The current career landscape is undergoing many exciting changes. With innovations constantly entering the market, students and employees alike have been able to enhance their skill sets with the newest techniques. These trends, including online learning and social media, help people connect with opportunities that may not be available in the local area.
The International Career Institute (ICI) highlights the importance of connecting students with these exciting new methods of learning, fostering and promoting high educational standards, while also giving them the tools to succeed in today’s competitive work environment.
Online Education
The number of students enrolled in some form of online education has steadily increased to a total of 6.1 million. The growth in distance enrollment has affected K-12 education and collegiate education alike. Today’s online students may be taking just one or two courses to supplement a job or full-time college attendance, or they may be completing their entire course load online.
Online education enables residents who are working full-time to expand their educational horizons, leading to better job performance and greater prospects for their career. With such a tightly packed city and intense competition in the workforce, access to remote opportunity online can be a saving grace.
Social Media
Social media is changing the future of work. Many jobs have grown alongside social media, including customer service, legal, creative, programming, and job recruiters. Each of these professions needs to be conversant with social media to complete their job functions. As ICI suggests, creating an environment in which students can get an abundance of information is always beneficial for their decision-making process.
Customer service representatives must often respond to complaints and requests that arise from social media. For example, a customer service representative must monitor the tags and mentions for his or her company, making sure that there are no negative or potentially embarrassing incidents.
Legal teams need to be prepared to handle any crises that occur as part of the company’s social media presence. They also need to make decisions regarding the legality of contests and giveaways. Legal teams also help the company avoid problems with exposure and help to keep their social media presence lawful in every way.
Job recruiters have a unique need to use social media. Today, many prospective job applicants search on LinkedIn and other social sites before they look at traditional job search websites. Recruiters and headhunters also make use of social media to target prospective new employees.
New Technologies
Employees are better able to collaborate with one another given today’s technological advancements. Software like Slack enables the entire office to stay in touch instantly, providing an easily accessible record of all communication about a certain topic. Work is kept in the cloud, enabling quick and easy access from anywhere.
Big data is another influential aspect of the new workplace. With the use of big data, companies are better able to target potential consumers and to keep track of the people with whom they have already interacted. Employees of companies that use big data have a huge amount of information to process. This can sometimes be confusing, but analyzing big data is a growing part of many job descriptions.
Big data is a growing force in entertainment. For example, Netflix uses its vast store of browsing and viewing data to create shows and movies that will grab people’s attention. The site also provides recommendations based on big data. Film and television companies strive to match Netflix’s success.
The Transformation of the Workplace
These digital trends have made their mark on today’s workplace. With online education, employees can enhance their skills without having to take time out of their busy lives to physically attend classes. Students need to have a good understanding of what qualifies as meeting educational standards before making decisions. Social media represents a shift in how companies track and take care of their customers. Finally, big data and collaboration software have created new job functions and transformed existing jobs.
Students and entry-level job searchers need to stay on top of these technology trends to succeed in today’s competitive environment. The International Association of Private Career Colleges suggests students find a school who will constantly adapt to these changes in the workplace and ensure that their students will have the tools they need to move forward.
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