Professions of the future, what they are and how to recognise the skills needed

Decision Engineering or Machine Learning Creative Producer? If today these two professional figures may be peculiar (starting with the name) and difficult to imagine within an organisation, in tomorrow's world of work they could become very common, if not fundamental, on a par with others that are emerging or that do not yet exist. "It is the 'fault' of the profound technological revolution underway and of an increasingly pervasive transformation process, further accelerated by the large-scale diffusion of artificial intelligence and based on the combination of human and tech components.

A research carried out by PHD Media (communication and marketing agency of Omnicom Media Group) in collaboration with Singularity University has attempted to trace the profiles of the professions of the near future, in a (not too distant) scenario in which the mix of highly specialised technological skills and humanistic matrix competences will assume an even greater weight and the need to 'recalibrate' will be a necessity for everyone, both for those about to enter the job market and for those who are already there. And with it, access to paths of permanent training will become increasingly vital.

The indications that have emerged from the responses of marketers, HR managers and Head Hunters therefore help to understand the characteristics of the professions that could fill the job advertisement boards and detect possible problems in recognising new skills. The example referred to by Daniela Della Riva, Chief Strategy Officer of PHD Italy, is emblematic and concerns the Cleanroom Developer, a figure who deals with rationalising company data, making it comprehensible and usable. "This is a profession," explains the manager, "that is already a reality, yet only one in four professionals is able to identify this type of skill, while on the part of those who select the report it is one in three and confirms a medium-low ability to recognise and use this type of skill".

Looking at the other professions that will dot the galaxy of jobs of the future, the study notes that the greatest impact of technological evolution will be in the field of communication and creativity. The Machine Learning Creative Producer, specifically, will exploit innovative creative production software to develop new applications faster and more automatically, drastically reducing production time and implementing predictive models that will improve performance.

The task of the Conversational AI Developer, on the other hand, will basically be to use different technologies to bring fully interactive communication projects to life, i.e. to give end users the opportunity to interrupt the flow of communication and initiate a conversation with one of the characters in the commercial, asking him/her questions about the product/service. Experts in Game Commerce, and thus figures with an advanced ability to create a new level of e-commerce within the major online game platforms, will be relied upon to create virtual products linked to existing products and to manage new forms of buying/selling that embrace familiar tools such as cryptocurrencies.