REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 15, 2013 — Top candidates for current and future jobs will be measured by capabilities and competencies, with 20 distinct skills bubbling up to the top in millions of high-growth, high-paying job postings, according to a white paper commissioned by Microsoft Corp. and released by IDC. The study provides insight into the skills students need for the top 60 high-growth, high-wage occupations that will account for 11.5 million new hires and 28 percent of job growth by 2020. Out of those skills, oral and written communication, detail orientation, and Microsoft Office proficiency top the list.

With technology and innovation booming, the global economy is changing and business needs are evolving. IDC research found that although a number of positions require technical skills, even more require knowledge and cognitive skills.

“Educators need to focus on teaching a breadth of skills. IT skills are important, but soft skills, while not evaluated in school, are fundamental to every job students are pursuing today and in the future,” said Anthony Salcito, vice president of Worldwide Public Sector Education at Microsoft. “IDC’s research reveals that although a number of positions require technical skills, even more require knowledge and cognitive skills gained from use of personal productivity applications and services. For this reason, Microsoft is committed to investing in students around the world to ensure they have access to the tools that teach these skills.”

IDC 'Skill Requirements for Tomorrow’s Best Jobs’ key findings

In looking at the job skills of the future, both hard and soft skills are important, according to IDC and Microsoft’s "Skill Requirements for Tomorrow’s Best Jobs: Helping Educators Provide Students with Skills and Tools They Need" white paper. By leveraging job and skill requirements from 14.6 million job postings from the second and third quarters of 2013, IDC identified the 20 most common skills required for those positions. To validate the importance of those skills, IDC examined 60 occupations that have above average growth potential and salary potential between 2013 and 2020.

“Of the more than 11,000 skills we examined, it is interesting to see the play between hard and soft skills,” said Cushing Anderson, program vice president of Project-Based Services at IDC. “Many of the top 20 skills reinforce the other; the skills we identified are not taken in isolation but rather are a golden set of skills that are consistently important. Seventy percent of the high-growth, high-wage occupations frequently require at least one of the top 20 skills.”

Key findings from this research include the following:

• The 60 high-growth occupations include jobs in medical support and nursing; sales and marketing professionals; education, teaching, and instruction; computer programming and specialists; and office managers/business operations.

• These high-growth, high-wage positions are in demand across multinational companies, with more than 53,000 companies looking for them on a recent weekday. Global companies posting for these positions include financial services firms like CITI and Santander; consulting and accounting firms like Deloitte and PwC; manufacturers like General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corp.; and retail giants like Home Depot and Advanced AutoParts.

• Communication, integration and presentation skills (CIPs) are required for about 40 percent of all positions and make up 11 of the top 20 skills that are required by 39 percent of the fastest growing, highest paying positions.

• The only software package called out within the top 20 skills across all occupations is Microsoft Office, explicitly required in 15 percent of high-growth, high-salary positions. Microsoft Office is No. 3 on the list of skills most required, and Microsoft PowerPoint and Word are No. 11 and No. 13 most required skills.

• Assessments should be used to demonstrate students’ mastery of material and help improve the teaching and learning process. IDC calls for programs to include formative adaptive assessments, performance-based tasks to demonstrate CIPs capabilities, and appropriate technologies to facilitate consistent administration and evaluation of assessments.

Student advantage

In an effort to help prepare students for the technology skills required in the workforce, Microsoft on Tuesday announced Student Advantage, a new benefit to qualifying institutions that brings Microsoft Office 365 Education to more students worldwide. Microsoft Office 365 Education, an always-up-to-date cloud productivity service, is currently used by 110 million students, faculty and staff around the world. Office 365 Education enables students to communicate and collaborate more efficiently, access assignments in shared workspaces, have notes synchronized in OneNote and have familiar Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel anywhere, across virtually any device.

Beginning Dec. 1, 2013, any institution worldwide that licenses Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus for staff and faculty can provide access to Office 365 ProPlus for students at no additional cost. Today, more than 35,000 institutions are automatically eligible to deliver the Student Advantage benefit to their students. Office 365 ProPlus includes all the familiar and full Office applications — locally installed on up to five devices and available offline. When a school combines Student Advantage with Microsoft’s other cloud services, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online, all available free through Office 365 Education, students have access to the same set of gold-standard productivity tools and services used by Fortune 500 companies all over the world.

“Students use Office every day for school work and activities that are most important to them. Office not only helps students stay organized and get their work done today but at the same time develops skills that will be required when they enter the work force. In fact, no other software or services show up in the top 20 most important skills identified in the research report,” Salcito said. “We are thrilled to offer Student Advantage to schools across the globe so students have access to the latest, most up-to-date version of the world’s leading set of productivity tools in order to give them a competitive advantage when entering the workforce.”

Nearly 98 percent of students using productivity software currently use Office. Student Advantage enables students to access the familiar experience of Office in an always-up-to-date cloud service across their compatible PCs, tablets and phones.

IDC methodology

The research was conducted by scanning 14.6 million job postings from April to September 2013 supplied by WANTEDAnalytics, a provider of real-time business intelligence for the talent marketplace. Of those jobs, IDC analyzed the posting and identified the 20 most common skills required for those positions. IDC also leveraged data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, including data on 2010 employment and forecasts for 2020. IDC analyzed employment data for 748 Standard Occupational Classifications and selected the most attractive classifications according to three criteria: size, growth and wages.

