The world is changing every day, and the digital age has accelerated many of those changes to what feels like light speed. So many of the skills that were absolutely necessary at home and at work in the 20th century feel completely outdated today.

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Some of these skills may have benefits in terms of brain development that could make them worth keeping around to some extent. Others are simply holdovers from generations of the past, and there is little reason to keep them around. Here are eight job skills that are officially dying out.

Using a Dictionary

Before the internet, the dictionary was one of the most important books to keep handy, both at home and at the office. Since you couldn’t simply Google the meaning of a word, you had to flip through the alphabetically-sorted pages of the ol’ Merriam-Webster.

Looking words up online is often quicker and easier, but with a dictionary, we might have found a word or two along the way to the one we were trying to find. Today, we tend to find the meaning of the word and move on. Does that mean we are learning fewer words? One study suggests that might be the case.

Memorizing Phone Numbers

Before the advent of the smartphone, and especially in the 1970s and ’80s, you might have had a phone with few features other than a basic dial pad. If you wanted to call someone at home or at work, you could look their number up in a phonebook, but it was much easier to write it down and then commit the number to memory.

Today, memorizing phone numbers is mostly a thing of the past. Nearly everyone has a smartphone, at least in countries like the United States. And even flip phones can store contacts, so hardly anyone flexes those memory muscles anymore.

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Map Navigation

“Navigate home.” Have you ever uttered that phrase? If so, chances are you can hardly imagine the idea of fumbling over a paper map (or printed-out MapQuest directions), carefully planning your route for what felt like hours. But what if you couldn’t find your map? You might be out of luck. And the idea of using a compass is foreign to so many of us.

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Using GPS to navigate to where you’re going undoubtedly saves a lot of time and is much more convenient. But one neurobiologist claim that this reliance on GPS causes changes in our brains, such as reduced grey matter density in the hippocampus. Studies like these are still in their early stages, but perhaps we shouldn’t throw away all those old maps just yet.

Dialing a Rotary Phone

Remember those touch-tone phones we talked about earlier? Most of us don’t even dial numbers anymore if we’re calling someone we know. We just pull them up in our contacts list and click call. So the idea of having to spin a rotor to call anyone is tough to imagine.

But once upon a time, rotary phones were commonplace — and they were much more convenient than having to ask a switchboard operator to patch you through to the person you wanted to call. However, while rotary phones were hugely innovative at the time, it’s tough to see this piece of tech having much of a resurgence.

Using a Card Catalog

For decades, card catalogs used the Dewey Decimal System to help people find the book they wanted at the local library. Card catalogs are just what they sound like: a series of printed cards on which the titles of books and other materials were printed along with a corresponding decimal. That decimal would match the one printed on the book, giving library patrons a way to navigate thousands of books with relative ease.

Libraries still maintain a catalog, and they might even still have decimal systems, such as call numbers. But instead of having drawers full of cards, you simply look the material up in the catalog, which tells you where to find it. While card catalogs were a great solution in the 19th century, they would be cumbersome to maintain today.

Driving a Stick Shift

Stick shift (or manual ignition) enthusiasts remain to this day, as many people in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s learned to drive with a stick shift. Manual ignition vehicles are more complicated to drive than automatic transmission vehicles, and the former is seen as something of an art form by those who know how to drive them.

While manual transmission devotees might insist they should never die out, few cars today have stick shifts today: 2.4% in 2020, according to CarMax. And that percentage is more likely to decrease further than not, as electric vehicles have single-speed transmissions, eliminating the need for constant shifting.

Checkbook Balancing

Balancing a checkbook was once a cornerstone of personal finance. It was the process of reconciling the records you kept of the checks you wrote against those listed on your bank statement. If you found a discrepancy, it would indicate an error either in your records or the bank’s records.

However, few people write checks today. In the past, this was a way to pay with cash when you didn’t have any on hand. But writing checks can be cumbersome, and today, we can just swipe our credit or debit card or use Apple Pay instead. Writing a check could be useful for helping us pay closer attention to the dollar amount we spend, but the convenience of electronic payments tends to win out today.

Writing Cursive

The teaching of cursive handwriting was once common in schools far and wide. Perfecting your cursive was a point of pride, and some teachers might even grade students based on how neat their handwriting was. More than just a point of pride, though, it is believed that writing in cursive helps with brain development and language skills.

However, now that essays can be written electronically, it makes more sense to type them, and cursive has fallen out of favor. Some students inevitably never perfected their cursive anyway, so teachers’ jobs are easier if everything is typed. We might be losing something with cursive, but the ease of typing has rendered cursive a thing of the past.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 8 Job (and Life) Skills That Are Officially Dying Out

Executives who regularly promote themselves on social media may have a leg up when it comes to landing high-paying job offers that help to advance their careers.

