Trends for Job Seekers In 2019 – As we bid adieu to the great year 2018, the amazing year 2019 lies ahead of us to make our professional lives count. 2019 is a blank slate waiting for us to rediscover ourselves, challenge our comfort zones and make our mark. But how are you going to do that if you don’t know what changes might take place in the year 2019, especially in the job market?
You may be the ones who’re about to finish high school, or maybe the ones who’re thinking of changing the job in 2019, or maybe you’re planning to transition your career from an employee to a self-employed business owner. Irrespective of your plans for 2019, you need to pay heed to few things that are of immense importance.
In this article, we will discuss 5 trends for job seekers that are expected to happen in spite of your plans for the next year. But before that, we will discuss the foundation of these trends briefly so that the things get a little bit easier for you to understand.
Attention Job Seekers !!
Why do you need to pay attention to upcoming trends in 2019?
Things have really changed, better to say, transmuted in the last hundred years. For example, in the 1900s, people were hired for doing assembly work. Back then, the individuals who were good at punching cards were good employees. They used to be experts at small things, and the concept of division of labour was popular.
But now those skills aren’t skills anymore – punching cards, attaching bolts to the machines, lining in the assemblies to do just one small part of the whole manufacturing are gradually becoming obsolete because robots and electrical machines now do those things!
Hundred years back, after completing studies, people used to get a job and be happy doing that job for their entire lives. But now, golden handshakes are being replaced by start-ups. People with education, knowledge and technology are building their own utopia without the help of anyone.
So, the only thing that changed is one word – “technology”, and that changed the entire concept of jobs. Technology and the availability of information divided the entire society into two equal parts deleting the middle class of the society. The upper part consists of the ones who are educated, tech-savvy, creative and ready to take risks. They’re the ones who are becoming solopreneurs or business owners of start-ups. The lower part includes the people who’re still trying new jobs, not using technology to benefit and not learn. They’re busy complaining about the changing dynamism of the society and how bleak the chances are for getting jobs.
We can draw a distinct line between these two groups of job seekers. The first group are not job seekers; rather, they’re creating more and more opportunities for themselves and people in the next group. And the next group is not getting jobs because they’re not embracing the dynamism of economy and technology and not learning what they should learn.
Things are changing super fast. To have a grip on our time, you should know the warning signs that lie ahead of you if you don’t take immediate action.
With that foundation in mind, let’s look at the top 5 trends for job seekers (job-makers) in 2019 so that more and more people can join the first (upper) group of the society created by the society.
1. 2019 will be a year of linchpins
If you’ve heard the term “linchpin” for the first time, let us give you a brief background. The term was popularized by marketing guru Seth Godin by writing a book in the same name. Linchpins are people who deliver excellence, the individuals who are at the top rung and usually called best. Seth explains – When you’re suffering from a disease, and you’re looking for a doctor? What sort of doctor you’ll look for? The best one, obviously! No one would pay heed to the doctor who is average or doing just okay. So, if you’re not the best in your field, you will be left out in 2019.
This year would be the year of linchpins, people who put their heart, soul, and might to deliver excellence in offering products, services, and skills to customers and employers. So, if you fall under this category of job seekers, you better polish your skills, hone your knowledge and learn as much as you can. Because with the aid of technology more and more people are getting better informed, better skilled and better employees! Average and mediocrity are the acts of the past now.
But you have a chance. You can decide to be linchpins just by knowing your industry and working hard on your skills. Recruiters, companies are only looking for the best of the best. Thus there is no existence of average. Either you’re best, or you’re worst. Do you need to decide which side you’re on?
2. More jobs would be replaceable
What makes a job valuable? If you ask yourselves this question, you would realize that the job is not as valuable as people doing them. Jobs become valuable because people do them in such an effective manner that no one can emulate them. And the more valuable a person would be in their job, the tougher it would be to replace them.
But what if you fall under job seekers that anyone can do with minimum skill and minimum education or minimum efficiency? It would simply be replaceable. So if you’re looking for such jobs, think again. Once your overhead cost becomes high to the employer, he would replace you with someone else whose cost (read salary) would be lesser than you.
Moreover, few jobs are quickly becoming technology-centric. The business owners are not ready to hire someone to count the cash when there is a machine. And guess what, the machine is much cheaper than the human!
So what options you’re left within 2019 while you search for jobs?
Become more valuable.
If you only know how to do the accounts, learn the new software running in most companies. Then, go further and try to understand how you can reduce the cost of business and help the owner make more profit. That way, he will love to keep you.
