We published it because we know that most career changers and job seekers feel that their chances of finding what they want right now are pretty limited. But that is not necessarily the case. Despite the recession and huge unemployment levels, there are some careers that are understaffed, in which it is not at all difficult to get work if you have the right abilities and personal qualities.

The Career Energy Guide has identified ten very different careers where we believe there are plenty of opportunities for employment in 2010, provided you are willing train for them if you need to. We list them in the guide, together with information on what they entail, how to get into them and what your next steps should be. Each career has been chosen on the basis of being suitable for late entry, in other words not just for people new to the world of work, and a range of factors that indicate both good short and longer term prospects for employment. We also asked representatives of each profession to give us a short low-down on the careers we have covered.

 However, the fact that you can get a job in the ten areas we have covered does not mean that they will be right for you. So we have also set out the main criteria that you need to think about when considering a career move, and how each of the top ten careers meet these criteria.

There are tens of thousands of careers out there, and although the top ten are relatively easy to find work in, the chances are that there may be something even better out there for you. You just need to know what it is.

Related posts:

1. The Return of Career Changers Later this week the UK may formally come out of...
2. Career Opportunities On the Land A report on today’s Radio Four programme Farming Today drew...
3. Time For A Career Change? Over the past year economists and politicians have been divided...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

On the one hand, the long term picture is dominated by social and technological change. We all expect greater choice and autonomy over our careers. We live in a society whose citizens want to be able to live a lifestyle of their choice. This trend has been evident since at least the birth of trade unionism but has accelerated in recent years as gender, sexual and human rights agendas have come to the fore. These are now giving way to agendas of personal autonomy.

On the other hand there are strong economic pressures, at least in the short term. We will need to work longer before we can draw our pensions, politicians and the press are talking of a new Age of Austerity.

So what is it to be? Will the trend towards greater choice, flexibility and improved lifestyles continue in the workplace. Or will a shortage of money force us to sweat even harder to earn a crust?

Of course only time will tell. But experience suggests that the short term pressures, whilst severe, may not be quite as enduring as we expect. After all, we live in a world where things change quickly. Do you remember how people spoke of the Conservative Party as being finished for a generation after the 1997 election? That turned out to be a short generation. In the 1970s the world was expected to run out of oil in a few years; then the North Sea oilfields  were discovered. The dotcom boom briefly misled us all. It only needs one economic or political event, somewhere in the world, to turn things on their head again.

At the same time, some changes are permanent. The role of women in society has changed dramatically in the last half century, it is unlikely to reverse. The lifestyle changes that the 21^st century is bringing are a similar trend. The nature of work will change dramatically over the next few decades. There may be short term economic pressures. But they are unlikely to impede progress for long.

Related posts:

1. The Trouble With The CBI’s Apprenticeship Proposal The CBI have called on the government to spend £125m...
2. Working Better? Writing in the Guardian this weekend, Equality and Human Rights...
3. When Redundancy Is An Opportunity Sometimes it pays to take a contrarian view, to look...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Careers are not random things. They deserve to be planned. After all, since most of us are meticulous about planning things which only last a short time, such as a holiday, an event or a meeting, it must make sense to plan a career which is going to last for forty years or more. The fact that most of us do not plan our careers is a poor reflection on our educational system, one which Career Energy and a small number of other career consultancies are working hard to put right.

A planned career includes anticipated moments of transition. Times when changes are necessary in order to continue on our path to our long term goal. And redundancy is often the catalyst for the next change; we enter the job market in a state of positive anticipation, knowing what we are looking for and having done the ground work neccessary to make it happen.

Of course career planning is best done at an early stage in our careers and reviewed frequently. But even if you are hit by redundancy without ever having created a career plan for yourself, all is not lost. Give me a call at Career Energy, and let’s help you treat your current situation as an opportunity.

