Remember when you had to use a dictionary to look up a word? Or when you had to actually memorize people’s phone numbers? Or when you had to use a fax machine to send someone a memo?
Yeah, me neither. But my colleagues love to remind me that all these things used to exist. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m a Millennial.) Times are changing—and yes, it’s a great thing—but along with the new jobs, new career paths, new office environments, comes the need to learn new skills. Nowadays, it’s just as important, if not more so, to know how to email effectively as it is to know how to communicate in person, or edit photos on the computer as opposed to develop film the old-fashioned way, or work from home productively versus in a cubicle.
Yes, as our world evolves, so should our individual skill sets, which unfortunately means some things that used to shine on our resumes become, well, obsolete.
Twitter had some fun with this concept using the trending hashtag #obsoletejobskills.
Here’s the best of the best—some of them are pretty hilariously accurate:
Urgent fax-sender #ObsoleteJobSkills 😿 pic.twitter.com/wWrBkhunUm
— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) May 17, 2016Rewinding movies at Blockbuster #ObsoleteJobSkills
— Jags Movie Guy (@MoviePaul) May 17, 2016Rotary Phone Repairer #ObsoleteJobSkills pic.twitter.com/K0LUIUSQob
— Secia G (@Nessa_Star4) May 17, 2016Cursive. #ObsoleteJobSkills
— Peter Birdsong (@PeterBirdsong) May 17, 2016We were the original Google... #ObsoleteJobSkills pic.twitter.com/rJYi5Ewm9K
— Omaha Public Library (@OmahaLibrary) May 17, 2016Envelope Licker #ObsoleteJobSkills pic.twitter.com/bKpIzSwi7y
— Secia G (@Nessa_Star4) May 17, 2016Formatting floppy disks #ObsoleteJobSkills
— Cammie Cantrell (@cammie408) May 17, 2016Paper filing #ObsoleteJobSkills
— Coretta Carter (@carter_coretta) May 17, 2016#ObsoleteJobSkills throwing crumpled paper balls in trash can
— wesley (@neverhipster) May 17, 2016Really good handwriting #ObsoleteJobSkills pic.twitter.com/rOPU0GAWaB
— Mediabistro (@Mediabistro) May 17, 2016#ObsoleteJobSkills knowing what the word "obsolete" means
— Kevin Noah Riley (@KevinNoahRiley2) May 17, 2016
Some skills are yes, very outdated (like rewinding cassette tapes and sadly for my second grade teacher, writing in cursive), but I’d argue that even some seemingly obscure and irrelevant skills can be altered for the job of your dreams. Many are transferrable, while others say a lot about who you are and why you’d be good for the job—even mundane college experiences.
So while #obsoletejobskills is a good reminder to clean up old junk on your resume, or invest in learning a new program, or taking a class, it should also be taken as a way to really analyze your skill set and see if what you do have could actually be used to your advantage in some way. Because while the world will continue to change, not everything has to disappear for good. Some skills—like listening, collaborating, leading—will never go out of style.
