Are You Preparing for the Jobs That Don't Exist Yet?
The modern world of work is a fast-moving environment. Continuously developing technology brings new and previously impossible opportunities every day, but how can jobs not
exist yet?
Cast your mind back to as recent as the late 1990s, if you're old enough, and ask yourself if you had ever heard of anyone working in 'social media'. The term hadn't even been
invented, let alone anyone having worked out just how it could be used every day in business. New technologies and products appear almost every day and smart people find new
and innovative uses, spawning a host of new skills and roles that need to be filled.
If you have children, consider the pace of change in the world that you've seen in the last five years and ask yourself again whether the jobs being done now will be
recognisable in another 20 years. School kids are being prepared for the unknown. Who can tell what jobs they will be asked to do? To a certain extent, the same uncertainty
applies to job searching today. A quick browse through the job boards reveals roles most people have never heard of, needing specialist knowledge just to understand the role
description.
Planning your career must then by necessity involve a degree of planning for the unknown. The need to stay current with technology and process becomes vital as these are the
areas that spawn new roles, new ideas and future career paths as yet unthought of.
It's up to us all then, to try and keep pace with what's happening in our own areas of specialism. It's not just IT and the Internet that's moving quickly. If you're in
construction, what are the new methods and technologies you're seeing coming in and what can you do to keep your knowledge up to date? If you're an accountant, what can you do
to stay abreast of cloud accounting software developments when you're between jobs?
Technology is a moving feast. It moves quickly and affects every area of business, in turn affecting every job role out there that you might be applying for. Keeping up to
date with the technology affecting your profession, whether you're a barista or an engineer, is fast becoming one of the most important parts of any job search.
Article Added: 31/10/2014
Posted By: Paul Docherty