After completing secondary or higher secondary education, some questions arrive in everyone’s mind, such as what to do ahead, what field to choose for better job opportunities, what are the fields that have more professional scope, etc. Many make bad career decisions because of family and peer pressure, not having ideas about what is suitable and interesting for them according to this era’s demands. Today we will have a detailed discussion about career options, opportunities, scope of different fields according to the modern world’s requirements, and how to deal with the problems most of us face on the way to career development.
Best Career Options in the Current Era:
Let’s explore and discuss the careers that have a broader scope and opportunities that are continuously developing and are useful in the current era.
• E-Commerce: Young individuals who are more into business startups or have family businesses already should incline towards e-commerce, as online buying and selling is rapidly becoming popular day by day. Skills like logistic operations, warehouse and inventory management, e-commerce business models, stock control techniques (i.e., LIFO, FIFO, etc.), and effective marketing tactics are essential for business-minded masses. The importance of business should be highlighted, as it not only creates job opportunities for many people but also enhances skills like project management, problem-solving, creative idea generation, teamwork, etc.
• Digital Marketing: As everybody knows, marketing goes together with business, and in this digital era, strong digital marketing knowledge is essential for those who have their own businesses, those who want to provide services, or those who want to have a job in a reputable company with a handsome salary.
Digital marketing is categorized into a few sub-fields (i.e., social media marketing (SMM), search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), etc.), which are highly demanding and have incredible importance as a separate field.
1. Social Media Marketing: It is comprised of creating marketing campaigns or paid ads on social media platforms (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) for the targeted audience.
2. Search Engine Marketing: SEM aims to promote and advertise websites and companies’ content to achieve a higher ranking on search engines.
3. Search Engine Optimization: It is commonly known as SEO, which is the most popular marketing skill just like SMM, and is used for organic higher ranking of a website’s content to be visible on search engines.
You can find various free courses on YouTube and Google, some of them with course completion certificates from Google, which provide high credibility regarding your skill. Pursuing these skills alongside academic studies can be a good decision for students; it will also groom your working skills and provide you with hands-on experience for the future.
• Content Writing: Words are the most powerful source of expressing one’s thoughts and observations to the world, and this is the reason that marks the importance of content writing even in the era of Artificial Intelligence. If you have a business website; you are running some media channel or newspaper; you are a social media content creator, filmmaker, blogger, or columnist; each and every field requires content writing as its fundamental ingredient. In digital fields, blogging and creative content writing have a wide scope; even Google algorithms require organic content for websites to rank rather than AI-generated content.
For developing and enhancing writing skills, the best way is to read and observe more, along with language improvement. Along with that, in-depth research skills and frequent interaction with society help a lot to create unique ideas for crafting eye-catching writeups.
• Software Development / Engineering: This field includes many fields according to the emerging tech era, such as Cybersecurity, Data science, Cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, etc.), IT specialization for sorting various complications occurring in software and machines, etc. In the world of emerging technology, these fields require wide importance to provide employment opportunities and tech support to the society for creating a technologically built society.
• Artificial Intelligence: In the current era, AI is swiftly overtaking human activities and making the hardest tasks easier just with a little smartness, such as writing, designing, illustrations, coding, etc. It has even introduced robotic models, workers, and anchors with its advanced strategies. Learning about AI training for better outcomes and utilizing it is extremely needed to go along with the advanced AI world. Unfortunately, our educational institutes do not provide us the facilities to work in these fields to utilize our capabilities, but youth should make efforts on their own with the internet help and should learn skills like Python, R, SQL, and AI / ML frameworks.
• Vocational Skills: Our society often underestimates the vocational skills and often derogates the people with these skills, even though vocational training is really useful and we cannot survive in the society without having these basic skills or such talented people with skills like tailoring, electronics, mechanics, designing, arts and crafts, plumbing, cooking, etc. One of the reasons to underestimate these skills is bare minimum wages, which should be increased, and we can do it collectively by taking initiatives to give importance and adopting these skills without any shame. Furthermore, these skills can be enhanced by the time with up-to-date techniques and changes. We should also pay rightly and justly to these hard-working people to encourage them.
