If you’ve been in the working world for a while, I bet you’ve seen how quickly job skills evolve. Twenty years ago, typing speed was a prized skill, and mastering fax machines was almost necessary. Now? Not so much. As per LinkedIn, over 92% of today’s jobs rely on digital skills. Skills that didn’t exist 10 years ago!
A key factor in the evolution of the modern workplace is that technology rose so unprecedentedly that old staples of employment became tainted relics. These 18 skills may have previously looked great on a résumé, but perhaps now it’s best to leave in the past.
Fax Machine Mastery
Office tech used to peak out with faxing. But now, only about a few offices use a fax machine on a regular basis, and it’s almost certainly just for nostalgia!
With the presence of PDFs, email, and cloud-based sharing, knowing how to load paper into a fax machine and “hear the beep” is no longer a matter of course.
Speedy Data Entry
Being a data entry speed demon was important back in my day. However, data entry is fast disappearing with the use of automation tools and AI-driven data entry software.
Today, AI systems now perform 47 percent of data entry tasks.
Typing Speed Competitions
Back in the day, the gold standard for typing was 100 words per minute. However, speed typing has lost its appeal since most work happens on collaborative platforms which does not depend on real time speed.
Today, typing isn’t a race, it’s just a baseline skill.
Receptionist Skills
Answering phones, taking messages, and smiling at the front desk were once staple social positions in any office you have ever been in. However, most offices use digital reception software today, and virtual assistants and physical receptionists have become quite a rarity.
Shorthand
Once shorthand, with its secret scribbles and abbreviations, was the preferred way to scribble notes in meetings. Today, Otter.ai handles it for us, making shorthand a thing of the past.
Mail Sorting and Filing Systems
Do you remember spending hours sorting, classifying, and filing documents? Thanks to digitalization, physical filing cabinets are long gone, replaced by digital filing systems and shared cloud drives.
45% of small and midsize companies still use a physical filing system.
Phone Etiquette (on a Landline)
You’ve been in the workforce for a while. Congrats if you remember the procedure for placing somebody on hold on a landline.
However, landline etiquette is quite irrelevant to cell phones and VoIP systems. For U.S. adults, only about 2% still even use a landline.
Using an Overhead Projector
Ah, the good old days of rapidly dimming lights and diligently flipping transparencies! Well, overhead projectors are just the past compared to today’s PowerPoint and digital presentation tools.
I know offices where one would be hard-pressed to find an overhead projector that isn’t buried in a “tech museum.”
Memorizing Directions
Just a few years ago, memorizing directions to client sites was critical. Now, a smartphone’s GPS will lead us anywhere.
Only a handful of people use paper maps today, and many of us don’t even need to know the route by heart anymore.
Advanced Microsoft Word Formatting
Do you recall being the office hero and knowing how to add borders and create word tables? Today, collaboration has become less about the design and more about the content.
Most people use much simpler collaborative tools such as Google Docs, which has over a billion users.
Handwritten Letters and Invoices
Good penmanship for writing formal letters used to be a big deal. With email, Slack, and countless digital platforms, the handwritten memo has become as rare as a unicorn.
Only a few companies still send handwritten invoices!
Rolodex Organization
You couldn’t manage professional contacts without Rolodex, but these days, you can use digital tools like LinkedIn and CRMs such as Salesforce to organize and access contacts more easily and quickly.
Even CRMs can track interactions, send reminders, and analyze trends, making the old-fashioned Rolodex a thing of the past.
Manual Bookkeeping
Once they had defined the numbers, crunching those numbers was all a good accountant did. But then software like QuickBooks and Xero took over, automating everything from payroll to expense tracking.
About 82 percent of accounting tasks are now done through digital channels.
Personal Organization via File Cabinets
Fans of personal file cabinets remember the time when the ultimate provenance of an organized employee was a mountain of carefully labeled folders and files in personal file cabinets.
Today, cloud storage has rendered them useless since we have access to files from anywhere at any time. A quick search is all it takes instead of rummaging through paper stacks, which leaves most file cabinets as relics of things past.
Writing in Cursive
Once regarded as beautiful and taught widely in schools, cursive writing is mostly traded for typing and printed text for clarity and speed.
These days, even signatures are digital, and rarely is it done in cursive, taking it from a practical skill to something closer to an art form.
Manual Time Tracking
Previously, work hours had to be punched on a clock or filled out by hand in time sheets. Today, digital time tracking apps like Toggl and Hubstaff already do the job well, with fewer errors and paperwork.
Calculator Proficiency
Back in the day, there was no iPod in your pocket or one in your hand. Every desk had a calculator, and you had to be quick with it.
Today, software such as Excel and Google Sheets deals with simple math and the most complex calculations, and dedicated calculators are more or less rendered obsolete. While basic math skills aren’t useless, we now have such ease with calculators that skill is more nostalgic than a necessity.
Running to the Printer
Back in the day, rushing to the printer for reports and memos was a workout in itself. But with digital communication and ‘paperless’ offices, printing is, for the most part, unnecessary.
Emails, PDFs, and even shared documents can now manage what took stacks of paper to begin with—eliminating the printer run from a routine event to something that only needs to happen on occasion.
Disclaimer- This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information
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