The Ideal Skills for the Top 10 Remote Jobs of 2021

As mentioned in a recent blog post about the effect COVID-19 has had on work, we saw a rise in the number of jobs that transitioned from in-office to remote working environments. Even though we are currently seeing a spike in the number of cases, there are vaccines that are poised to enter the workforce’s bloodstream, and eventually (hopefully soon!) life will return to something much more resembling normal. However, many businesses have already transitioned a number of employees to remote work and a number of these jobs are likely to remain remote.

PAIRIN wanted to learn more about the future of remote work, so we teamed up with FlexJobs, the number one site to find remote work opportunities, to better understand how jobseekers find remote work and what skills are most needed in the world of remote work. We worked with FlexJobs to gain insight into the top 10 remote work career paths for 2021. PAIRIN then looked for the top skills necessary for these career paths and refined this information by examining what specific jobs made up each career path. We analyzed the most common and important PAIRIN attributes that drive those jobs based on the highest averages of skills, resulting in a list of the most important attributes needed for each career path on the list of top 10 remote jobs.

Top 10 Remote Jobs and Skillsets

We also analyzed this data on aggregate to identify the most important attributes across these top 10 jobs to identify the top attributes associated with remote work overall. Listed below are the top eight attributes amongst all of these remote jobs:

1. 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.
2. Social Awareness – To relate and respond to the feelings, needs and concerns of individuals or broader societal groups.
3. Conflict Management – The ability to effectively negotiate and resolve disagreements.
4. Relationship – The drive to draw close and remain loyal to another person or people—to truly connect and enjoyably engage with them.
5. Assertiveness – Global tendencies to express and interact with boldness, enthusiasm and confidence.
6. Critical Thinking – To gather and objectively assess key information as a guide to belief or action. An intellectual process that uses analysis, conceptualization, synthesis and evaluation.
7. Stress Tolerance – To endure pressure or uncertainty without becoming negative (e.g. hopeless, bitter or hostile) toward self or others.
8. Supportiveness – The drive to assist, protect and provide for others in emotional or physical need.

One thing we noted was a strong need for Assertiveness and Critical Thinking in these jobs, which may be an indicator of the types of jobs that have been moved into remote work in recent months as a result of the pandemic. We are observing a trend of an increased need for people to be more critical thinkers as well as forceful in their interaction. From this data, we also observe that even though there is a remote nature to all of these jobs and working on one’s own, there is still a very social component to remote work in these top jobs. While working remotely, employees must be able to accurately and remotely detect emotional content in a relationship, manage one’s own emotions and effectively manage conflict as it arises. 

There may be a myth about remote work being more isolated, as our research shows there are key social attributes that are necessary for success in any one of these top remote careers. That is, because work in and of itself is a very social engagement, we are not islands on our own but part of a larger ocean of other workers in an organization. We are all connected, and the stronger our connection, the stronger our organizations will be, whether we’re remote workers or physically in office spaces.