How to keep up with ALL the trends

Dr. Joseph Barber

We all want to know what is trendy and cool, whether we are thinking about sunglasses or backyard chicken farming, but this type of information can be very helpful in your career exploration too. What types of skills are in demand, and what types of industries are hiring and for what job position? How have the availability of job openings been affected by the series of economic downs and (slightly more or less) downs over the last few years? Well, there are lots of places you can find this information. The best sources are from the mouths of people who work in the jobs or industries you are interested. This is why networking is so important to your job search. They will have first-hand, up-to-date information on hiring trends and the types of skills that are most valued.So, you should network…, right away. While you are pondering your next networking outreach, you can also get some very interesting information about job trends online. Indeed.com is one source of this type of information. They have a whole section on job trends: www.indeed.com/jobtrends. You can find lots of advertized jobs on Indeed.com, and all they have done is searched through their current  archived job postings to see what percentage of jobs include the keywords you are interested in. Let’s take the keyword “Twitter” as an example. Perhaps you are interested in social media, and want to see how valued this skill is in the job market across a broad range of industries and career fields. Here is what the trend looks like:
twitter Job Trends graph

twitter Job Trends Twitter jobs
Not surprisingly, employers weren’t really interested in this attribute in 2006 (in the “Pre-Twitter” universe), but there has been a growing number of positions that mention Twitter.
What about faculty positions within academia…, what is the trend in terms of job postings that mention the keyword “Assistant Professor”. Let’s take a look at the data:
"assistant professor" Job Trends graph

“assistant professor” Job Trends “assistant Professor” jobs
Good gracious! What is going on here? Well, it actually makes a lot of sense when you consider the cyclical nature of the academic job market. For full time faculty positions, most will be advertized between September and March. These peaks reflect this time period. Also, there seems to be a slight trend towards there being more faculty positions being posted over time – which is a good sign.
Choose any job title, employer name, technological skill (e.g., ArcGIS), or broader skill (e.g., problem-solving, communication) as a keyword, plug it into the job trend search box, and you’ll be officially up to date on all that is cool and trendy in the world of jobs and careers.You can also come and make an appointment to chat with a career advisor here at Career Services to explore what this might mean for your own professional development or job search, so that you are preparing yourself with the right skills for the right kind of jobs at the right time.