Identifying Critical 21st-Century Skills for Workplace Success: A Content Analysis of Job Advertisements

This article extends the literature on 21st-century learning skills needed for workplace success by providing an empirical examination of employers' direct communication to potential employees via job advertisements. Our descriptive analysis of 142,000 job advertisements provides two contributi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational researcher 2020-03, Vol.49 (2), p.80-89
Main Authors: Rios, Joseph A., Ling, Guangming, Pugh, Robert, Becker, Dovid, Bacall, Adam
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
21st century
21st Century Skills
Academic Degrees
Academic Standards
Advertisements
Advertising
Career Readiness
Classified advertising
Collaboration
Communication
Communication Skills
Content analysis
Cooperation
Data collection
Educational Development
Educational standards
Employer Attitudes
Employers
Employment Qualifications
Job Skills
Labor Force Development
Learning
Literary criticism
Majors (Students)
Occupational Information
Problem Solving
Qualitative research
Skill Development
Skills
Social Responsibility
Success
Web Sites
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Summary:This article extends the literature on 21st-century learning skills needed for workplace success by providing an empirical examination of employers' direct communication to potential employees via job advertisements. Our descriptive analysis of 142,000 job advertisements provides two contributions. First, this is one of the first studies to empirically rank-order skill demand. In doing so, it is clear that oral and written communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills are in high demand by employers, with particular emphasis on the pairing of oral and written communication. Furthermore, it is apparent that many of the skills suggested in the literature as being critical for workplace success are in very low demand by employers, and some were not found to be mentioned at all (e.g., social responsibility). Second, this study explicitly examined whether 21st-century skill demand varied by job characteristics, which was found to be the case, with differences being noted for both education level and degree field requirements. Results were replicated with a sample of roughly 120,000 job advertisements collected 1 year from the initial data collection. Implications for developing educational standards around 21st-century skill development are discussed.
ISSN:0013-189X
1935-102X
DOI:10.3102/0013189X19890600