In a recent study, Texas McCombs professor of information, risk, and operations management Andrew Whinston found that savvy executive candidates such as CEOs and CIOs who modestly—but frequently—tout their knowledge, expertise, and skills on Twitter were 32% more likely to attract higher-paying job offers after interviews.

The finding offers compelling evidence for executive job seekers who are weighing the risks and benefits of posting to a social media platform such as Twitter. On the one hand, posting done poorly can backfire on candidates if hiring managers scouring the internet for information find details they don't like. The public might also perceive executives as self-promoting or conceited if they post too much about themselves.

On the other hand, this type of personal branding done well has been understood to help elevate candidates' credibility and set them apart from their fellow job seekers. But the researchers found that posting to Twitter also has more tangible, longer-term effects in the form of better job opportunities and higher overall earnings.

"People who are actively self-promoting on Twitter will benefit from doing that," says Whinston, who wrote the paper along with Yanzhen Chen of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Huaxia Rui of the University of Rochester. "They're getting returns for their time."

Tallying tweets

Whinston and colleagues reached this conclusion after they examined compensation data on chief executive officers, chief marketing officers, chief information officers, and chief product and innovation officers employed by Standard & Poor's 500 constituent companies from 2010 to 2013 from the ExecuComp database of executive compensation, plus posts made to executives' personal Twitter accounts.

The researchers chose Twitter because of its social broadcasting feature, which lets users cast their messages to a much wider audience than does Facebook, which people tend to use mainly for targeted communication with friends and family.

On Twitter, the researchers measured how many posts executives made and the size of their audiences. They also tallied how many were personal branding tweets by analyzing how closely tweet content matched an executive's company and job position.

Whinston and colleagues matched pairs of executives who were looking for similar jobs: one of the executives had engaged in self-promotion on social media, while the other had not. The researchers also took advantage of a series of Twitter upgrades in 2011 and 2012 that included expanded tweets and push notifications that made it easier for people to use the platform for personal branding. They compared personal branding and job market performance before and after the upgrade to help rule out an alternative explanation: that different personality traits were responsible for some people getting better job offers.

Takeaways for would-be executives

Whinston and colleagues discovered that posting to Twitter did matter for these executives. C-level job candidates who posted to Twitter more often, touting their personal brands, were more likely to be offered jobs at high salaries than executives who had not been promoting their personal brands online.

"Self-promotion worked in this class of people," Whinston says. "We found that the idea of self-promotion is indeed a valid concept, and that it's worth some time and effort to promote yourself on Twitter."

The findings have real-world applications for lower-level workers, too. People who are seeking to become executives, or executives who want to boost their careers, might get further faster if they take the time to post high-quality, relevant content that promotes their personal brands.

Future research could look at the impact of social media personal branding on other labor markets to see how far-reaching the effect might be, Whinston says.

The research was published in MIS Quarterly.

When you choose a career ladder to climb , it is important that you place it on the right wall or you will waste a lot of time and effort.

Jonathan Masland spent summers in college painting houses in Philadelphia, so was forever climbing ladders. The advice he received during his undergraduate studies at Harvard University has stayed with him throughout a career that has included investment banking, internet startups, healthcare M&A, telecoms and an entrepreneurial food trailer leasing business.

My co-Director at Fortuna Admissions, and co-founder of 42, a startup dedicated to providing technology and financial solutions for students pursuing higher Education in India found that business school was a wonderful time to make sure that you put the ladder on the right wall. “The process of choosing the right MBA or Masters program for you is also part of making sure you climb the right wall as you are forcing yourself to figure out what is important to you.”

With an MBA from Wharton, Jonathan spent 14 years at the Tuck School of Business a Dartmouth College and as the Executive Director of the Career Development Office managed a team that delivered career services to 580 full-time MBAs, 10,0000 alumni, and undergraduates through the school’s Business bridge program. Overseeing recruiting relations for more than 1,000 organisations, his team delivered six straight years of highest or close to highest level of employment of the top ten U.S. MBA programs.

“Self Awareness was hands down the most important trait in successful job seekers. As we restructured career services at Tuck, I presented 10+ job characteristics to eight Career Development Office Directors and they all chose 'Self Awareness' as most important. So the more self aware they are as they go into business school, the more self awareness they develop during the program, the more successful they will be in their job search and in their career.”

When people think of business schools, they often think of the MBA. But as the CentreCourt Masters Festival I co-organize with Poets & Quants demonstrates, most business schools also offer a wide range of Specialized Masters programs that can cover very specific areas of business depending on the specialism or future role a student is interested in.

