What knowledge, skill or ability will be your next cash cow? Answering that question goes hand-in-hand with predicting the next big trend. It’s like speculating about high earning stocks but focusing on your own personal development instead. What will the next cutting-edge, high paying skill be?
Can’t Trust the Man
It ‘s suspect that the Labor Department identifies what the up-and-coming jobs will be. Do they realize that when they do so, one-hundred thousand people enroll in degrees and programs to get certified in those fields the government recommends? Wait a minute! Then the salaries for those professions bottom out as qualified people glut the job market. A potentially rewarding career becomes commoditized. I smell a rat!
HotJobs really aren’t – they’re the leftover positions that are difficult to fill or those with high turnover. Universities can’t respond quickly enough to emerging trends with their curriculums. By the time academic bureaucracies approve a new course or degree, the skills it offers seem obsolete. You must predict these trends yourself, identify what you need to learn, and then chase opportunities to master those profitable skills.
The Next Big Thing
Information Technology pros are always in short supply. My employer has continued to post six-figure IT jobs despite a year of anemic revenues.
Companies will pursue environmentally-friendlier ways of producing energy or doing business; few people have translated this movement into opportunities.
The lagging economy’s ignited huge movements of debt-reduction and do-it-yourself fans. The massive market this demographic presents can’t possibly be saturated yet.
Many people have been forced to short-sell their homes and others experienced foreclosure. What’s happened to the demand for rentals and affordable housing? A unique opportunity?
The novelty of Facebook and Twitter fades each day. How can a new Internet application create a better social media experience?
Another thought: the majority of people who make over $200,000 a year are self-employed.
What to Learn Better
Your inventory of cutting-edge, high paying skills may not require you to learn anything new, but rather learn something better. Highly-specialized people not only make more money, their income is more secure (that is until someone overseas masters those skills and peddles them for a fraction of the cost).
You can’t go wrong by learning to improve your communication skills. Regardless of technological advances, principles of effective communication will remain the same.
And people as influential as Gary Vaynerchuk insist the Internet and its social media capabilities for building business haven’t been touched yet. Have you thought about how you could use social media tools to build your business or professional opportunities?
It’s not a question of what to learn, it’s where do you begin?
