25 of the most in-demand skills that will help you get a job in South Africa right now

Contracting company Outsized has published its talent on-demand report 2022, detailing the banking and finance jobs which are in demand in South Africa right now.

2021 saw more than a doubling in demand for talent through the Outsized platform in South Africa and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. This is a continuation of the trend that started in 2020, as remote work and project-driven outcomes have become the norm and financial demands favour the use of expert contractors, the group said.

“While we continued to see demand from financial services, not least the insurance sector, strong growth was also coming through from Big 4 consulting clients. This was off the back of new projects as well as the reinstatement of projects put on ice initially by the onset of Covid,” said Johann van Niekerk, managing director of Outsized South Africa.

“We also saw a resurgence of interest from the rest of Africa, and anticipate this trend for both areas to continue in 2022 as uncertainties related to the pandemic continue to decrease.”

The global trend of making use of remote resources has also seen increased interest in the use of skills from South Africa, both for the quality and price they offer, it said. “This is increasing and expected to continue to do so.”

South Africa

Outsized said the following skills and jobs have seen a broad increase in demand for the following skills:

• Actuarial skills – South Africa has a deep talent pool in this area;
• Project support – such as project and programme managers, Scrum masters, Agile specialists;
• Regulatory skills – both for implementation and regulatory development;
• Data – in particular, data analysts and data architects;
• Financial risk specialists – covering credit, market and operational risk.

A broader overview of the data shows that insurance companies and the big four consulting firms the biggest hirers at the moment, Outsized said. This is reflected in increased demand for specialist skills, in particular around financial risk work and regulatory projects, it said.

The most in-demand skills across each sector are as follows:

Insurance

• Actuarial
• Data Analytics
• Business Intelligence
• Accounting
• Data Architecture

Investors

• Programme Evaluation
• Risk Management
• Market Research
• Programme Management
• Legal & Regulatory

Big 4

• Legal & Regulatory
• Murex
• Quantitative Analytics
• Treasury
• Credit Risk

Management consulting

• Data Analytics
• Data Engineering
• Data Science
• Solutions Architecture
• Data Visualisation

Various

• Data Analytics
• Business Analytics
• UX
• Due Diligence
• Payments

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