About Microsoft in Education

At Microsoft, we are deeply committed to working with governments, communities, schools and educators to use the power of information technology to deliver technology, services and programs that provide anytime, anywhere learning for all. For more information: http://www.microsoft.com/education.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. — Oct . 14 , 201 3 — Johnson Controls, a global diversified technology and industrial leader in more than 150 countries, has secured Microsoft Office 365 for its employees, partners and suppliers around the world, enhancing knowledge sharing on a global scale and fostering innovation through greater employee interaction.

“Collaboration has been the hallmark of Johnson Controls’ success as a company,” said Colin Boyd, vice president, information technology and chief information officer, Johnson Controls. “We chose Office 365 because it will help us more effectively capitalize on our collaborative culture.”

The company evaluated multiple options and ultimately concluded that Microsoft’s cloud solutions offered the most reliable, cost-effective and scalable tools required by a global corporation. In addition, the platform’s capability to provide real-time translation in many languages effectively supports Johnson Controls’ focus on bolstering interactions among employees.

Boyd added: “At Johnson Controls, we will use Office 365 to enable the spontaneous, lateral communications that drive innovation and increase productivity, which are essential requirements in today’s global manufacturing environments.”

With Office 365, employees can engage in dynamic, evolving conversations that spark ideas and new ways of solving problems no matter where they are located. From the instant messaging, desktop sharing and Web conferencing capabilities in Lync to surfacing project-related email messages through Outlook, Office 365 gives the company the efficient and global communication tools it needs to be agile and responsive.

For example, the account teams within Johnson Controls’ automotive business consist of dedicated groups of people located in different countries working together to provide coordinated and consistent service to hundreds of customer locations. With Office 365, a shop supervisor with a car seat assembly question can use a smartphone to take a video of the assembly and upload it to a SharePoint site for the engineering team to immediately review and resolve.

“Avoiding any production issues that might impact our customers is a key issue for Johnson Controls,” Boyd said. “We’re using Office 365 to mitigate this risk, connecting our 300 production plants with engineering centers through real-time communications to drive quality and responsiveness for our customers.”

More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available in the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

About Johnson Controls

Johnson Controls is a global diversified technology and industrial leader serving customers in more than 150 countries. Our 168,000 employees create quality products, services and solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies of buildings; lead-acid automotive batteries and advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles; and interior systems for automobiles. Our commitment to sustainability dates back to our roots in 1885, with the invention of the first electric room thermostat. Through our growth strategies and by increasing market share we are committed to delivering value to shareholders and making our customers successful. In 2013, Corporate Responsibility Magazine recognized Johnson Controls as the #14 company in its annual “100 Best Corporate Citizens” list. For additional information, please visit http://www.johnsoncontrols.com.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

NAIROBI , Kenya — Oct. 1 4 , 2013 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced the expansion of the Microsoft Ventures partnership program into Africa. Microsoft Ventures was introduced in June as a coordinated global effort to offer tools, resources, expertise and routes to market for startups through partnerships with accelerators around the world.

The company has selected 88mph as its first African accelerator partner. 88mph was chosen for its proven model of helping launch and secure funding for innovative African startups. Together, Microsoft and 88mph will work to provide startups with mentorship, technology guidance, seed funding, joint selling opportunities and more.

Microsoft Ventures takes a holistic approach to helping startups get off the ground through a community evangelism program including Microsoft BizSpark, an accelerator program and a seed fund that works with startups worldwide. The expansion into Africa was conducted as part of the recently launched Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative and will therefore prioritize startups in key sectors including agriculture, education and healthcare.

“Through the 4Afrika Initiative, we are deeply committed to fostering African innovation and to fueling Africa’s economic growth and competitiveness, and we are very proud to see Microsoft Ventures extend its reach into the African continent,” said Amrote Abdella, director, 4Afrika Venture Capital and Startup Programs. “We strongly believe that with the right support, African startups hold tremendous potential to impact both their local economies and the world’s perception of African-led innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Startups will be selected based on the globally established criteria of Microsoft Ventures: Applying companies must have a full-time founding team, a bold vision for tackling a real problem, technologically driven solutions and less than $1 million raised. In Africa, Microsoft is also looking for solutions that can scale across and even outside the African continent.

“Microsoft is a company that deeply understands the value of the ecosystem, and we believe that by working together, 88mph and Microsoft can offer a world-class launch pad to African startups looking to achieve true scale,” said Nikolai Barnwell, Nairobi director, 88mph. “We share a deep commitment to the African startup community and look forward to showcasing more and more African innovators on the world stage.”

The graduating startups from 88mph’s most recent accelerator class will participate in a DemoDay on Dec. 5 in Nairobi where, with Microsoft’s help, the startups will present their businesses and opportunities to invited investors.

Through the BizSpark program, the company has already helped support 625 African startups to date by providing access to Microsoft tools and technologies, and this program will continue. And for the second consecutive year, the company is also a sponsor of DEMO Africa, a startup competition taking place Oct. 24–25 in Nairobi.

More information about Microsoft Ventures is at http://www.microsoftventures.com. More information about the 4Afrika Initiative is at http://www.microsoft.com/4afrika.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.