3 insights that can tell students where their career is heading

As an educator or a teacher, you may pride yourself on being able to answer all the questions and clarify all the doubts that your students may pose. But, there are some questions that not even you—regardless of how experienced or knowledgeable you might be—can answer with absolute certainty. You know, questions like, “what jobs can I get for the skills I have?”, “what should I study so I can get a job in my hometown?”, or “will my skills be relevant in the coming decade?”

 

To such questions, you may respond with indirect, generic answers like, “Here’s how to plan your job search so you can find employment opportunities you may like…” or—to quote the old Doris Day song—with a vague, hopeful “Que sera sera” And—unless you’re a soothsayer (or claim to be one)—there’s no shame in not knowing answers to questions regarding your students’ future, as we can’t even grasp everything that’s happening right now. However, through the power of analytics, not only can we know exactly what’s currently happening in the job market but also how the job market is likely to evolve in the foreseeable future. This means you can virtually guarantee your students’ career success by guiding and preparing them with certainty.

 

Talismatic’s labor market analytics gathers and processes data from thousands of employers across America and helps educators to gain valuable, never-seen-before insights into the job market that can guide their students towards the best employment opportunities. Using labor market analytics tools, educators can gain the following insights to be able to tell their students with certainty, where their careers are heading:

 

1. The industries and companies hiring for specific skills

Knowing which industries require a specific major or skill-set allows students to choose their majors based on the domains they are interested in working for. It also helps prospective students to know that the programs they are joining will have demand among industries that are set to grow in the future. The use of labor market analytics helps educators, and through them, the students to identify the top industries and companies that hire for specific skills.

 

For instance, Talismatic’s analytics show that students pursuing an IT major are currently more likely to be placed in the semiconductor and computer hardware industries, which together accounted for over 15000, or 55%^[1] of the total number of IT jobs floated in the first half of this year.

Having this kind of information allows students to plan their courses and projects well for maximizing their chances of landing lucrative employment opportunities. Educators can use this information to design curriculums for programs that will make their students more suited to employment in these industries. Thus, when the students graduate, they’ll find a broader range of career options to choose from. This kind of insight also helps career services teams to prepare their students for employment through useful guidance backed by real-time data. Educational administrators like deans and provosts can use such information to include courses that closely cater to the needs of the specific industries.

 

For instance, since most IT jobs are floated in the semiconductor and hardware industry, educators can incorporate courses that are relevant to these specific industries into their curriculum. The inclusion of industry-focused subjects might be the differentiator between your students and their competition when all else is equal.

 

2.    The different employment opportunities that a Major can get

Sometimes, the different career options that are available for certain skills, majors, or programs are not very obvious. For instance, did you know that “Teacher” is among the top positions for students with a bachelor or a masters degree in finance^[2]? In fact, the average salary range for teachers is on par with, if not more than, that of consultants and accountants with the same qualifications.

 

Often, certain skills—unbeknownst to graduates and even educators themselves—can be applied in roles that may not directly align with the programs that they are a part of. And, unless you have enough information on the job market, you won’t be able to identify all the potential employment opportunities that a given major or a set of skills can land you.

 

In addition to being unable to find a niche and non-obvious job opportunities, graduates also have a hard time recognizing jobs that they are suited for due to the differing organizational nomenclatures that make the same job profile have different titles depending on the company. Unless students and educators invest time and effort into dissecting every job description and the skills and knowledge required for each vacancy (a tedious job in itself, to say the least), neither the students nor the educators can gauge the abundance, or the lack thereof, of qualified jobs. This limits the number of roles that students can aim for, which sometimes leads to them missing out on the best of opportunities.

 

Being able to identify all the possible roles that their students qualify for enables career services teams from universities and community colleges to offer their students a wide range of career options to choose from.

 

3.    The skills that are projected to grow (or drop) in demand

The job market, especially in the technology sector, is highly dynamic. As an educator, you can teach your students what you think will keep them not only relevant but also in high demand in the labor market. But, can you do so with absolute certainty? Now, unless you do not have solid evidence suggesting the future validity of what you’re teaching, you are essentially gambling with your students’ careers. To surely know where your students are heading in the future, use labor market analytics to know if the demand for their skills or the jobs they’re qualified for will grow or wane over time. And don’t think that just knowing the national average growth projections for different roles and skills will suffice in guiding your students towards making the right career choices. This is because job market trends vary from state to state.

 

For instance, the demand for consultants with finance majors is predicted to grow by 23.3%^[3] by 2026 in Texas, while the national average growth prediction for the same is just 1.6%. Similarly, while the demand for accountants, nationally, is predicted to grow by 10%; for Texas, this percentage is more than twice of that—23.7%.

 

This goes on to show how the job market can vary for different regions, which means accurately understanding how the job market evolves is not a very straightforward calculation and involves identifying many uncertain variables.

With every variable that becomes certain, educators increase the likelihood of accurately knowing where their students are heading. Knowing not only the future demand but also the locations where the demand is likely to grow the most means career services teams can point towards future employment hotspots where their students can secure employment with minimal competition, even when the nationwide demand may seem low.

 

When educators have access to such insights, they maximize the likelihood of accurately knowing how their students will fare in the job market. Educators can offer highly informed career guidance to make their students’ hunt for the best employment opportunities easier. And, when educators like deans and provosts—who have a role in designing curriculums—get access to these insights, they can evaluate the efficacy of their educational programs.

 

However, truly benefiting from such information requires getting it well ahead of time—during the institutional planning phase. This is when such insights can enable educators to make decisions involving curriculum design, staffing, and overall educational program planning, creating a major shift in the way their institution functions, from the career services team to the chief academic administrator.

Institutions wishing to gain highly customized analytical insights to help drive institutional performance can request for their own customized report from Talismatic. Talismatic offers educational institutions, across the US, with periodic reports customized with detailed labor market stats specifically pertaining to a University, College, State, or City. So, if you want to know how the job market will transform, before it does so grab your job market intelligence report from Talismatic, now!

 

^[1] Similar Opportunity Report, June-July 2018

^[2] Trends and Growth Predictions report, June-July 2018

^[3] Trends and Growth Predictions report, June-July 2018