By Steven Rothberg

Students and other job seekers often want to base their decision of what career to pursue by which jobs are the most difficult to fill. Their reasoning is often that jobs which are hard to fill provide the greatest job security and often the greatest pay.

While there is often some truth to that, when searching for a job, we believe that the best approach is to objectively analyze your competencies, interests and values. What are you good at? What do you like to do? What is important to you? Look for common themes between your answers. Then, if you're fortunate enough to be able to choose between alternatives, look for those jobs which are hard to fill.

The jobs which are the hardest to fill vary from region to region, season to season, and year to year. While the exact order of the list may vary somewhat, these 25 are invariably amongst the most difficult to fill:

1. Registered Nurses
2. Sales and Related Workers
3. Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Workers
4. Tellers
5. Sales Managers
6. Therapists
7. Computer and Information Systems Managers
8. Executive Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
9. Financial Analysts
10. Purchasing Managers
11. Customer Service Representatives, Utilities
12. Computer Specialists
13. Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technicians
14. Office Clerks, General
15. Engineering Managers
16. Retail Salespersons
17. Computer Programmers
18. Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologists
19. Insurance Sales Agents
20. Sales Representatives
21. Accountants
22. Survey Researchers
23. Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
24. Financial Specialists
25. Loan Officers