From the well-established MSc in Management and MSc in Finance to the fast-growing MSc in Business Analytics, the growing portfolio now includes the MSc in Climate Change, Management and Finance, MSc in Supply Chain Management, MSc in Product Management, MSc in Cybersecurity and more.

As the list of potential Master programmes continues to expand, what career ladders have Business Masters graduates been following recently?

Some individuals will follow career paths open to them based on the location they have studied. For example, Berlin boasts a burgeoning start-up scene and this is taken advantage of by MSc graduates of ESMT Berlin with a new Master in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Roland Siegers, Director of Early Career Programs at ESMT Berlin sees a clear trend. “Our graduates mostly enter one of the many exciting start-ups in Berlin. They are looking for hot, fast-growing, dynamic companies with a start-up culture that enables them to use different skills and move fast up the hierarchy. Later on, they either create their own company, or move on to more corporate companies such as consulting, but in roles linked to innovation or analytics.”

For MSc graduates from Durham University Business School in the UK, Neil Armstrong, Senior Manager for International Engagement and Careers, notes a continued attraction towards the finance sector, which has been long been popular amongst business school graduates. “Finance roles still hold the greatest interest for students. The biggest percentage of our students move into the finance sector, followed by technology and consulting. Students also move into a range of graduate level roles including marketing professional, supply chain analysts, and HR specialists or generalists.”

At Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, an employment report on Master of Management Studies graduates from 2021 revealed similar career paths taken to previous years. Consulting and finance remained the top industries amongst graduates, with 61% of full-time graduate positions following one of the two sectors.

For the Master of Management at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, more than 22% of graduates went on to follow a path in consulting. Large numbers of graduates of their Master of Supply Chain Management and Master of Accounting also went into the consulting and finance sectors.

Roland Siegers at ESMT also notes that start-ups are becoming increasingly popular among graduates who may have ordinarily pursued traditional roles: “There is a clear shift towards more start-up careers, away from traditional industry roles. In particular, there is an increase in careers in FinTech as more students are graduating with a business plan and the ambition to found their own businesses.”

Siegers argues that the Covid-19 pandemic has also shifted what graduates expect from employers. “In recent years, big names have become less critical, especially for local students; they prefer to join an exciting project at a dynamic organization. After being forced to work and study online, graduates also demand flexibility from employers.”

Beyond consulting and finance, schools have also witnessed an increase in graduates pursuing careers in healthcare. The UK’s UCL Global Business School for Health, newly launched in 2021, focuses on this union between business management and healthcare, offering an MSc Biotech and Pharmaceutical Management, MSc Global Health Management, and MSc Digital Health and Entrepreneurship for students to accelerate their careers and become future global healthcare management leaders.

For students unsure of what path to pursue after graduating, business schools provide services to help with this. Career services at Durham University Business School support students at all stages, through one-to-one advice and guidance, grounding their own individual goals at the core of every discussion. “The school introduces students to the range of career options available to them in all business sectors and how the labor market is driving demand. Students gain support to build their skill sets and effectively manage the change in the digitisation of the recruitment process,” explains Neil Armstrong.

ESMT Berlin also introduces students to potential career paths they could pursue with their degree.“The ESMT career department organizes a lot of touching points with alumni from different industries who can present various aspects of chosen career paths,” explains Roland Siegers. “They also invite a diverse range of companies to recruiting event to allow our students to check which company culture resonates with them.”

At Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Sheryle Dirks, Associate Dean for Career Management, explains, “We don’t provide services and resources just to help students find jobs now. We want our students to leave Fuqua with career-building strategies and skills they can use throughout their professional lives.”

Other business schools are beginning to offer Masters programs specific to sectors that are seeing rapid growth. The University of New Mexico Anderson School of Management offers an MS in Cybersecurity and Business Analytics, providing graduates with skills that look set to only increase in demand. Lisa Beauchene-Lawson, Manager of Admissions and Enrolment at UNM Anderson says, “these are skillset that are highly sought after and I expect the demand for programs like this to continue to increase; it’s certainly trending upwards at our institution. Data security is very complex and constantly changing so we have to continue changing with that demand as well, especially with the Bureau of Labour Statistics showing an increase in these information security analyst positions.”

The MS in Product Management at Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business reflects similar demand, but for a specific job role: “Our previous Dean for the School of Computer Science came from Google,” explains Brad Eiben, Executive Director of the MS in Product Management, “and his observation was ‘when I was at Google, we had a difficult time finding good product managers, so let’s make them.’ This program came from that idea. At Google when they found a good software engineer, they’d ring a bell; When they found a good PM, they’d throw a parade. That’s how difficult he found it. So, we build product managers for employers.”

