It’s planning season and this means that you must be pondering how to dazzle your boss with a solid 2019 strategy.

Step one is taking a moment to understand the macro top trends that will shape your profession in 2019. Step two is having a clear idea who you will be hiring and what are the hot skills these candidates will possess. Knowing this will help you focus your and your team’s efforts accordingly and also give you some time to pre-emptively prepare for any unexpected hiring manager requests.

To get that hot skills list for you, we tapped into LinkedIn data and looked at billions of interactions between professionals and companies. Then we identified the candidates who were most likely to start new jobs or attract recruiters’ interest and analyzed their skill sets.

Here are the top 10 skills globally (and across 14 countries) that we think will dominate your 2019 recruiting plans:

We compared this 2019 list with the trends from the last few years and here are some interesting things that we noticed:

Data and cloud computing are dominating the list yet again: Cloud and distributed computing has remained in the #1 spot for the past two years and is the Top Skill on almost every list — including France, Germany, India, Ireland, Singapore, the U.S., and Spain. Following closely on its heels is statistical analysis and data mining, which came in #2 last year, and #1 in 2016. These skills are in such high demand because they’re at the cutting edge of technology. Employers need employees with cloud and distributed computing, statistical analysis and data mining skills to stay competitive.
User interface design and data presentation are emerging as some of the hottest new skills: User interface design (#5), which is designing the part of products that people interact with, is increasingly in-demand among employers. It ranked #14 in 2016, #10 last year, and #5 this year (second largest jump on this year’s Global Top Skills of 2017 list). Data has become central to many products, which has created a need for people with user interface design skills who can make those products easy for customers to use. You can see a very similar story with data presentation (#8) which is a brand new skill on the list.

Demand for marketers is slowing: While marketing skills like marketing campaign management, SEO/SEM, and channel marketing were in high demand in 2018, things have changed. This year, SEO/SEM dropped five spots from #4 to #9 and marketing campaign management dropped completely off the list. Demand for marketing skills is slowing because the supply of people with marketing skills has caught up with employers’ demand for people with those skills.

Recruiting is a high demand in Ireland and the Netherlands: And it’s always nice to be reminded that your own skillset is in high demand. In fact, recruiting is one of the hottest skills in countries like Ireland (#10) and the Netherlands (#5) and is showing significant gains year-over-year. If you are ever feeling unappreciated or in a rut, maybe those are great destinations to consider moving to.

Final thoughts : All joking aside, we hope that this list gives you are good roadmap about what types of skills you will be recruiting for in 2019. Given that these skills are in such high demand, it’s essential that you take time to prepare your messaging strategy and know the EVP of your company inside and out. Here are some useful articles with tips that will help you get ahead of other recruiters:

The 3 Types of LinkedIn InMail Subject Lines: The Keepers, The Sleepers And The Bleepers.

• The Clever Plan One Company Devised to Recruit an Engineer
• 5 High Touch Techniques You Should Use to Recruit Passive Candidates
• New Report Reveals the Trends That Will Define Recruiting in 2019
• If you want to learn more about these skills, take advantage of our Week of Learning.
• From October 24 to 30th, all of LinkedIn Learning’s 5,000+ courses will be free, including the classes that will help you get a solid understand of the top skills of 2019.

Top Skills Methodology

There are thousands of skills that members can add to their profiles, so we grouped these skills into several dozen categories. For example, skills like “Android” and “iOS” would fit into the “Mobile Development” category. Then we looked at all of the hiring and recruiting activity that happened on LinkedIn between Jan. 1 and Sept. 1, equaling billions of data points, and identified the skill categories that belonged to members who were more likely to start new jobs and receive interest from recruiters. Skill categories that did not meet a specific threshold for membership were excluded from our analysis. The up and down arrows reflect changes in the skill rankings compared to last year’s list.