- LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief has confirmed the job market is ‘not great’. Its new report reveals the top skills to have right now if you want to up your chances of landing a job—and it turns out, being able to squash workplace drama is one of them amid layoffs and RTO mandates.
Job opportunities seem to have dried up, as candidates are sending out hundreds of applications to be faced with ‘ghost’ postings and steep competition. But talent could have a leg-up if they tap into some of the fastest growing skills in the struggling job marketplace.
“It’s not a disaster, but it’s not great out there,” LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief Dan Roth said in an interview with TODAY. “Which is why it’s so important to know what skills you need to have to look better when you’re applying.”
About 54% of Americans plan to look for a new job in 2025, according to Roth, but hiring has been down 3.4% year-over-year. He added that the fight for opportunities has heated up, too—there’s currently about 2.5 applications for every open job, whereas right after the pandemic the ratio was about 1:1.
Highly qualified job-seekers are competing in the same arena for a shrinking number of opportunities—but LinkedIn found there are some surefire skills to have to get noticed by hiring managers.
Conflict mitigation is a top skill to get hired in 2025
There’s been a lot of turmoil in the workforce—from wildly unpopular RTO mandates to layoffs alongside AI optimization, to clashing views in the office. Without employees who know how to manage the tension, cultural problems can bubble over into disengagement and resentment.
It’s why conflict mitigation—being able to foster collaboration and lead agile teams in times of strife and success—is currently the second fastest-growing skill, according to LinkedIn’s data.
When analyzing what skills were being added to U.S. users’ profiles, what skills people who got hired had, and what skills employers are adding to postings, squashing workplace beef reigned supreme.
Common job titles that include this increasingly popular skill include administrative assistants, project managers, and customer service representatives. And it is most notably in demand in the tech industry, as well as, IT consulting, and higher education. These sectors have been particularly hit hard by organizational changes, from China’s foreign chips competition, political impacts among U.S. schooling, and AI overhauling the workforce.
The ability for both leaders and workers to be able to navigate rough waters has been a growing precedent. Emotional intelligence is a growing qualifier when it comes to vetting executives, LinkedIn found last year—from 2018 to 2024, there was a 31% increase in these C-suite leaders featuring soft skills on their profiles. Five capabilities they often advertised included effective presentations, strategic thinking, communication, strategic vision, and conflict resolution.
Roth added that conflict mitigation has also grown in importance as employees of vastly different age groups try to find common ground.
“For the first time we have five generations working together in the workforce,” Roth said. “And so you’ve got the situation where people think differently—how do you deal with conflict at the office? AI cannot do that well today.”
LinkedIn’s list shows that other human skills are still in demand, including adaptability, innovative thinking, public speaking, and customer engagement. While AI literacy still ranks at the top, it highlights that employers aren’t blind to the importance of human skills too.
Other hot skills for 2025—with AI literacy at the forefront
If the AI embroilment between Meta, OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Nvidia tells you anything about the industry, it is that the advanced tech is the new frontier of business. Not only is AI relevant to Silicon Valley titans—employers everywhere now expect staffers to use the tools on the job.
AI literacy was ranked the number one skill on the rise in 2025, according to LinkedIn’s recent analysis. Common jobs that look for these capabilities are software engineers, product managers, and CEOs—and mainly span across tech, IT, and higher education industries.
But the skill doesn’t entail being able to write code—only know how to best apply it to one’s role.
“This is not a ‘go learn to code’ moment,’ this is ‘get familiar with how to use AI,’ try out the tools, think about how to apply them in any role you have in any job you’ve got,” Roth said in the interview.
Other skills with more technical, type-A uses also made the list—including process optimization, solution-based selling, and large language model (LLM) development and application. But Roth added that while the rise in AI has naturally increased the need for those technical abilities, it’s also had the opposite effect.
As more companies are applying the technology across their organizations—from HR departments, to frontline workers—it’s exacerbated a desire for human soft skills. And LinkedIn’s leadership board of the top skills for 2025 shows how desperately they’re needed.
The top five fastest-growing skills in the U.S. for 2025
- AI literacy: The ability to understand and utilize tools, and harness that technology for business purposes
- Conflict mitigation: The ability to navigate workplace conflicts, foster collaboration, and lead agile teams
- Adaptability: The ability to continuously learn and maintain resilience
- Process Optimization: The ability to drive operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness to stay competitive
- Innovative thinking: The ability to problem-solve creatively as AI transforms the work landscape
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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