• Creative Skills: Skills such as graphic designing, fashion designing, interior designing, painting, sketching, food art, performing arts (i.e., music, singing, poetry, acting, etc.), social media content creation, photography, animation, etc. are really helpful in career building. Some of these skills are considered useless, but in this digital era, you can showcase these skills through social media platforms, and they can make you earn an enormous amount of money with consistency of time and effort, and you can also enjoy reputable recognition.
• Biotechnology and Modern Healthcare: As we see, every year some epidemics and diseases keep emerging and harm many human beings as well as animals; one of the examples is COVID-19. Witnessing such severe diseases, I think youth should be more inclined towards biotechnology and healthcare in the medical field, as they have a wider scope and are extremely needed in society.
Careers like telemedicine specialization, public health analysis, genetic counseling, genetic engineering, and biomedical engineering should be chosen in medical areas; it will also boost employment opportunities for the young generation.
• Finance & Fintech: Finance has gained more prominence in today’s tech world. Financial Advisory, Blockchain Development, and cryptocurrency investment have been becoming popular in the past few years. These careers are suitable for individuals with a risk-taking mindset and strong market analysis and risk-analysis skills.
• Analytics: Data analysis and web analysis are the major analytical fields currently. It not only provides high authority job positions but also enhances skills like problem-solving, decision-making, project management, and so on. Amazing. Isn’t it? You just need to get familiar with the tools and software that are used for data analysis and collection. Young ones with an active mind and enthusiasm for doing something productive can avail themselves of this opportunity easily with a handsome salary.
These are some of the useful and widely acknowledged career options I know about; you can also share some other options and opportunities.
Freedom of Career Choices and Debunking Myths:
Despite living in the modern era, most of the young students, both male and female, in our society depend on parents and societal pressure instead of on themselves to make career choices in accordance with their interests and capabilities. We see many people around us having cliched ideologies about educational and career choices, such as “being a doctor or engineer is the only reputable and honorable thing” or “why you have chosen Arts/Humanities; don’t you want to become successful in the future, or are you illiterate?” etc. I faced such humiliation from relatives and fellows over my choice for Social Sciences in Higher Secondary school. How weird. Isn’t it?
I wonder why these people do not realize the importance of every field in its own area and the freedom of choice and interests of individuals. For a diverse and inclusive society, we need to work in every field according to our talent and capabilities, whether it has popularity and acceptance by the society or not, unless it is providing some value. Until today, creative skills like fine arts and music were considered taboo or somewhat useless; however, social media has greatly influenced people to deny these myths and prove society wrong.
I have seen many talented individuals who are working on social media platforms by showcasing their creative skills, while others are working in technological areas, which are the best ways to mitigate unemployment in our society.
All of us really need to demolish the superstitions regarding career choices and should explain the society especially our elders that every field we choose has some or other benefit somewhere whether more or less, and the world can not run without Arts and Social Sciences just like it cannot run without science and technology!
Importance of Soft Skills in Career Building:
Soft skills are equally important in a career, just like hard skills. A person with adequate knowledge about some technological or creative skill is not more than a useless person if he lacks confidence, time management, communication skills, etc. For becoming successful in life and showcasing your hard skills to the fullest, you must meet the demands of soft skills.
Let’s suppose you have learned digital marketing with in-depth knowledge and practice, but you don’t know how to communicate effectively or how to work with team projects. How are you going to survive in a professional environment, or how will you do your best in a job interview while lacking confidence? You cannot even work on self-projects and on personal business without improving social skills. One of the reasons for not having confidence is also that sometimes you have not learned the main skill thoroughly, which causes you to have low self-esteem and an inability to perform adequately.
The best way to perform well in a professional environment is to socialize with and know different people from diverse cultures, fields, and interests and to attend different social gatherings, discussions, and sessions. In this way, you will be able to have insights from various perspectives, which will boost your observational and analytical skills, and socializing will definitely help you to overcome your shyness and will provide you with self-confidence and effective communication skills.
You can participate in volunteer work by working with NGOs and can also assess your skills in various areas by participating in different competitions arranged by these organizations. Try to interact regularly with some acquaintance or stranger for a while, whether virtually or physically, to overcome hesitation and self-doubts.
