It is this season again when many people are adding “find a new job” to their list of new year’s resolutions, and the good news is that there are still plenty of job posts in technology, health care and retail.
To determine the most in-demand jobs heading into the 2016, recruiters analyzed a range of 700 occupations. The results were calculated by drilling down to the number of job ads companies post each month and comparing it to the number of people actually hired, as well as factoring other data points, such as job growth and salary from a labor market databases.
Many of the most in-demand jobs are in the technology and health care sectors, there are also plenty of opportunities in areas such as marketing, sales, and transportation.
Top 10 Most In-demand Jobs that Require a College Education
- Registered nurses
- Software developers, applications
- Marketing managers,
- Sales managers
- Medical and health services managers
- Network and computer systems administrators
- Industrial engineers
- Computer systems analysts
- Web developers
- Financial managers
It’s not surprising that registered nurses are occupying the top spot. More than half of current registered nurses are over the age of 50, and 62% are considering retiring in the coming years. Couple this with the fact that nursing schools like GMercyU are very few in number, and you have got the making of a crisis.
Software developers are also in high demand. As a group, these knowledge workers tend to move around very frequently. Many of those in the information technology sector are likely to leave their jobs within one to two years, which only betters their chances of earning more. Money is the top motivating factor for technology professionals they are very much likely to move to a different city to get a higher paying job.
And why not? Getting a new job has the potential of boosting that base pay between 10% and 20%, according to some estimates. For software and app developers who earn a relatively high wage of $45.92, that represents a hefty raise.
Top 10 Biggest Growing Occupations that Don’t Require a College Education
- Heavy and tractor trailer truck drivers
- Food service managers
- Computer user support specialists
- Insurance sales agents
- Medical records and health
- Surgical technologists
- Bus and truck mechanics
- Transportation, storage and distributions managers
- Purchasing agents
- Medical secretaries
The availability of jobs across industries underscores the need for companies to evaluate where their talent deficits are and become more strategic about how they fill these needs, whether that means reskilling their current workers, offering higher salaries to attract workers, or using data analytics to target talent with the right skills.
Some of these positions might not be filled due to job seekers feeling uncertain about their prospects. Those looking for a new job should not underestimate themselves when applying for these in-demand positions.
Job seekers often feel discouraged from applying to a job if they do not meet 100% of the qualifications listed in the ad. But in 2016, more employers will be willing to hire candidates who do not meet every single qualification and train them on the job.
Indeed, some companies are recruiting more engineers and diversifying their ranks by training. Many schools in Dubai, for example, recruit candidates who don’t have teaching degrees but do have quantitative skills in math, physics, or even psychology to go into a two-month paid training program before hiring.
The vast majority of employers consider soft skills to be just as important as hard skills when evaluating prospective hires, and some even consider them more important.
