Hybrid Jobs: Top Careers & Soft Skills

According to a recent survey, 39% of workers say their ideal work arrangement post-pandemic would be hybrid jobs—a combination of both in-office and remote work. Sixty-six percent of employers globally are considering redesigning their workplaces to accommodate a hybrid work arrangement, and it’s estimated that the hybrid workforce will boost productivity by 4.6%.

Given the transition to and interest in the hybrid workplace, FlexJobs analyzed tens of thousands of hybrid job postings across 50 career categories to identify the top 10 career categories for hybrid jobs in 2021. PAIRIN then identified the most critical skills for jobs in those categories by utilizing a combination of their essential skills survey results mapping to O*NET skills and occupation data. These ten career categories have had the most hybrid job postings in the FlexJobs database between January 1, 2021, and October 31, 2021. A hybrid job is one that allows for partial remote working and can have various setups, such as:

• Each week is split between remote and in-office work
• Work is usually done remotely with occasional in-office days
• Work is mostly in-office with occasional remote days

In order to better prepare candidates interested in pursuing a hybrid career, FlexJobs teamed with PAIRIN, the trusted technology partner to today’s leading workforce programs, governments, and education systems, to identify the skills job seekers need to succeed in these top ten careers. PAIRIN’s science-based skill development tools measure essential skills, also known as soft skills, because they are proven to have the most impact on someone’s ability to be successful in a career and in life. Below, Dr. Dan Hawthorne, Director of IO Psychology at PAIRIN, offers advice on skills that are important in a hybrid work environment in general.

“Because hybrid models involve employees working in both remote and office environments, the skills necessary to be successful will bridge both,” said Dr. Dan Hawthorne, Director of IO Psychology at PAIRIN. “Skills such as compliance and service orientation will help people to self-manage and engage in good time management. We also see skills that help employees work alongside other people in an office environment like relationship, assertiveness, and supportiveness. And finally, skills like conflict management and stress tolerance bridge both environments by helping people manage the general stress of work and working out disagreements between others both in-person and virtually.”

FlexJobs recommends learning more about what hybrid means for the companies job seekers are applying to, specifically asking:

1. Are people at all levels of the organization allowed to have a hybrid schedule?
2. What are the expectations for coming into the office vs working at home?
3. Is the company setting these guidelines or letting individual teams decide what works best?
4. How is information distributed for employees to access whether they are working in the office or at home?
5. What new programs or initiatives is your company working on to ensure everyone is having a fair and equitable experience in a hybrid environment?

Below each career category are the most important soft skills, as identified through PAIRIN’s personalized, science-based research, that professionals need in order to thrive in that respective career.

These 10 career categories have had the most hybrid job postings in the FlexJobs database so far in 2021.

Sales

• Influential Leadership: The ability to positively persuade others’ choices by focusing on what is important to them and building consensus.
• Conflict Management: The ability to effectively negotiate and resolve disagreements.
• Social Awareness: To relate and respond to the feelings, needs, and concerns of individuals or broader societal groups. (Includes empathy, organizational awareness, and service orientation.)

Project Management

• Relationship Management: To use awareness of one’s own emotions and those of others to navigate interactions successfully. (Includes inspiration, influence, enriching others, cooperation, change, and conflict management.)
• Collaboration & Teamwork: To combine efforts and resources with others toward a common goal. To work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams.
• Dynamism: Global tendencies to generate results through intentional, resourceful, energetic mindsets and behaviors.

Computer & IT

• Creativity: The desire to think, do, and express in ways that are different from the norm. This includes personal elaborations or variations on known or existing techniques.
• Originality: The ability to invent or independently conceive of ideas, methods, or products of the first order (underived), regardless of their usefulness.
• Objective-Analytical: The emphasis of logic and fact-based evaluating over feelings, suggesting clarity, thoroughness, and productivity.

Medical & Health

• Service Orientation: The ability to anticipate, identify, and meet people’s often unspoken needs through assistance, products, or services. The drive to generate customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Supportiveness: The drive to assist, protect, and provide for others in emotional or physical need.
• Social Awareness: To relate and respond to the feelings, needs, and concerns of individuals or broader societal groups. (Includes empathy, organizational awareness, and service orientation.)

Accounting & Finance

• Social Awareness: To relate and respond to the feelings, needs, and concerns of individuals or broader societal groups. (Includes empathy, organizational awareness, and service orientation.)
• Compliance: Global tendencies to maintain self-discipline and conform to another’s plan, rules, will, or direction.
• Relationship: The drive to draw close and remain loyal to another person or people—to truly connect and enjoyably engage with them.

Marketing

• Flamboyance: The drive to impress or excite; to stir others through words or actions.
• Influential Leadership: The ability to positively persuade others’ choices by focusing on what is important to them and building consensus.
• Assertiveness: Global tendencies to express and interact with boldness, enthusiasm, and confidence.

Education & Training

• Cooperative-Practical: The moderation of reason and feeling resulting in calm, commonsense thinking—upbeat, attentive, and realistic.
• Creativity: The desire to think, do, and express in ways that are different from the norm. This includes personal elaborations or variations on known or existing techniques.
• Social Awareness: To relate and respond to the feelings, needs, and concerns of individuals or broader societal groups. (Includes empathy, organizational awareness, and service orientation.)

Customer Service

• Supportiveness: The drive to assist, protect, and provide for others in emotional or physical need.
• Service Orientation: The ability to anticipate, identify, and meet people’s often unspoken needs through assistance, products, or services. The drive to generate customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Conflict Management: The ability to effectively negotiate and resolve disagreements.

Administrative

• Service Orientation: The ability to anticipate, identify, and meet people’s often unspoken needs through assistance products or services. The drive to generate customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Supportiveness: The drive to assist, protect, and provide for others in emotional or physical need.
• Flamboyance: The drive to impress or excite; to stir others through words or actions.

HR & Recruiting

• Compliance: Global tendencies to maintain self-discipline and conform to another’s plan, rules, will, or direction.
• Perceptivity: The drive to understand the emotional and intellectual processes of oneself and others.
• Productivity: To set and meet goals, even in the face of obstacles and competing pressures. To prioritize, plan, and manage work to achieve the intended results.