By making a conscious effort to learn how tech products are made, non-technical professionals can ... [+]
The LinkedIn emerging jobs report does not make for comfortable reading for non-technical professionals. The top five jobs which the network expects to grow most all demand coding skills: artificial intelligence specialist, robotics engineer, data scientist, full stack engineer and site reliability engineer.
Yet, while technical jobs are on the rise, businesses cannot survive without marketers, sales people, strategists and customer service agents. To benefit from the tech boom, non-technical professionals need to learn how to work with increasing numbers of their technically trained colleagues.
Be in the right environment
LinkedIn’s principal economist Guy Berger suggests being in an environment where the technology is being used. He says “spend time with people who make it, so you can understand how it works.”
People learn on the job, so by choosing opportunities to work with data scientists, developers and app designers, you are setting yourself up to benefit from the technology jobs boom.
Take a course
As well as learning on the job, Berger also recommends taking courses to enhance your understanding. While the aim is not to code apps and or write an algorithm yourself, learning how these tools are made will help you use them.
Taking introductory courses online, such as tech for non-technical founders or computer science 101, will help you understand what your technical colleagues do and how to work with them.
LinkedIn’s Communications executive Sophie Sieck works closely with the company’s data science team to use the company’s huge trove of data to tell stories. While the soft skills of communication and the deep tech skills of data scientists may seem worlds apart, combining them is what gets unique and interesting results.
In order to work effectively with the data science team, Sieck took courses and made a conscious effort to soak in knowledge from her data science colleagues.
Co-create with the tech team
Technology is a set of tools that help businesses grow. In order to make the smartest tools, you need to have a diverse set of skills.
By understanding what developers, data scientists and analysts do, you can work with them to co-create tools to enhance your business. While an engineer may be writing the code for an advertising algorithm, they need a marketing specialist’s input to understand what kind of customer to target and why. LinkedIn’s Berger says that “you cannot outsource decisions just to the tech people.”
Quite simply, if you are the person who understands how technical tools are made, you will be able to use them to improve your business unit and thus your career. By making a conscious effort to learn basic technology concepts, non-technical professionals can benefit from the exponential rise of tech jobs.
