Top 10 Fastest Growing Career Fields

Career expert Laurence Shatkin discusses 10 of the fastest growing career fields in this video. For anyone who is planning which career field to enter or switch out of, this information is vital. So what are the top 10 fastest growing career fields?

• Computer network analyst
• Computer software engineer
• Personal and home care aide
• Home health care aide
• Medical assistant
• Abuse and disorder counselor
• Mental health counselor
• Personal financial advisor
• Financial analyst
• Veterinary technician

The Sexy Side of HR

Jessica Miller-Merrill of Blogging 4 Jobs recently contacted me to ask if I would be interested in partnering with her and a few other human resource industry professionals to deliver a panel presentation at the SXSW Interactive conference in March 2011 in Austin, Texas. Her vision was to put together a group of us who could talk about how and why employers should use cell phone text messaging, social media, and other technologies to recruit and retain top talent. I gave her the enthusiastic thumbs up.

Jessica submitted the proposal in July and last week was notified by SXSW that her proposal made it to the second round of consideration. This next round consists of voting from visitors to the SXSW Panel Picker Page and those votes count for 30 percent of the score given to each proposal. In short, if you think that this is a good topic, it is really, really important that you vote for our panel.

Jessica (@blogging4jobs) will moderate The Sexy Side of HR panel and we’ll be joined by Joel Cheesman, Blogger & VP at Jobing.com (@cheezhead) and Carrie Corbin of AT&T Talent Attraction (@thealphafemme).

Please take out two minutes and do the following: Go to the Panel Picker Page, click the link to “Sign In” near the top corner, click “create a new account” (assuming you don’t have one already), complete the simple form, and vote for The Sexy Side of HR panel. It really is that simple. Thanks!!

IRS Uses YouTube for Recruitment. Why Aren’t You?

One of my favorite clients is the Internal Revenue Service, in part because statements like that tend to raise eyebrows amongst my friends and family. “The Internal Revenue Service? Aren’t they the bad guys?” Well, no one enjoys paying taxes but I think that most of us agree that we’re okay paying taxes when they’re well used. And the more you get to know the IRS and the people who work there, the more you’re amazed at how entrepreneurial they actually are.

Case in point: the IRS makes great use of recruitment videos to help communicate to potential employees the wide variety of jobs for which they recruit and the types of people best suited for those jobs. The typical person wouldn’t think of the IRS as a leader in the use of social media but they are. If you want to see an example, play this video of an actual IRS employee explaining what his job is and you’ll see what I mean. These videos are relatively inexpensive to make as the production qualities are good but not over the top and “real” people are used rather than more expensive hired guns.

You’ve heard of video resumes, but how about video job postings?

One of the most interesting organizations that I’ve run across recently is Deluxe Corporation. They’re headquartered in suburban Minneapolis and were founded way, way back in 1915. Most people likely aren’t familiar with Deluxe’s business and many of those who who think they are, well, aren’t.

If you’ve ever written a paper check, then you probably know Deluxe. They’re the king of paper check printing but we all know that’s a dying business as more and more of that business moves to on-line bill payments and other forms of electronic commerce. Deluxe saw this coming and about a decade ago began to transform its business. Just about everyone would agree they needed to adapt or perish, so the question wasn’t really if they should adapt but how they should adapt. Deluxe made a brilliant decision by recognizing that one of its greatest strengths was that it had a HUGE number of small business clients who knew and trusted Deluxe. So rather than looking to adapt based upon its existing products or even the skills of its current employees, Deluxe decided to adapt to fill a need that many of its clients had: information technology.

If you’re a small business and need a web site developed or a web site hosted or other information technology needs, you should know that you can and should consider Deluxe to fill those needs. But think about the incredible transformation in the types of employees they now need to hire. Rather than hiring a whole lot of pre-press and printing folks, they now need to hire a whole lot of information technology folks. So Deluxe needed — and has — gotten smart about hiring information technology people really, really quickly. Want proof? Have a look at this Talent Sourcer job posting video that they recently posted to their Facebook Fan Page. Keep going like this, guys, and you’re going to thrive for another 95 years.