Life Sciences & The Green Sector: Emerging Job Trends
I attended an excellent panel presentation on 10/15/09 at a meeting of the Career Counselors’ Consortium Northeast. The panelists represented three industries: Life Sciences, the Green Sector, and Human Services, and they discussed the emerging trends in their fields, particularly related to employment and career opportunities.
The panelists were articulate, informed, and quick. Here are the trends they reported.
Life Sciences and the Green Sector are growth industries in MA and in the US generally. These industries are seeing a great shortage down the road of professionals with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) training and experience. If you have a STEM background and wish to move into one of these fields, start your engines, and start talking to people.
And, not all the growth opportunities in these fields require STEM background. Many of the opportunites in these industries are similar to what’s needed in any industry: expertise in marketing communications, finance, HR, accounting, training and development, and so on.
If you are interested in moving into either of these growth fields (Life Sciences or the Green Sector) and you have skills and experience outside of STEM, the way to start is to first identify your particular interest — is it the environment? cancer research? medical devices? renewable energy?
Once you know that, find out who the players are in that field, in your part of the country. Find out everything you can about these organizations. Use your network to talk to people who work there, and find out what you can about how they staff the the kind of work that you do.
Essentially you want to find out what it would take for you to make a move into that organization. Are you marketable to them as you are? Is there particular experience you could obtain that would make you a more compelling hire? And so on, as you would with any other job campaign.
Regarding Human Services . . . I’ve been reading for the last few years that the human services field is also growing. I always found this very puzzling, since it appears that funding for these kinds of services is always getting cut. During the Q & A with the presenters, I got an answer to this seeming contradiction. Yes, there is a growing NEED for human services providers and practitioners, but no, there are no corresponding policy changes to support more jobs in the field. The trend reports seem to ignore this critical detail.
Certainly the news about emerging job trends in Life Sciences and the Green Sector is good. These fields offer opportunities to technical and non-technical people alike, as well as to professional and non-professional contributors.
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