What are digital skills and what are they for?

Developing digital skills has now become an imperative need in our technological society. 

It’s no secret that digital development has allowed us to take a step forward in terms of possibilities, new goods, greater comfort, new sources of work, protection, intelligence...  

Things as simple as communicating with others, speeding up important procedures, invoicing in a bank, are activities that have been digitized to offer a better and more immediate service. 

Therefore, a common user is forced to adapt to these changes in order to be able to carry out their daily responsibilities or obligations. 

And yet, a large percentage of our population can barely handle basic digital skills, that is, user level. That is why we will talk today about digital skills, what they are, which ones there are, and the importance of these skills for your future career, no matter what your profession is. 

What is a digital skill? 

When we talk about a digital skill, we refer to the ability of a user to be able to use and share as much digital content as possible through smart devices. 

These can be phones, computers, tablets, and any software program or application. 

Basic digital skills, such as using a cell phone at the user level, allow you to perform simple tasks such as processing services and documents, checking bank accounts, making transactions, searching for content and consuming it. 

However, complex or advanced digital skills, which are the ones of interest in this article, are those that allow a greater development in the digital network. 

Being able to meet user needs, creating mechanisms and strategies that are comfortable, simple and attractive. 

On the other hand, companies also benefit from advanced digital skills: the skills of professionals like the community manager, the computer programmer, the data analyst, the graphic designer, or skills like the management of professional tools... All these capabilities promote the development of companies by leading projects that help to meet objectives. 

Of course! These skills must be complemented with those skills called soft skills. 

• Problem solving skills. 

• Emotional management. 

• Working under pressure. 

• Critical, logical and analytical thinking.

• Creativity.

• Innovation. 

These are just some of them, which combined with your digital competencies, allow you to develop better advanced skills and increase the quality of your work. 

What is the role of digital skills? 

And then, what are these digital skills for? And the short answer is: for progress, growth and innovation. 

Let's see these competencies as a means, a means in which you will be able to demonstrate your knowledge and skills, only taken to the digital realm. Here are some examples: 

• Are you a good communicator? Well, use your talent to meet needs in the digital environment. You can be a broadcaster, or work for digital journalistic media, you can also create entertainment storytimes, or you can dedicate yourself to being an interviewer. The limit is up to you. 

• Do you consider yourself very artistic? Whether in music, dance, painting, graphic and fashion design, there are many digital options in which you can expose your talent. You just need to study which media are focused on the type of content you want to create, and execute it. 

• Do you like to corroborate information, are you methodical, scientific and love knowledge? Imagine creating your own infoproduct, in which you not only showcase your skills, but also help others to solve their problems. Or, you dedicate yourself to expose curious and interesting facts, teach practical solutions or create useful digital tools... The possibilities are endless. 

Do you understand the importance of this?  

It’s worth noting that you can bring these examples to your own life, from the comfort of your home. You can use your skills to offer private services, or you can dedicate yourself to scaling a company. 

Whatever you decide, the key thing to understand is that it's all about development, advancement, innovation and satisfaction. It's about demonstrating our talents and knowledge to make the world a better, simpler, more useful, more practical and more fun place. 

NOTE: we invite you to tell us at the end of this article what digital skills you possess and how you make them known to the world.

What are the most in-demand digital skills now and in the future? 

Now you will learn a little more about the current labor market. It’s very diverse, that's the first thing you should be clear about, and the proposals here are not the only ones. 

There are many other digital jobs and professions that can also be well paid despite being less in demand. 

The important thing is to create authority in a niche, to become a recognized user in your work, climbing in your personal brand creating financial stability. 

That is key, and the same goes for the most in-demand skills, that they are in-demand doesn’t mean that you are already assured of success, you will have to demonstrate your value and why they should hire you and someone else.

1. Digital marketing

To talk about digital marketing is to talk about a very extensive field. There are many tasks that comprise this particular area, since marketing is a compendium of skills focused on selling, mainly. 

Skills related to SEO, growth hacker, social media, content manager, community manager, digital analyst ... Each of them with a specific purpose of work, optimizing search engines, increasing followers, planning what, how and where to present content, etc… 

However, this variety of tasks is nothing more than a set of specialized skills whose purpose is to sell, persuade, interest, communicate and connect to a target audience. 

