7 Skills You Must Build To Propel Your Career Forward In 2025

Skills, job skills, resume skills, careers — 7 Skills You Must Build To Propel Your Career Forward In 2025
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The landscape is changing. Professionals who build the right skills will simply go further than those who don’t. Here’s a list of seven skills you must start building today.

There’s a huge shift happening in the world of work. Jobs requiring a college degree are on the decline while the trend towards skills-based hiring and promotion is on the rise. And, while a college degree can still give you a competitive edge, you don’t want to sleep on the fact that many employers are prioritizing skills over college degrees to fill some of their most in-demand jobs.

7 Skills You Must Build to Propel Your Career Forward

In order for you to stay relevant and compete in the 2025 job market and beyond, you’ll want to beef up your skill development starting with some of the fastest-growing skills in the workplace.

LinkedIn has published its list of the 15 fastest-growing skills that professionals need to invest in and develop. Feel free to explore LinkedIn’s full listing. I’m highlighting seven (7) skills from the list that I often hear about in my work with hiring managers, supervisors and executives.

AI Literacy
Conflict Mitigation
Adaptability
Process Optimization
Innovative Thinking
Solution-Based Selling
Budget & Resource Management

1. AI Literacy

There is a huge skills gap between what AI can do and what most employees think it can do. Getting employees up to speed with AI—its capabilities and business value—is a challenge that many organizations are experiencing.

The University of Maryland is one institution that has stepped up to fill the AI skills gap. Notably, the college offers

a completely free online course in artificial intelligence (AI) and career empowerment for mid-career professionals. The certificate program is for building AI skills. It is self-paced learning and specifically tailored to professionals seeking to transition into the private sector or those seeking a career shift.

2. Conflict Mitigation

Conflict is a normal and healthy part of human interactions and dynamics. But a discomfort with it and a lack of skill for how to address and mitigate it undermines—or sabotages—communication, team performance and leadership success.

Employees, leaders and managers with highly developed conflict mitigation skills are better equipped to respond in disharmonious environments. These professionals are better equipped to advance organizational strategic priorities because they lean into—rather than run away from—difficult conversations, divergent perspectives and healthy debate.

They create high-performing teams who understand that conflict is normal as opposed to being intrinsically bad.

3. Adaptability

Adapt or die. Many of us have heard this old adage referring to the importance of remaining agile and open to change. Adjusting as necessary to changing circumstances is a critical leadership skill.

For organizations to not only survive but thrive in an uncertain and rapidly changing world, adaptability is key.

4. Process Optimization

Leaders who improve processes trump those who simply solve problems because the big things that executives and leaders need to accomplish involve creating, improving or managing systems and processes—not just solving isolated problems.

Process optimization is a skill that moves you beyond doing things to assessing and evaluating how you do the things you do. When you are optimizing processes, you will ask questions like:

Are we doing the right things in the right way?
What is our process, who owns it, and how can it be improved?
Have we clearly mapped our processes and communicated this mapping with others with a need to know?

With process optimization, there is a strong focus on being proactive and seeking out opportunities to improve operations, affect change and influence strategic outcomes. The inclination of those operating from this skillset is to evaluate the interrelationships and interconnections within and between steps, processes, systems and people.

5. Innovative Thinking

Today’s high-performing organizations are those that recruit and retain strategists, creative thinkers and innovators who embrace the eight essentials of innovation as defined by McKinsey & Company.

Those with innovative thinking skills are primed to promote a culture of diverse thinking where new and different ideas are elicited. These leaders will get the best out of their employees and teams because instead of stifle new ideas and different perspectives, they invite them.

6. Solution-Based Selling

Too many run away from the word selling, but we’re all selling something to someone at some point. It doesn’t matter whether you are specifically identified as a “salesperson.” If you have a role within the organization, you have a responsibility to be solution oriented, and this often involves persuading or convincing someone to do something different.

You have a responsibility to deliver customized value and define solutions that solve specific problems for internal and external customers and stakeholders. This requires skill, and the best leaders use this skill to create and deliver value.

To do this well, you must understand your customers and stakeholders—value them, listen to them, and drill down on their perspectives to understand how they experience your services, products, representatives, etc.

7. Budget & Resource Management

People with budget and resource management skills can climb higher on the career ladder. Finance management is a leadership imperative just like making effective decisions, creating great work environments and demonstrating strategic thinking.

If you ever want to progress up the career ladder within your organization to where you are the one trusted to lead large projects, manage dynamic teams, make critical resource allocation decisions or have a meaningful say in strategy, you need to develop this skill.

An Example of an Employer Prioritizing Skills

Again, we’re in a skills-based economy, and many employers are prioritizing skills over college degrees. How do you plan to develop these skills so that you can remain competitive?

I recently wrote about how to get hired at Deloitte and explored insider tips from the company’s chief talent officer, David Rizzo, about what skills he looks for in employees.

Of the many things Rizzo looks for in employees, he emphasized the following:

The right kind of technical and behavioral skills—use skills to communicate what you do and how effectively you deliver organizational and team results.
How you communicate your experiences—use skills to demonstrate your ability to adapt to a changing environment, solve complex challenges and deliver results.
A good fit between the job candidate and the company culture, team and values—use skills to demonstrate intellectual and organizational curiosity and channel it in a team and purpose-driven manner.

Take Action Now to Build Your Skills and Stay Relevant

After spending decades working with employees at all levels and after recruiting, supervising and leading employees and teams, it’s clear to me what skills set one employee apart from another.

The best performers and leaders demonstrate a variety of skills that go far beyond box-checking this credential or that credential. They demonstrate the seven (7) skills listed above, and they do it consistently and effectively.

Do you have the what you need to compete for the best jobs? Are you up to speed with in-demand skills for 2025 and beyond? Check out platforms such as Coursera, edX, LinkedIn Learning and Skillshare to begin or continue your skills-development journey.