Each year as twenty-somethings leave college campuses in
droves, industries on the rise offer something uniquely appealing: the
opportunity to seize brand new positions where competition hasn't reached
critical mass. They're so new that they didn't even exist a decade ago, which
more than puts your parents out of the running.
App Developer
The iPhone was
introduced in 2007, the Android shortly after. Since then, more than a million
apps have been put up for sale in Apples App Store and Android's Google Play.
Consider this: in 2011, Apple pulled in more than $15 billion in revenues from
mobile applications, which shrink programs that used to run only on desktop
computers to make them work on mobile devices.
As demand surges for
apps to run on iOS, Android and whatever operating system is waiting in the
wings, companies are faced with a dearth of talent with the skills to develop
for mobile. This means fresh opportunity for programmers and developers to
break into a booming market.
Educational or
Admissions Consultants
When a certain set of
affluent parents watch their toddler stack his or her first set of blocks,
they're not lost in a moment of cute, they're strategizing their child's
likeliness of getting into the right pre-school. These moms and dads will stop
at nothing to secure the best education for their kids—which for many includes
hiring an educational or admissions consultant to help ease the process of
interviewing and testing into schools from preschool to college. Admissions
consultants can be paid thousands of dollars for their skills—which often
include personal connections with school administrators.
Elder Care
As the population ages and baby boomers become grandparents, an increasing amount of attention is being turned to the care of the elderly. Between legal concerns, staffing at residential facilities or consultants hired to facilitate end-of-life issues, jobs in this area are expected to increase. People who have an understanding of the increasingly complex healthcare system in addition to an interest in comfort care are well suited for these roles. Communication skills are also paramount—as elder care service providers are often tasked with communicating end-of-life issues to their client and his or her family members.
Social Media Manager
Making the most of
online communities— what we generally call "social" networks—has become
an integral part of businesses from small-town coffee shops to behemoths like
Amazon and Microsoft, which both employ social media managers in their
marketing and advertising departments. "There has been a great big shift
in how companies communicate with their customers ," Purdy says. On job
site indeed, for example, there are currently over 11,000 listings for the
title. But the term "social media managers" really covers all manner
of tasks—from the social-savvy recent grad who mans the Twitter feed to the new
wave of marketing strategists who help companies to leverage their social
audiences through targeted marketing.
But don't be fooled that
your 10,000 Twitter friends are going to land you a job. "Young people may
be more technologically savvy than their older colleagues," says Purdy,
"But technology in the workplace is evolving so quickly that a person
can't think that just because they're great at Twitter will make them a
desirable commodity long-term."
Chief Listening Officer
One step up from a
"social media manager," (more on that later) the Chief Listening
Officer keeps her ears (and eyes) on social channels and real life
conversations to keep the company up to speed on what their customers are
saying. "Before social media, business was a one way channel of
communication. The company talked, we listened," Purdy says. "Now
we've become accustomed to two-way conversations. We expect them to listen, and
so we see these kinds of roles."
Beth LaPierre became the
first ever Chief Listening Officer in 2010, and while she's since moved on to
other gigs, she spent her time monitoring the more than 300,000 mentions of
Kodak on Facebook, Twitter, message forums, YouTube, blogs, and elsewhere on the
Web each day, using software from Radian6 and PeopleBrowsr. Then she moved that
information to the relevant department. As more and more companies rely on
social streams and online exchanges for customer service reasons, the role of
the listener will only increase.
Sustainability Expert
"There are
obviously some very concrete reasons that companies, even those who aren't in
the green or alternative energy space—would be interested in sustainable
practices," says Purdy. Oftentimes hiring someone into an
environmentally-conscious role could be a cost-savings issue, he says, both in
terms of lowering power bills or to take advantage of increasing tax rebates
for companies committing to sustainability.
A degree in
environmental science or business management major would prove useful in these
new "green" roles as they often require developing new workflows to
increase productivity while lowering the carbon footprint of a business, but
specific environmental leadership majors are on the rise. Projects can include:
recycling and waste reduction, supplier sustainability evaluation. Purdy thinks
Millennials are a shoe-in: "Look at the next gen of managers and
leaders," he says. "These young people grew up in a culture that
valued recycling, valued being green. They're far more driven by those concerns
because they've been hearing about it since they were babies. I think we'll
continue to see growth in this area for young employees."
Cloud Computing Services
In August 2006 Google's
Eric Schmidt described the company's approach to software as a service as
"cloud computing" at a search engine conference, possibly the first
high profile usage of the term. Because it was used in the context of describing
Google properties (Gmail, etc. etc.), it became synonymous with online storage
and sharing of data. These days, the term has adopted by everyone from
Microsoft to start-ups that help moms access coupons in the check-out line.
Companies are looking for database managers, engineers and strategists for
storing and indexing massive amounts of data—we're talking petrabytes (one
quadrillion bytes) of information.
Millennial Generational
Expert
Generational consultants
help companies better understand the changing workforce—and who better to
explain the Millennials than a living, breathing member of Generation Y?
Companies in every sector and of every size face the challenge of recruiting
and developing young professionals to prepare them to be future executives.
Companies can build loyalty in their workforce by engaging in practices that
connect directly with their younger employees. All-hands happy hour, anyone?
But this isn't a role
that's strictly for the young ones. Many generational experts are older
employees, who've turned their experience with young people into an ability to
advise companies on how best to engage, motivate and, yes, placate this often
fickle workforce.
Market Research Data
Miner
As customer information
becomes more and more vital to the retail experience, businesses are compiling
data in droves—and hiring experts to make sense of it. From different datasets
including structured (transaction), semi-structured (user behavior) and
unstructured (text) information, data analysts and scientists look for
behavioral patterns to help retailers and businesses predict future trends or
to build recommendation engines or personalized advertising.
"Library science is
a really hot degree right now," says Purdy, "And data-mining could be
one of the reasons. It's a helpful knowledge set for someone hoping to manage
large amounts of data" Hopeful data-minded candidates can include library
science majors, researchers, engineers or applied scientists.
User Experience Design
What is user experience
design? Quite simply, experiences created and shaped through technology and how
to make them happen. Case in point: the experience of waking up to an alarm
clock is very different from the experience created by the rising sun and chirping
birds. A user experience designer's concern is how to mimic the birds-sun
experience through technology (see the variety of alarm clocks on the market
that grow louder and brighter to wake you gently). Would-be designers should be
fluent in Photoshop, understand programming languages like CSS and HTML and
feel comfortable taking an idea from sketch to prototype. As far as demand
goes, things are looking bright: a recent indeed.com search returned 168,219
job listings.
