The 20 Hottest Job Skills of 2013

Want to boost your salary in a hurry? Some entries on your resume are worth more than others. Pick up these skills, and your paycheck could increase by as much as 20 percent.

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Unsurprisingly, PayScale data shows that programming languages remain high on the list of money-grabbers. Almost a third of the top-earning skills pertained directly to a programming language, and several other entries related to software development and data analysis.

It’s safe to say that tech, finance, and energy are good sectors to look into, if you’re contemplating a career change. And if you just want to get farther in your current career path, these skills might get you where you want to go.

Below, we present the top 20 skills that will boost your pay (plus, how much of a salary bump you can typically expect):

1. Scala: 21.31 percent

2. Hadoop: 17.35 percent

3. REST: 16.88 percent

4. Natural Language Processing (NLP): 16.85 percent

5. Machine Learning: 14.98 percent

6. Big Data Analytics: 13.78 percent

7. Oil and Gas Formation Evaluation: 12.12 percent

8. Risk Consulting: 11.61 percent

9. Investment Management: 11.32 percent

10. Ruby on Rails: 11.23 percent

11. International Human Resources (HR): 10.34 percent

12. Tableau Software: 10.06 percent

13. Financial Modeling: 9.09 percent

14. Competitive Analysis: 8.14 percent

15. R: 7.89 percent

16. Python: 7.44 percent

17. Marketo: 6.69 percent

18. Statistical Analysis: 6.60 percent

19. Data Modeling: 6.55 percent

20. Contract Negotiation: 6.27 percent

Tell Us What You Think

Have you added one of these skills to your resume this year? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or join the discussion on Twitter.