Looking at past and current trends to understand what sectors are popular amongst business MSc graduates is one thing, but what industries might graduates pursue in the future? For Neil Armstrong at Durham University Business School, it is important to consider how technology will continue to take hold in all industries and all sectors. “Students see technology companies as holding future potential and have more and more interest in this area.”

This is a progression that Roland Siegers agrees with: “The industries that will embrace change and transformation, both technological but even more so culturally. All industries will be affected by increased automation, digitization, AI, etc. So, it is more a question of the individual firms living up to these challenges.”

Siegers also believes that sustainability will become an increasingly important area to future graduates: “I expect to see growth in sustainable energy production and green finance. Very few graduates will find it appealing to work for fossil fuel-only companies from here onwards. Graduates will want to see how convincing these companies and industry strategies are in contributing to a more sustainable future.”

The upcoming CentreCourt Masters Festival captures the dynamic and evolving market for Specialized Masters, as leading business from around the world develop new programs alongside established courses in Management, Finance and Accounting.

So where do you want to place your career ladder?

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The leading enterprise automation platform is a Great Place to Work® Certified Company

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., August 08, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Great Place to Work® and Fortune magazine have honored Workato as one of the 2022 Best Medium Workplaces, coming in at the #20 spot. Earning a spot means that Workato is one of the best companies to work for in the U.S.

To determine the Best Medium Workplaces list, Great Place to Work analyzed the survey responses of over 200,000 employees from Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies with 100 to 999 U.S. employees. In that survey, 98% of Workato’s employees said the company is a great place to work. This number is 41% higher than the average U.S. company.

"We are so grateful for our dedicated employees who have made us a part of this list and continue proving that a people-centric culture is a key to success. To again be included on a Fortune and Great Place to Work list demonstrates how dedicated our employees are to helping shape the way people work and the impact our technology has on driving business transformation," said Carle Quinn, Chief People Officer at Workato. "Our people make working at Workato an honor and we thank them for all they do to help shape our employee experience that led to this incredible honor."

Founded in 2013, Workato is transforming automation across businesses with a single platform for data, apps, and processes. The company is emerging as a market leader in enterprise automation as the only low-code, no-code platform that reduces fragmentation company-wide. Over the past year, Workato more than doubled its workforce and established subsidiaries in the U.K., India, and Japan, plus opened an office in Dublin and a data center in Frankfurt.

The Best Medium Workplaces list is highly competitive. Great Place to Work is the only company culture award in America that selects winners based on how fairly employees are treated. Companies are assessed on how well they are creating a great employee experience that cuts across race, gender, age, disability status, or any aspect of who employees are or what their role is.

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"It’s not the size of an organization that makes it great, but how the organization treats its people," says Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work. "And these medium workplaces have proven that the inspiring cultures they’ve created go head-to-head with those of any large corporation. Leaders at these companies put their people first, and in return, achieve stronger business results than the average workplace."

Great Place to Work, the global authority on workplace culture, determines its lists using its proprietary For All methodology to evaluate and certify thousands of organizations in America’s largest ongoing annual workforce study, based on over 1 million survey responses and data from companies representing more than 6.1 million employees this year alone.

In 2022, Workato also ranked as a Best Workplace for Millennials™ and was ranked #3 on the list of Best Workplaces in the Bay Area.

To learn more about Workato and the future of enterprise automation, please visit www.workato.com.

About Workato

The leader in enterprise automation, Workato helps organizations work faster and smarter without compromising security and governance. Built for Business and IT users, Workato is trusted by over 17,000 of the world's top brands, including Broadcom, Intuit, and Box. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., Workato is backed by Altimeter Capital, Battery Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, Tiger Global, and Redpoint Ventures. For more information, visit workato.com or connect with us on social media:

About the Best Medium Workplaces™

Great Place to Work selected the Best Medium Workplaces by analyzing the survey responses of over 200,000 employees from Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies with 100 to 999 U.S. employees. Company rankings are derived from 60 employee experience questions within the Great Place to Work Trust Index™ survey. Great Place to Work determines its lists using its proprietary For All methodology to evaluate and certify thousands of organizations in America’s largest ongoing annual workforce study, based on over 1 million survey responses and data from companies representing more than 6.1 million employees, this year alone. Read the full methodology.

To get on this list next year, start here.

About Great Place to Work®

Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, it has surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Its employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting, and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Everything it does is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work For All™.

Learn more at greatplacetowork.com and on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220808005352/en/

Contacts

Joseph Hollister
Communications Manager
joseph.hollister@workato.com