Better yet, if you have the resources, start moonlighting. Have a job that pays your bill. Along with that, do something part-time that you can do, which will eventually make you more efficient to earn a full-time income. Once you can make a full-time income with your freelance gig, leave the employee life behind.
Don’t tell me it’s impossible! With the aid of technology now, you can start something part-time. Just keep on looking for good opportunities.
3. University & School education will gradually become obsolete
If this sounds silly, go to YouTube and type in the search box about anything you want to learn. You will get at least a hundred videos, or if not, you’ll get a clue where to look for the information to learn. The Internet has come to us as a boon. We’re having so much information these days that school education has been becoming redundant. Moreover, if you enrol in any school, you need to pay fees; but you need your time, effort, notebook, and willingness to finish something with the internet.
Thus the approach for job seekers has been changing. The candidates are becoming more knowledgeable, more tech-savvy and more skilful.
Ask Scott Young, a mid-20 guy who completed the entire MIT Computer Engineering course in 1 year without enrolling in MIT. If you’re new to this, you would need to change your outlook.
At MIT, this course takes 4 years to complete. So Scott took things into his own hands. He knew it would be hard. But its cost was only $2000. So he bought few textbooks and watched the videos of the lectures given by MIT professors, which are uploaded for free on the MIT website.
What would happen if you take this kind of challenge? How would it help job seekers in 2019?
The answer is obvious. You will rock. As in 2019, skills would be more important than the name of the schools you will get through. Do people imagine how come someone gets a salary of a million dollars for a year in a company? Simply because they are more valuable than the rest of us! They would generate a billion-dollar profit for the company. So the company would pay them a million without any question.
In job seeker 2019, your schools’ name won’t matter much, but your skills will. Are you ready?
4. Recruitment would be based more on data than qualitative assumption
Human resource is an area where most of the things are intangible, and it was challenging to measure the performance, motivation level of the people working in the organization, efficiency level in a given project, how much effort they’re putting into to get things done and so forth. But as human resources evolved and got a strategic outlook, everything has been measured through data.
Truly with the aid of data analytics, from end to end recruitment to understanding the motivational quotient of an employee becomes much easier.
In 2019, recruitment mostly would be based on data. Meaning the better your records look, the better your chances of selection. If you’re among those who hop jobs every 2-3 months, you’re in great danger.
What’s the solution?
It would help if you also became more data-driven.
You need to pull out things that you can present as evidence of your efficiency in the job you’re applying for. It would help if you spent more time preparing yourself for the job than normal. In 2019, even the experienced employees would be facing issues if they’re not at par with the industrial demands and not constantly learning the new rules of businesses.
A job and its contents have been changing every year and so drastically that if an employee holding the position doesn’t make an effort to upgrade themself, it would be their time to get replaced by someone better and more skilful. And that can happen just in a year or less time.
The best way to start being data-driven is to track your own learning and growth while you’re in a job. Ensure that the tracking should not be based on assumption or qualitative input, rather something you can measure and improve upon. Someone said so well – what gets measured gets improved.
Recruitment will get measured at all levels, and naturally, the processes and techniques of screening will also improve.
5. Millennials will take over jobs across industries
This is an amazing time of opportunity. Thus, more and more young people are taking the reigns of the companies in the world economy. Pick India. In 2020, India’s average age population would be under 29 years, whereas China’s average age would be 37 and Japan’s average age would be 48 years. In India, 2019 would be fully the year of Millenials.
According to research done by Upwork, it’s seen that at present, 30% of employees in the world are millennials. And not only that, millennials are now at top positions in many companies. So when are millennials asked what they prefer most before choosing a company? Their answer was classing. They said that their work matters and they want to work with companies with a sense of purpose rather than companies whose sole goal is to make profits.
For the job seekers in 2019, most probably you would be among millennials. But, if you don’t know what millennials are all about, here’s the brief. Millennials are the Gen Y who were born between the early 1980s to 2000s.
The job seekers market is yours now if you’re among millennials. So be ready to take over.
The trends we mentioned above are just the outlook for the future. But they’re not certain. Things may change; opportunity may explode into something that we never can imagine right away. But one thing would never change in this age; it’s disruption. Every tech company is creating new jobs every year, offering new roles, making new positions, and facing new challenges. So job seekers must keep their eyes and ears open and keep learning whatever they can. A glorious future awaits you if you’re willing to tap the opportunity.
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