It’s that time of year. The month of "April Fools." The perfect time to make a list of odd-sounding – but real – skills and compare what they sound like to what they actually mean.
All of these skills are taken from the Lightcast Open Skills library, which means they are real skills mentioned in real employer job postings and employee professional profiles. The definitions provided below (the real ones, that is) are mostly from Wikipedia.
As fast as the world of work is changing, the list of emerging (and oddly named) skills just keeps growing. So, in honor of the weird, the niche, and the wonderfully specific, we invite you to pause for a brief moment and enjoy this collection of 9 skills that sound like one thing, but mean something else in their true labor market context:
1) Fluidized Bed
What it sounds like: Just a fancy name for a waterbed.
What it is: A physical phenomenon where a solid particulate substance behaves like a fluid…because you pump pressurized fluid (or gas) into it. I’m no engineer, but sounds kind of like an earth slushie. It appears in postings for metallurgical technicians and power plant mechanics.
2) Epic Stork
What it sounds like: An unforgettable bird.
What it is: A software program used in healthcare settings that is designed specifically for obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) departments. It’s a module of the popular electronic health record software, Epic.
3) Unreal Engine
What it sounds like: A fictional motor.
What it is: A game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game, Unreal. Has since been used in many other games as well as the film and TV industry.
4) Prince2
What it sounds like: The king’s other son.
What it is: An acronym that stands for “Projects in Controlled Environments 2.” It’s a structured project management method that emphasizes dividing projects into manageable and controllable stages (more popular overseas, but it was still mentioned in over 6,500 project management job postings last year in the United States!)
5) RxSwift
What it sounds like: A prescription for more T-swizzle in your life. Can be filled at your local pharmacy, or by attending a Kansas City Chiefs game.
What it is: A reactive programming library for Swift (Apple’s programming language for iOS) used to handle complex data streams and manage asynchronous operations in iOS and macOS applications.
6) Ganache
What it sounds like: That rich, chocolatey icing / glaze / sauce that’s part of so many delicious desserts.
What it is: A personal blockchain environment used for Ethereum development, which enables the simulation of a blockchain network for testing and deploying smart contracts.
7) ANTS Performance Profiler
What it sounds like: A performance review system for those little insects that show up in your kitchen when you’re not as diligent as you should be about cleaning up after yourself. I’ve heard…
What it is: A performance profiling tool used for .NET applications. This skill involves the ability to identify performance bottlenecks, memory leaks, and CPU hotspots in code.
8) Photo Stitching
What it sounds like: What you do when you want to crochet those family memories into an afghan.
What it is: Actually, this one is kind of what it sounds like: the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Usually does not involve crochet though.
9) CanCanCan
What it sounds like: Positive thinking on steroids
What it is: A Ruby on Rails authorization library that provides a simple API for managing user permissions and roles in web applications.
Are all of these skills in super high demand? Not necessarily. Many of the skills on this list are pretty obscure. But they still appear in the Lightcast skills library because if they’re in demand anywhere, we want to capture it. That’s part of the power of Lighcast skills.
So, whether you’re developing academic programs, deploying workforce training, or deciding on talent strategy for your organization, we deliver the data you need (5x bonus for alliteration!). Nothing is too niche*. If it exists in the labor market, we’ll help you track supply, demand, compensation, and other relevant insights for that skill. And that, is no joke.
Have a good April!
*If for some reason we don't track the skills you're interested in, you can help us change that by suggesting a skill to add to the library!