How to Search for a Job?
There must be a question in your mind so far that the title says “career advice and job search,” so where is the information about job searching? Right? Don’t worry, here is it! After graduation, or even before graduation, most of us become concerned about well-established careers according to our respective fields, but obviously it is hard to find a good job immediately without effort, and it takes a long wait. But, do you know there are various online platforms or sites where you can find immediate jobs, internships, and individual project works? These platforms not only provide you jobs but also ease, work from the comfort of your home, and connection with people from the whole world, and there is no such thing as waiting for months to get a response or waiting for job vacancies. Let’s have a look at some platforms to give you ease so that right after graduation, you won’t be tensed for your career.
1. LinkedIn: It is like a social media platform where you not only search for jobs but also learn and connect with like-minded people from your industry. People post their ideas, and their networks interact and share their perspectives with them, which improves effective communication and other soft skills alongside professional opportunities. These interactions build a virtual community where people learn from each other, encourage and provide motivation to others, appreciate each other’s successes, and emotional support when needed, which positively influences the grooming of every
individual.
After complete optimization of your profile according to job-required skills and achievements, you can simply search for work opportunities by applying filters according to your feasibility, and you will find many internships and jobs (remote, on-site, hybrid) in your specific industry. Apart from that, you also receive daily job and internship updates and announcements that match your profile. And you know that LinkedIn has a very simple and user-friendly interface. So, don’t delay and join this amazing platform to have the best job of your choice.
2. Indeed: It is one of the popular platforms that is used worldwide and accommodates job listings from countless websites. It has many interesting and useful features, such as simplified and understandable application processes, job alert notifications to keep users updated, salary information and companies’ reviews for the ease of the applicants, the feature of uploading resumes, and global job postings in different industries. Indeed, Indeed is a user-friendly platform for job hunting.
3. Upwork, Fiver, and Freelancer: These platforms are specifically designed for freelancers who do not want to work as a permanent corporate employee but to work on self-projects according to their own convenience and demand. This platform is also limited to those people who have particular skills in tech fields such as marketing, programming, and content writing, web and graphic design, etc. But using these platforms provides lots of benefits to freelancers, such as earning in dollars by having projects from foreigners, which is more than enough for a single project; it also provides long-term projects with clients by winning their trust; and the most important feature is that freelancing sites have a secure payment transaction system that protects these sites from scammers. So, if you have some tech skills and want project-based work, then these platforms are definitely suitable for you.
4. FlexJobs: Many of you (just like me) must feel tiresome and bored in a typical office and full-time work environment, so don’t worry, this platform is for you! FlexJobs, especially customized for part-time remote jobs and freelancing projects, consists of a wide range of jobs with customized job alerts for matching user criteria. It also provides remote work resources and career coaching. This platform is actually useful for those who want to work alongside their studies and do not have much energy to be consumed in full-time jobs.
I knew about these useful and worthy platforms, but there are many more, such as Glassdoor, SimplyHired, ZipRecruiter, The Muse, Handshake, Remote.co and We Work Remotely, and so on. You can have knowledge about them from Google or ChatGPT and choose the best platform according to your requirements and niche.
Some Important Points to be Noted:
Applying through these platforms does not mean that you will get a job or project immediately; you will need experience and a portfolio, and for that, you will have to work as an intern initially for practical experiences, which will also help you in upgrading your resume and work profile. Resume and profile optimization is also essential; without effectively optimizing them, there would be very few chances to be selected for your desired role. Furthermore, optimization must be relevant to your desired career with the addition of all the necessary skills, achievements, and experiences, if you have any. Additionally, you will have to be patient and consistent in applying, as obviously there are many other applicants too. Being patient, consistent, and not giving up is the only way to achieve your desired goals.
Lastly, keep working on your interests, goals, and improvement consistently, as improvement is the continuous process, not the destination. Diminish all the superstitions prevailing in society and do whatever you feel like doing for your career and yourself. Keep learning from yourself, from society, from the young ones and elders, and you will be successful one day. This is all about today. Feel free to share opinions and additional points regarding the topic. Thank you!
Blogger
