There are careers that are becoming increasingly popular right now that didn’t even exist ten years ago. These seven opportunities are just brushing the surface, but they can give you an idea of opportunities that exist now to going after.
Home School Liaison:
Many school districts and other educational organisations have found it necessary to bring in a specialist to work with home-schooling parents. As home schooling becomes more popular, there has to be someone in place to address the unique needs of students outside of schools.
Patient Advocate:
Due to legal changes over the past twenty years, patient advocates have found roles throughout the medical community. Where doctors and other medical professionals focus just on the medicine at hand, a patient advocate focuses on a patient’s needs. That can range from helping a patient find the right doctor to scheduling appointments to navigating insurance. In short, a patient advocate makes sure patients receive the help they need, as well as the medical care.
Sustainability Manager:
In the past few years, numerous large organisations have added job titles like ‘sustainability manager.’ While the exact name may differ, the job description focuses on coordinating sustainability initiatives within the organisation.
In some companies, there are even vice presidents of sustainability. The job is more than just making sure the company recycles — a sustainability manager might work with questions of productivity, technology and more.
Blogger:
Okay, saying blogging is just a decade new is stretching it just a bit. The first blogs were started around 1997 — but there were almost no bloggers earning an income from their work then.
Now though, there are bloggers who earn a full time income from posting to their own sites, bloggers who write on their employer’s blog, freelance bloggers and a wide variety of other career paths for someone who wants to work as a blogger.
Senior move managers:
A whole slew of specialised moving companies have popped up in the past ten years, focusing on helping senior citizens move, usually into a more managed situation. That sort of move requires downsizing, often dramatically. There are also other issues usually in play, from moving medical equipment to handling the involvement of a client who may not be up to making all the decisions necessary to managing the concerns of family members.
Virtual assistant:
As more and more tasks can be handled entirely online, individuals and businesses have found handing those tasks off to virtual assistants to be practical ways of getting everything done.
Many virtual assistants specialise in specific areas, like acting as an administrator for a small business. Because many people and organisations don’t need full time help, a virtual assistant usually works with multiple clients — but there are plenty of those clients out there.
These six careers just scratch the surface of the new opportunities that are out there. As technology continues to evolve, plenty of jobs are being created (both for people who want to work with the technology itself and those who just want to use new tools to accomplish existing goals).
There are certain industries in particular where we’ll continue to see growth: medical, environmental and energy industries are going to only have more opportunities in the years to come.
It’s not exactly easy to train for a career that doesn’t even exist yet, but it’s worth keeping a close eye on these trends and learning more about the industries that are (or will be) booming. If you want one of these careers, you may have to invent the job title and even the responsibilities yourself. There certainly won’t be a college degree or a certification available right away, though, so creativity is a must!
