The State of Certifications and the Rise of Skill Demand
Employer demand for specialized skills has been on the rise in recent years. At a research workshop held by the National Academy of Sciences in 2008, labor economists reflected on job growth in what they defined as the “high-wage professional, technical, and managerial” sector. In labor market terms, they identified skill demand as a feature of workplaces moved to develop in tandem with changes in technology. The panelists also pointed to policies and trends intended to upgrade skills in low-wage service jobs and techno service work.
In more recent years, traditional college settings have responded to labor market skill demand by preparing students for the immediate workforce using certifications. A recent story describes a rise in technical programs enabling students to go to work as well as continue their progress towards more robust, well-rounded degrees.
In the Future Skill Demands workshop, sociologists also weighed in with the idea that our “society constructs workplace skill demands, through choices about how to package tasks together into jobs and occupations.” The panelists suggested that when it comes to predicting the kinds of skills required in future, an important training policy is to make sure workers are broadly competent in basic skills (of reading, mathematics, and thinking) as well as “creative problem-solving, complex communications skills, adaptability, self-management, personal development, and systems thinking.”
Certification supply
This theme echoes through student discussions as well. Those students playing a longer game, of attaining a bachelor’s degree or higher before entering professional industries are also upskilling with certifications to improve their standing among the competition. Student discussions make clear the belief that a background degree in data science provides more versatility for career building in IT, adapting as technology does in order to move from one post to another.
The theme of mobility and adaptability has another important touch point for the discussion on how certifications are at play in employment markets. Besides appealing to those preparing to enter the workforce, certifications are also in demand for audiences of career-changers and those continuing their education. From Monster.com to AARP, career changers are advised online to improve their skill set with additional certifications. A 2017 study from Glassdoor suggested the best opportunities to be available in the growth industries of technology, healthcare, and finance; all of which sectors are resistant to job losses from automation in the workplace (a major job loss factor cited by the World Economic Forum). These careers also demand highly skilled employees who actively engage with problem-solving.
Our skill curiosity
To dive deeper into exactly how and where certification demand and supply is growing, consider searches from Google Trends. Exploring trends in how Internet users are querying a given topic, together with the topics that correlate to their searches offers insight into both supply and demand.
Over the last 12 months (at the time of this writing), user search combinations including keywords: certification/training/business/online correlated to content on IT and programming language fields of study. The strongest interest in certifications consistently came from the US and Canada, followed in short order by users in Singapore, the UAE, Qatar, India, Nigeria, and the UK.
Highly related queries, or topics that these users also searched, included ‘business analysis’ and ‘Six Sigma’. Software tools like Tableau, Agile, and Scrum have been rising in related topic searches; as well as project management—all of which are high-level professional skills. The subset of the population using the Internet to query these keywords are engaging with specific certification content that aids performance at the top tier of labor markets—from data visualization and software development to leadership and organizational intelligence tools.
Minor changes to keyword combinations reveals more specific takeaways. Searches for: business / certification / online were, like above, highly correlated to the similar computer science field of study. This search also revealed a strong rising interest in business analysis, the field associated with PMI-PMP (project management) certification.
Financial analysis and HR-career certifications like HRCI-PHRr are visible when narrowing Google searches from all categories to “Business & Industrial” categories, especially in the US, Singapore, the UAE, and Qatar. Exploring related searches for certification in this category showed strong, consistent interest in DevOps, Agile and Scrum software development tools. Data security and database were also related topics and related queries in this subset, pointing users to certifications like Comptia Sec+, and reappeared in the Computers & Electronics category, though in both cases these results were lower on the related lists, which may indicate an area to watch for growth.
Is skill demand growing?
Internet analytics are one tool for comprehending our curiosity, our searches for information. We look at where, when, and in what correlated domains those searches are happening. In so doing, we’re looking at aggregated curiosity and making an interpretation, or visualizing a trend. How are certifications growing, where, and in which industries?
One clear answer is that users around the world demonstrate a consistent interest in the certifications precisely demanded in IT careers with a broad apparent interest in the education, the fields of study, that help to build those careers.
Certifications in finance and HR do appear to track closely to their purpose in labor markets, appearing more in categorical searches rather than All Categories. Blue Prism, a robotics tool that automates processes, is also significant as a top certification of interest, a direct player in the market shift toward specialized, technical skill demand. Other search variations make clear that business training has been of paramount interest in searches from users in African countries—South Africa, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe; meanwhile career change is a popular search in countries with more robust and established economies like the UK, Australia, and Ireland.
Analytics may help us to better understand the way people around the world engage with the challenge to balance broader education with the demand for workforce-relevant skills. At a minimum, as labor functions are more technically defined, the skill demand for special knowledge certification will also grow.