Related posts:

1. A Great Opportunity We have reached the point, common to all recessions, at...
2. The Importance Of Plan B We face two economic, career-impacting possibilities as the second half of the working...
3. Response to Redundancy Response to Redundancy is a government funded initiative to help...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Broadly speaking university courses can be divided into vocational and non-vocational subjects. Vocational courses include the professions and any course that specifically equips students for a particular job. Many students will in any event opt for a non-vocational course; poor guidance at school means that most students pick courses based on their A-level experiences rather than a true preference for the subject. But should those who would normally opt for a vocational course still do so in this climate, or should they apply for something broader?

As career consultants, my colleagues and I at Career Energy see many people in their mid to late twenties who regret their earlier career choices. This is particularly the case in the professions, notably lawyers, doctors and accountants. Most of those with regrets do leave their careers and take up something new.

This, irrespective of the shortage of vacancies, leads me to believe that the choice of a vocational course at university should not be made on the basis that it will give the student a stable and prestigious career. If they are going to hate it and leave, then what is the point? Far better, in our experience to select a university course that you enjoy. The career will come later, at this stage the priority is education.

Related posts:

1. A Good Idea For Gap Year Graduates The new government funded gap years for graduates are to...
2. Funding Higher Education In a bid to reduce the demand on public funds...
3. A New Model For Graduate Training Schemes BT’s announcement that it is to discontinue its graduate training...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The first thing that struck me was the impossibilty of understanding the questions. Statements like ‘I am not the sort of person who wouldn’t like to be told what not to do…Answer Yes or No’. If you can’t understand the grammar, how can you give an accurate answer?

But worse than that was the sheer number of questions. There should have been one which asked ‘I am not the sort of person who likes answering lots of questions on line’. Because I don’t. I get bored easily, I know it and I am quite pleased that I do. It is what makes me entrepreneurial and imaginative. But if I get bored easily then I am bound to resist answering several hundred multi choice questions.  And if I resist them then I will answer inaccurately, or not at all.

The designer of a psychometric test will argue that they counter the tendency to answer questions inaccurately by repeating the same question in different ways. I am bound, so they say, to answer it thoughtfully more often or not. But what if I don’t complete the assessment? If I get so disinterested that I simply close the web page? Which is what I did. What value to the psychometric then?

For this, and many other reasons that I don’t have space to go into, Career Energy decided some years ago not to use psychometric testing in our assessments of our clients’ career options. We use in depth discussion instead, based on a rigorous methodology that we have developed over the years, and continue to develop. We find that most of our clients prefer it that way. We certainly do

Related posts:

1. The Psychometric Testing Myth A client recently told me of a psychometric test that...
2. A Good Idea For Gap Year Graduates The new government funded gap years for graduates are to...
3. A Little Known Fact About Interviews With little green shoots reportedly raising their heads, we can...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If you live in an area dominated by a large employer- as many people did until the 1970’s, should your expectations and the limit of your ambition be to work for them, or should you aspire to spread your net wider?

No prizes for guessing that I favour the latter position, Career Energy would not exist if we believed that jobs were just something you did out of necessity, with no choice and little control. But is this just a middle class, southern attitude; is it reasonable to expect that people from working class, industrial areas can avail themselves of the same choices as those who live in service-industry dominated areas? The answer I believe is still yes. Some individuals may need more information to help them aspire beyond their immediate environment, but why should they be denied this?

The question of saving jobs doesn’t really come into it because at the end of the day, if jobs are lost, government will implement a local job creation scheme, as they did with the coal and steel industries. So Career Energy’s message to government is, if the primary reason for considering a bail out of Jaguar is to save the company, consider something else first. Put Jaguar’s management on one side and consult with the employees first. Help them to discover their options, help them to see what they might have done had Jaguar never existed. Perhaps ideas for new enterprises will emerge; there may be a thirst for more education or training, it is possible that the community will articulate a different vision for itself. 

Once it is clear what options and preferences the staff have, whether collectively or individually, include them in your decision making. Don’t just bail out the company because of its name, or because there is something intrinsically essential about big business.

Related posts:

1. The Future of Work The nature of our future working lives is becoming an...
2. The Importance Of Plan B We face two economic, career-impacting possibilities as the second half of the working...
3. The Trouble With The CBI’s Apprenticeship Proposal The CBI have called on the government to spend £125m...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.