We’ve all heard how quickly the economy is growing, that we’ve achieved unemployment levels below 4.0%, and everyone’s hiring. It’s certainly a job seeker’s market and companies are scrambling to fill key jobs in a timely manner. You’ve likely seen multiple versions of this scenario in news feeds, and a quick online search will produce many articles about the abundance of jobs and the hiring challenges faced by firms across the spectrum of business type and location.

In many cases, companies have not yet found the answers and are working harder and taking longer to staff open positions – and some key vacancies are newly-created jobs that didn’t exist a few years ago. There are many jobs and types of jobs available, but which ones have demonstrated the potential to take your job search into overdrive and are likely to keep your career moving forward?

promising jobsOur friends at LinkedIn did some research using their extensive data sets and helped us identify the “Most Promising Jobs” for 2018. These are jobs with strong hiring demand year-over-year, solid earnings and the highest likelihood for advancement within a company.

Knowing which jobs top the list based on these key factors is probably a good place to start when thinking about how best to leverage the market conditions to your advantage. Surprises? Well, the overall themes are not new, but it turns out that some are creating new and interesting types of jobs that didn’t exist before – and some new roles are in high demand and can fast-track career growth.

 

Three of the Most Promising Jobs

Let’s check a few of the more interesting findings from the survey – all of these indicate year-over-year job growth of 45% or more (#1 comes in at 425%!) and offer very strong career growth potential.

#1 Engagement Lead: These take many forms (Client Engagement Lead, Software Engagement Lead, Customer Engagement Lead) but are all getting at the same theme: How businesses engage effectively with their clients, customers and users is critical to growth and success, and companies are centralizing responsibility for this essential concept into relatively new positions.

  • Median Base Salary: $93,000
  • Year-over-Year growth in job openings: 425% Yes, more than 4x the openings than last year.
  • Advancement Score: 10 out of 10

#3 Customer Success Manager: Typically focused on enabling clients/customers to maximize the value from the company’s products and services. See theme #1.

  • Median Base Salary: $83,000
  • Year-over-Year growth in job openings: 91%
  • Advancement Score: 10 out of 10

#9 Data Scientist: Businesses now have more data than ever before, but how do they use this data to achieve strategic advantages and operational objectives? These highly-educated specialists explore the data, develop models to simulate relationships and outcomes, and generate actionable guidance.

  • Median Base Salary: $113,000
  • Year-over-Year growth in job openings: 45%
  • Advancement Score: 8 out of 10

So, what does it all MEAN, Basil? (Austin Powers movies made a recent reprise on someone’s TV.)

Some key take-aways for job seekers and companies include the following:

Job Seekers

While the overall economy is strong and it’s a job seeker’s market in nearly all sectors and job categories, demand and opportunity are not spread equally among all job types. Take some time and evaluate opportunities that leverage your experience and skill sets in new ways – setting you up for an exciting new career path with great future opportunities.

Companies

Although it’s super-easy to just recycle existing job descriptions and churn out more of the same titles and job postings, the labor market conditions have changed – and so too have your firm’s business priorities, customer demands, organizational structures, and 871 other factors that impact job content.

Take a step back, evaluate what your talent roadmap looks like, and redefine job content in a way that fits your evolving organizational needs while leveraging the appeal of emerging new roles that capture the imagination and aspiration of today’s well-informed, ambitious and very selective job seeker.

And while you’re at it, partner with a talented, knowledgeable, and passionate executive search firm to get your newly-crafted position in front of the top talent in the marketplace. Today’s uber-candidates aren’t cruising the job boards, they’re crafting their own destinies. Be sure that they have a guide who can help them find their way to your exciting new role. Hey, I can think of a great place to start…