Are These The Jobs of The Future?

Some careers advisers have a distinct penchant for digging out obscure pieces of careers information and labour market trends.  However, I doubt if many will have perused the full 260 odd pages of the "Skill Shortage Sensible" report produced by the Migration Advisory Committee of the Home Office.  It does however contain a handy (if still considerable) list of the occupations the Committee recommend for retention in the shortage occupation list for the UK and Scotland.

In other words, it is a good guide to job areas in which UK citizens as well as immigrants to the country may themselves find opportunities in the future and may repay some further study.  Of course some of the
jobs are very high level occupations that would not be immediately within the grasp of the average graduate - but we would hope that least some of those who have sought careers advice at the University of Cumbria will harbour longer-term ambitions.

It might come as little surprise that many of the items on the list contain the word engineering at some point and some of the key disciplines that get several mentions are:

• nuclear decommissioning and waste management (so good news here for the sons and daughters of West Cumbria)
• electricity distribution and transmission
• tunnelling and landfill
• 'all chemical engineers'
• aerospace manufacture
• oil and gas

The continuing need for oil and gas extraction also accounts for a further sub-family of anticipated shortage applications incuding geologists, hydrogeologists, geochemists, geophysicists and pipe welders as well as a wide number of engineering technical specialisms.

If you've spotted that you can't study many of these areas at the University of Cumbria, there is better news coming.  The shortage recommendation list includes a number of occupations relating to 2D/3D computer animation for film, televison and video games, including artists, modellers and production specialists as well as dancers and musicians.  

Health occupations are also well represented, notably:

• hospital doctors in haeomotology, emergency medicine, paediatrics, old age psychiatry, anaesthetics, intensive care, internal medicine and accident and emergency
• diagnostic and therapeutic radiographers
• operating theatre nurses
• social workers in children's and family services (interestingly in the light of current vacancy shortages locally)
• nuclear medicine and radiotherapy phycisists

Lastly, secondary teachers of biology, chemistry and physics as well as chefs also receive a mention.

Currently the shortage occupation list is reviewed every two years - the so-called sunset clause.

Working Towards Management?

This week we are very pleased to feature a guest post written by Sean McPheat, MD of management training and leadership development specialists MTD Training. Sean has been featured on the BBC, ITV, CNN International and many more, and has over 250 media credits to his name:

Start Securing the Skills Now!

A management role might seem a hundred light years away from where you are currently, but the reality is, it might be much close than you think. Whilst management is often perceived as something that has to be worked up towards, something that requires you to climb ladders and tick boxes before such a position is awarded, there is every chance that, with the right mind set and knowledge, not only will you be able to secure a management role as a graduate, you’ll be able to flourish and succeed within that role. Here are three lessons you can take from your current environment and turn them into something positive for your leadership career!

Sidling Sociality

The first thing to know about any management role is that it’s a social one. Your ability to succeed will hinge directly on your people skills, your ability to converse and drum up a dialogue, your aptitude when it comes to building relationships and reaching out to people. As a manager, your team is everything, and forging and maintaining strong bridges to them as individuals will be the difference that makes you successful out in the field. Relationships are incomparably important and knowing how they work is one of the most prominent skills you’ll need!

Confidence Balance 

Believing in your own ability is something you won’t get far in life without, and that’s a general rule across the board. Having the confidence to trust your instincts and your decisions is a difficult thing to learn, but knowing where the balance lies is even trickier. In a management role, your confidence should never be overbearing; it can be authoritative and final, however it’s all too easy to let this become too domineering, so much so that you could cause dissent and disengagement amongst your team. Learn how to find the right balance between being a strong decision-maker and being overconfident. When you work in teams, think about how the project is being managed, what people tend to work with and what they work against.

