.

• Seek opinions from a wider group of people, in particular don’t just seek perspectives from those who agree will always with your opinions.

• Question and challenge your own thinking, and those of others too.

Innovation Leadership

This is another skill that is challenging to master or even quantify. Key attributes involve taking a more visionary approach to aligning your team, being able to motivate them to achieve challenging outcomes, embracing new technology, new approaches and enabling teams to work highly effectively together.

How to acquire skills:

• I find the best approach here is just to practice where possible, make mistakes and learn for them. This is also a great opportunity to seek mentoring or coaching from someone who can see your blindspots and help you identify ways to keep improving.

• Seeking feedback and acting purposefully on the feedback is also a great way to continually improve innovative leadership behaviours.

Problem-Solving

Whilst generating great ideas is key to innovation, the ability to solve challenging problems is a key to increasing pace of delivery.

Problem solving is a skill that will certainly be put to the test regularly, so it’s always good to have solid examples when looking for a new role or challenge.

Key attributes to demonstrate include:

• Clearly defining problems and understanding the root causes, which helps prevent problems reoccurring.

• Evaluating the best options and generating or enabling groups to generate ideas.

• Being able to implement a problem resolution quickly and accurately.

How to acquire skills:

• Use tools such as root cause analysis and flow charts.

• Apply problem solving techniques (see 40 Problem Solving Techniques and Approaches)

• Applying design thinking. Rather than dwelling on issues, repackage them as learning and improvement opportunities.

• Continuous learning. This could be through researching different or new approaches to problem solving. My preference is to read up on how real teams and leaders solved real problems and what they learned from them. This could be through biographies, articles or watching interviews.

Communication and Relationship Building

These skills are usually something most people include in their resume, however, demonstrating these skills in action can give you an edge over those who merely say they can communicate and build world class relationships, but can’t back it up.

Relationship building is about gaining trust in people early, enabling them to work well with you, be open with you and allowing you to influence them. It involves creating a collaborative environment, showing honesty and integrity first, being attentive and being known as unselfish.

How would you acquire these skills?

Communication

• Active listening, or as I like to call it “Actually Listening”.

• Give clear and succinct messages, reduce the waffle!

• Thinking of communication as verbal, written and visual. Everything you do is a form of communication, therefore picking up on this enables you to change how you communicate fully, and how other people’s communication affects those around them.

• Practice often and vary your communication.

• Seek feedback and act on it (yes the “F” word is back, but feedback is super important as it confirms the development areas you probably already knew about, and addresses blindspots that you may not have known about).

Relationship Building

• More active (Actually) listening!

• Coffee chats, team building activities.

• Being curious and naturally interested in other people’s perspectives, views and concerns.

• Be seen as a problem solver and trustworthy, by solving a problem and showing how that has clearly helped the other party, not just yourself.

• Learn and apply conflict resolution techniques.

• Taylor your communication so it meets specific needs and doesn’t feel generic. The personal touch goes a long way!

Tools & Training:

AWS Skill builder (free training)

Tableau Free Training Videos

Cloud Project Manager 101

Google Cloud Skills boost

Azure Fundamentals

Articles:

The Future of Programme Management: 7 Trends you need to Know

Top 24 tools for Data analysis and How to Decide Between them

The Future of Product Management: Skills and Trends for 2025

40 Problem Solving Techniques and Approaches

7 Current Trends in Project Management in 2025

10 Best AI Project Management Tools

More from CLP:

Are AI Projects Different to Software Projects?

Communicate at Every Level

Even Leaders Need a Coach