Job Report: Innovation Future of Digital Media

By John Greaves

The first decade of the 21st century witnessed so many changes and it isn’t just the amount of technological advancement; it’s the swiftness with which the digital world has changed. “Jobs have flipped from farming to manufacturing to information, it’s a continuous trend and in America we’re at the forefront,” says George Ou, a Washington, D.C.-based analyst for the think tank Digital Society.org.  The hottest career fields in the tech arena appear to be those that are supportive of each shifting wave of advancement. According to Noah Garrett, founder and president of NCG Communications a consulting firm, “As job seekers and a business owner you must be prepared to support business technologies and future innovations of tomorrow.” It’s almost impossible to predict what’s going to be the next big idea or the most critical fields of the next decade (or even the next five years) but there seems to be a general consensus on the need to be intellectually and academically flexible. “’The best thing a kid heading off to college can do is get a broad set of thinking skills so they can adjust,” Ou says. “In 1999, we thought mainframe programmers would be extinct. The opposite became true because legacy programs like Cobalt are still important and pay good money, but there are fewer and fewer programmers who know how to work with them because everyone is moving to new stuff.”

While we can’t predict what will be the next big job field, we can identify trends. “As far as concrete positions, social media gurus are a resource and trend that has been and will continue to be around,” Garrett says. This means there will be a continuous demand for Web developers and other experts who can best create and implement the tools business needs to thrive. This is especially true for organizations that depend on community to survive. John David Delgado, youth pastor for The Church at Woodland in Cartersville, Ga., has seen his position change dramatically over the past few years. “If you look at church Web pages and look at their job postings, three quarters of their job openings are for Web developers,” he says. “Church youth workers all have to be Internet savvy to connect with their kids on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.”

Businesses are moving aggressively into social network marketing necessitating an upsurge in Web literacy among even those not technically in the IT department. “Some of your major corporations over the last two years — a trend I’ve seen they’ve created — is the position of Chief Innovation Officer, a job to innovate and lead a team of innovators,” Garrett says. “There will be a huge demand for management of social networking and for people who can think of new ways to use the technology.”

As cloud storage becomes more popular, Garrett also sees an increasing need for security professionals who can ward off viruses and piracy attempts to protect sensitive information. “Health care and medical records are going to be posted online; we’ll need people who are going to be able to handle security protocols for that,” he says.  Garrett is so passionate about the changing face of the business landscape, he wrote a blog on Local Tech Wire entitled New Web, new jobs — Are you ready?

Some of the most important career fields emerging weren’t even dreamt of in 2004, Garrett says in the blog. They include:

• Social media gurus
• Community managers
• Infrastructure engineers
• Systems administrators
• Data analysts
• Network administrators
• Security administrators

Based upon the increase in e-learning both in the university environment and for business-related needs such as seminars and conferences, it’s also likely that there will be an increased need for teaching professionals with Net savvy.

With all the good news there is some bad. According to reports from sites such as The Nation global demand for IT workers is down. Local Techwire reports that “The IT Job Trends Report released by the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) shows the daily average number of posted IT job vacancies in August increased only by 0.9 percent, a signal that employers in the state are not ready yet for more staff.”

Still the Nation says for IT workers all is not lost. “Three main skill types remain in hot demand: Java, .NET and enterprise resource planning. People with these skills are still in demand in the midst of an overall reduction in IT recruitment. There is also high demand for workers skilled in quality testing, software testing and quality assurance.”

With all the advancement our world is becoming closer knit and in some ways reminiscent of ancient villages. The sense of community is growing as we find new ways to use old skills. “As technology gets better, jobs will get easier because humans will continue to do what only humans can do,” Digital Society’s Ou says.

LinkedIn and the Value of Social Media in a Tight Job Market

By: blog.comscore.com

Last week’s report that the U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 9.7% in August is another stark reminder of the tough economic environment. With unemployment climbing 4 percentage points in the past year alone, it is no surprise that one of the fastest gaining online categories during that time has been Job Search, which is up 33% vs. year ago to 23.1 million visitors in July.
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