Critical Thinking 

Of course, you can’t have the confidence to be a strong decision-maker without the ability to think critically. You currently find yourself in situations everyday wherein you must be reflective, responsive, analytical and methodical in your approach, even if you don’t realize it. If you start observing and analysing these situations, you’ll be one step ahead and better prepared to step right into the role you’ll aim for as a graduate. University is, essentially, one of the best environments for developing critical thinking, so long as you pay attention to your circumstances.

Emotional Control 

Emotions can delve deeply into the equilibrium of a social situation, and one thing a manager must be able to do, is know when to exercise control. Whilst this sounds like becoming a cold and calculated management machine, it’s simply more of a case of analysing situational congruence and knowing whether particular emotions you may be experiencing will be appropriate. You’ll need all your emotions to build relationships with your people, but knowing how and when to keep them under control is the key. Again, you likely already do this on a daily basis, you just don’t realize it. Think about when you decide to keep certain emotions hidden, and how that skill might be applicable in a professional environment.

Consider how you function socially and cognitively every day, things you do without even thinking; you’ll quickly find there’s plenty of opportunity to learn all you need to know to be successful right where you are!

Hello Diigo - Goodbye Delicious!

After reviewing for some while the development of delicious.com since it was sold on by Yahoo, the University of Cumbria Careers Service has decided to use diigo.com as its main website for useful links.  Our links will be stored at the specific url http://www.diigo.com/user/uoccareers.  Here's a quick screenshot to show roughly what it looked like earlier today:

Hold On - What's All This About?

If you're not familiar with the likes of diigo and delicious, they are both social bookmarking sites.  Anyone can sign up for an account and use it to save web references that interest them - although in the case of diigo, you can do much more, e.g, annotate or highlight text within the referenced webpages.  A bit like Google bookmarks, they have the advantage that, unlike IE favourites or similar, you can view them from any computer.  An extra advantage over Google bookmarks is that anyone else can view them  too, if you have allowed public access to your bookmarks.

Because of the vast explosion of careers and job information on the internet, many University Careers Services make use of them to reference the vast amount of online information likely to be relevant to their clients.  For example, the University of Cumbria currently has 2055 web pages bookmarked on diigo - far too many to even consider putting on a "Useful Links" section of a website. Most services use delicious or diigo but there are others, and the University of London have their own dedicated bookmarking site, Careers Tagged

The key trick is that the use of tags means that it is possible to pick out links according to a key theme or area of interest, rather than browsing all of our links to find if there's anything useful to you.  So you get  exactly those weblinks that are relevant to your needs - more or less.  You can see the precise tags below each web reference in the screenshot.

OK, So How Do I Use This Stuff?

If you visit http://www.diigo.com/user/uoccareers you can pick out the tags that will interest you and search on them in the box at the top (next to Careers Adviser's Public Library).  Or simply type the first few letters of a word you want to search on and diigo will bring up all the possibilities in a dropdown box.  Alternatively just click on any tag beneath a weblink or in the "Top Tags" list and diigo will bring up all the bookmarks bearing that tag.

Then click on the link to bring it up in your browser, or use the 'preview' facility to get a taste of what's on that page.  If you have too many links using one tag, you can narrow things down by selecting another.

You can also retrieve links by modifying the main link to the uoccareers section of diigo in a url web address.  So http://www.diigo.com/user/uoccareers/cv will bring up all the links tagged 'CV' and  http://www.diigo.com/user/uoccareers/internship will bring up all the stuff on internships, etc.

Useful isn't it?

Sites like diigo offer you a vast amount of information at your fingertips and weed out a lot of the chaff you would get by just googling the themes you want.  It's surprising then that most students report that they have not heard of this sort of site, let alone used them, or set up their own accounts.  All we can say is - give it a try!

University of Cumbria students can find a more detailed guide about using diigo on the Jobs&Careers tab on Blackboard (see 'Plan Your Career' section).  If you should find any dead links on http://www.diigo.com/user/uoccareers - or if you would like to suggest some new ones - please feel free to contact us on careers@cumbria.ac.uk