Ever wanted to know what the best career choices are? Here’s a great article, hot off the presses on future career paths and it even has some choice quotes from your favourite business futurist. reprinted from Careers FAQ The A-Z of top jobs for 2014 and beyond 09 Dec 2013 By Marni Williams Where are the shortages? According to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), employment is set to grow by 820,100 jobs, or 7.1 per cent, to November 2017 across most industries and occupations in Australia. That’s decent growth, but if you want to get a job in 2014 you need to know where the demand will be. DEEWR says the biggest areas for job growth will be healthcare and assistance (13 per cent), retail trade (8.9 per cent) and construction (10.1 per cent): ‘Together, these three industries are expected to provide nearly half of the total growth in employment over the next five years’. Business futurist Morris Miselowski suggests we will have six careers within a lifetime, so if you’re thinking about which direction to take next it would pay to consider one of the golden opportunities below – because this is where the jobs will be. Top jobs in 2014: Accounting and finance Aged and disabled care Business bankers Community engagement and community development Construction Data miners, data scientists, data anything… Dental technicians Digital marketing managers Education Health technologists and medical device reps Mobile developers Online retailers Programmers Project managers Senior leasing executives Tourism and hospitality Website content writers 3D printers Accounting and finance Jobs for accountants are still going strong and are set to increase by 12.6 per cent to 2017 (DEEWR). There will be demand in the financial and wealth management areas, specifically for senior financial planners, multilingual financial planners and financial paraplanners. Global recruiter Hays says: ‘In accountancy and finance we expect to see new jobs created within the area of business and IT transformation … so that an organisation can adapt to growth and make cost savings. It is also important for audit/compliance purposes, particularly if the company plans to become ASX listed or has been acquired by an overseas head office’. Aged and disabled care Aged and disabled care has seen growth of over 102 per cent over the last five years and it will only continue to grow exponentially as preventative care, residential care, therapeutic treatments and hospital services will be required by large numbers of ageing baby boomers. Business bankers Business banking is a growth area, with new roles created in specialist areas. Credit assessors with a strong mortgage background and a DCA or equivalent will be in high demand as new teams are created in major banks. In addition, candidates with front-end retail experience will be sought as banks change their approach to business banking. Community engagement and community development With our cities needing to cope with growing populations, housing shortages and changing demographics, local councils are getting serious about community engagement. So, too, are businesses as they understand the importance of community outreach and really engaging with customers, residents and businesses. Construction The ongoing shortage of surveyors continues as students shy away from maths and science. With many bound to retire, it’s not just an area of opportunity, it’s vital to a strengthening construction industry. Hays highlights a ‘historical’ shortage of estimators encompassing the residential, commercial and civil sectors. They are also seeing demand for civil estimators in response to recent restructures. Data miners, data scientists, data anything… Business futurist Miselowski is excited: ‘We have spent the last 30 years feeding information about ourselves and the world into the digital ether, without getting much wisdom back. The next frontier is mining this information and turning it into purposeful knowledge. A new breed of employee is emerging called data scientists, who are tasked with the job of refining data to enable good decisions’. Hays agrees, saying that employers are increasingly looking for applicants with a Master in Information Systems. This is one job that can translate across many sectors. Dental technicians With our ageing population, the fact that most of us retain our own teeth much longer, and an increase in demand for cosmetic dental work, dental technicians will be in high demand alongside a range of health professions. According to the Australian Dental Association, demand for dental prostheses is down, but specialist areas such as crowns and bridges are up. Digital marketing managers When I asked her about trending jobs, Director of Hays (NSW & ACT) Jane McNeill put digital marketing high on her list: ‘Digital marketing managers are in demand as growth and investment in digital marketing is creating a “digital disconnect” in which the jobs market in digital marketing technology is hungry for skilled workers. The evolution of digital marketing is set to continue over the next decade and this will have a huge impact on the skills employers need. As this continues to be a growing area candidates with technical knowledge or digital expertise are in high demand.’ Education We’ve seen impressive numbers turn to online education all over the world, but will there be jobs to follow? Fairfax’s Employment Forecast says that population growth will see the education sector continue to rise, having ‘shrugged off the weakness in the international student sub-sector to record continued jobs growth, with positions up 4.6 per cent’. A recent government report indicates that the international student sector could grow by 30 per cent by the end of the decade. With continued population growth and the investment in skills and training programs, the outlook for the sector is bright. It has also noted a surge in pre-school teacher positions and ‘a significant shortage of early childhood teachers’. Positions in the tertiary education sector are also up 3.4 per cent. Health technologists and medical device reps You may know that healthcare is experiencing the biggest growth of all sectors, but it’s also changing. With developments in everything from genetics to wearable technologies and robotics, a plethora of new jobs are expected. Miselowski expects new titles such as ‘genetic counsellor’, ‘telemedical practitioner’ and a range of medical device reps to appear. Anyone who works in the allied health profession but also understands computers and technology will find plenty of opportunities on the horizon. And a range of medical device reps are already needed, as Hay’s Jane McNeil says: ‘In life sciences there are new products coming to market and companies are keen to employ medical device reps with like-for-like experience so that they can hit the ground running. An increasing number of roles now also require clinical backgrounds.’ Mobile developers Technology recruiter Greythorn is optimistic in its report: ‘With mobile access to the web growing at an exponential rate, and the way in which we interact with the web being driven more and more toward mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, mobile developers are becoming a highly sought after entity’. Expertise across Android, iOS and HTML 5, coupled with e-commerce integration skills, social networking and API knowledge will set you up to take advantage of this growth area. Online retailers It’s hardly ground-breaking news: according to the Australian and New Zealand Online Shopping Market 2013 report, online retail is growing strongly. National Australia Bank’s latest online retail sales index tells us that online sales have hit 6.2 per cent of retail spending. What’s more, the average annual spend for Australian online shoppers is expected to hit $1750 by the end of this year and 90 per cent of online shoppers expect to maintain or increase their spending over the next year. Programmers For a moment there IT might have looked like it was having a slow patch, but the industry is still growing strongly and more growth is expected with the continued rollout of the NBN. However, programmers are now working on short-term contracts and this is set to continue. As Greythorn says, ‘project-based recruitment will be one of the pillars of growth and activity for our industry’. Java and PHP skills are, and will continue to be, highly valued. Project managers It’s a broad field, but DEEWR predicts contract, program and project administrators to increase by a whopping 16.4 per cent to 2017. It might be time to really work on those project management skills. Senior leasing executives McNeill cites several large new shopping centre developments and upgrades as a driver of real estate jobs in some regional areas – ‘there is more vacant space to fill with tenants. This has created demand for senior leasing executives in the retail space’. Tourism and hospitality According to the Fairfax Employment Forecast, the sector is turning around, with jobs once again growing. Burgeoning areas include medical tourism, ancestry travel and sustainable tourism. Website content writers As Google declared ‘content is king’, journalists couldn’t believe their ears. Fairfax agrees: ‘In a surprising turnaround, positions for journalists and other writers continue to grow, thanks to the spurt in online content at the expense of more traditional media’. The journalism and media category actually grew by 3.1 per cent in 2013, which is above-average growth. With the exponential growth in online content production, those with the skills to write it will find themselves in high demand. 3D printers Ok, so this one might not exactly be ready for 2014, but it’s not far off and is one of the most exciting developments to come. St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne will be trialling 3D printing of human body organs within five years and expect that printing human spare parts could become normal within 10 years. The CSIRO has even initiated the Australian Additive Manufacturing Network to link research organisations with industry to make the use of 3D printers commercially effective. Get involved in 2014 and you’ll be ready for the next set of top jobs coming our way!]]>