Ever since humans developed consciousness and intelligence, they have been transacting business and creating markets. Therefore, it is a field in which there will always be demand and trained personnel to adapt to the new needs of a society. 

2. Cybersecurity and data privacy 

Now, just as the internet and the entire digital network has brought growth, development and greater professional and labor expansion, it has brought some details to take into consideration. 

Having a presence on the web means exposing your personal and banking data constantly to imminent hacks. 

However, the reason why these hacks are not easy to achieve is thanks to all the professionals who are in charge of creating data protection software and hardware. 

VPNs, security filters, captchas, antivirus, antimalware, passwords, security patterns, in short, an infinity of methods and tools created in order to protect the information and data of each and every Internet user, whether individuals or companies.

That said, the Internet is here to stay and evolve over time, but with its evolution, it also brings new risks that must be addressed and resolved. Therefore, the cybersecurity niche stands out as one of the most in-demand occupations both now and in the future. 

3. Programming and software engineering 

Have you ever wondered how your mobile application can emulate filters that modify reality, or how a video game can look so real? Or have you ever wondered how there can be platforms that store digital money? 

Technology is a great mystery to many, and only a few are able to stop and think how it is possible for technology to do so many things. And the reason behind that intelligence is only thanks to human intelligence. 

How: by programming. 

It’s thanks to software engineering that today you have the ability to access the Internet, use applications, order ubers, do paperwork, check your bank accounts from the comfort of a smart device or even read this article...  

Programming is nothing more than machine language, a language that is interpreted by software so that the device can carry out commands. The programmer gives a command, provides it with all the characteristics it should have, sends it, the interpreter analyzes it and the device executes it. Sounds simple, doesn't it? 

But like us, computers also have different languages that you can use to communicate. And that's the magic, you decide how many languages to learn and which ones to start with. The more you learn, the more job opportunities you will have and therefore, any technology and development company will be able to hire you. 

Technology is here to stay, remember?

4. Digital project management 

Having the ability to manage an entire project is not something very common in the entire population. Several skills are needed to be able to perform this job as efficiently as possible, leadership, responsibility and trust, judgment, focus and conflict resolution. 

A digital project manager is someone who is in charge of planning, guiding and concluding projects with a specific purpose for a company or client. Whether it is to sell, generate awareness or impact, build customer loyalty, improve the quality of the product or service, or many other purposes. 

Imagine you have an idea to improve the quality of photographs through a new technology, as a project manager, your duty is to plan how to integrate such technology into your idea, in what device, who will be targeted and who will be your suppliers and what resources you need to carry out the project. 

In addition, you will be in charge of the staff that will make the idea possible, and with your leadership skills, you will know how to communicate the idea to your team, how to resolve doubts and conflicts and any other obstacle. Once the product is completed, you must have your marketing strategy ready to finally reach the target consumers. 

If you understand the idea and are encouraged to be part of it, your future may lie in this increasingly in-demand profession. 

5. Data Science 

Be clear about the following, no company or client wants to base their projects on flimsy or unsecure information. 

For a project to succeed, it needs to be built on verifiable data that can guide professionals on the likelihood of success and failure. In addition, companies need to know about an infinite amount of data: customers, prices, products, ideas, probabilities, investment, savings, profits....

And not only that, all information must be verifiable, studied and analyzed. Otherwise, a project will not have the necessary basis to be carried out safely, which means working in the shadows, many errors, more pressure and lower quality. 

It helps companies and/or clients to make better decisions, based on truthful and quantifiable information, with much smarter projects and more successful results. 

These are some of the skills you should consider to become a good data analyst: 

• Ability to constantly learn and keep up to date. 

• Being an effective and assertive communicator. 

• Having a business vision. 

• Being able to resolve conflicts. 

You have successfully concluded reading about digital skills and what they are used for. We invite you again to actively participate in the comments by answering the question posed above. 

What digital skills do you possess, what do you want to achieve by developing these skills, how do you or would you make yourself known in the digital network? 

The intention of these questions is that you can recognize your own goals and motivate yourself to achieve them for the future. 

Information is power, and it is at our fingertips, the only thing we need to do is to act, and everything will come in addition. 

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