Where new grads should look for their first, entry-level jobs

For as long as there have been colleges and universities, there have been college and university graduates who have struggled with where to look for their first, entry-level job. The answer, at a high level, is simple: focus on employers, industries, and geographic areas that are growing.

Gorick Ng, a career adviser at Harvard College and author of “The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right.”, told LinkedIn, “Growth begets opportunities. You want to find yourself in a company that’s growing like crazy and therefore hiring like crazy, and you can say the same thing about companies, industries, and cities.”

First, look at the industries which are doing the most hiring and then, within those industries, which jobs are driving that hiring. For the class of 2021, the top hiring industries and jobs within those industries are:

1. Transportation and logistics – driver, mover, customer service specialist
2. Healthcare – licensed practical nurse, speech-language pathologist, home health aide
3. Software and information technology services – software engineer, developer, project manager, data engineer
4. Retail – salesperson, cashier, shop manager
5. Consumer goods – cook, salesperson, real estate specialist

Second, look at the jobs which have the highest growth in terms of number of people being hired into them. The top 10 jobs are:

1. Software engineering specialist
2. Online specialist
3. Sterilization technician
4. Wellness specialist
5. Medical technologist
6. Transaction services specialist
7. Technical support manager
8. Virtual assistant
9. Data entry operator
10. Technical sales representative

If working remotely is important to you, then an even better list of jobs would be those for which employers are hiring a lot of people to work virtually from their home-based offices. The top 10 jobs for remote employees are:

1. Customer support specialist
2. Office associate
3. Business development representative
4. Product manager
5. Real estate agent
6. Data analyst
7. Full-stack engineer
8. Salesperson
9. Security engineer
10. Account manager

If you’re able to move to a different city or even state, then you’ll also want to pay attention to the metro areas seeing the most job growth. The top 10 metro areas for job growth are:

1. New York City, New York
2. Washington, District of Columbia / Baltimore, Maryland
3. Chicago, Illinois
4. Los Angeles, California
5. Dallas, Texas
6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
7. Boston, Massachusetts
8. San Francisco, California
9. Atlanta, Georgia
10. Houston, Texas

Finally, regardless of the job you apply to or where that job is located, be sure to communicate to the recruiter and hiring manager in your resume and interview your soft skills. More and more employers are placing more and more emphasis on soft skills. The five most important soft skills to prospective employers are:

1. Analytical skills
2. Project management
3. Customer service
4. Marketing
5. Time management

Source: LinkedIn