Image by kandyjaxx via Flickr
So here’s a question for you. Does your next job exist? I don’t mean is there an opening someplace. I mean it literally – do you think the role itself exists? It’s not as simple a question as one might think. After all – the job I’m in now – consultant – has existed for a long time but one area of expertise in which I consult – digital media – has only been around for 15 years or so. So let’s think about this for a second and what it means.
Let’s begin with three jobs – webmaster, SEO analyst, and social media specialist. If you were in school in 1990, you wouldn’t have thought of any of those as a career choice – they didn’t exist. In fact, I spent a few minutes searching this morning and webmaster as a job didn’t start to show up until the mid-1990’s. SEO analyst is a creation of the early 2000’s and social media specialist only starts showing up in 2006 or 2007. Thousands of these jobs exist today, I’m sure there are courses offered to prepare one to hold one of these roles. So how can you be ready, especially for the gig that doesn’t really exist?
Some of that preparation goes back to the skills we’ve talked about before. Some of them are ones you can’t teach – creativity, intelligence – and others are very much learnable – SEO, SEM, analytics, etc. The real issue is not so much what’s the job going to be but where is the business going and your take on what new roles will evolve. What does the rise of mobile, of apps, of tablets, and of “game-ification” mean? What drives these businesses (and those that will evolve from them) and who is going to make these new opportunities become realities?
Let me add that this isn’t a creation of the digital age. Most of the jobs I’ve held over the last 30 years were new when I took them. In most cases I was the first person in the role and had to help define what exactly the role was and, more importantly, what the expected and desirable outcomes were. Your next gig may not exist yet but the seeds are probably planted already. What are you doing to bring them to fruition?
Consult Keith 