Join the world’s second oldest profession!
A recent guest post over on VentureBeat on your career, future-proofed notes that industries that once were dominant are long in decline and that nascent sectors are ascendant and will likely shape everything that lies ahead. This includes the careers that will be available to you. Given that you don’t want to be among the 23% of workers who are unemployed to some degree, according to the latest shadow statistics that includes long-term discouraged workers not included in the BLS U-6 unemployment rate that includes short-term discouraged and marginally-attached workers (which is close to 15%), it’s important to do what you can to “future-proof” your career. (Source: ShadowStats)
To this end, the author of the guest post gives you four simple rules that he believes will help you win your future. They are:
Take Risks – Big Ones
If you see your industry on the fast-track to the doghouse, try something new, even if it means working half a world away for a while.
Take All Opportunities
Never shy away from any event, trip, assignment, or project they want to give you that will expand your experience, horizon, and opportunity.
Go Where the Future Is
Even though we had the dot-com crash, the future still lies in tech and healthcare, but tech will be more than just over-hyped software companies. And it will be most prevalent in healthcare as the population continues to age and wants to live longer and better.
Think Beyond
Whatever we’re using today we won’t be using in 10 years, or at least not in the same form. Don’t get comfortable. Look to what is coming next and prepare for it.
These are great pieces of advice, but if you really want to future proof your career, all you have to do is take up the world’s second oldest profession – Procurement! Whether you call it purchasing, sourcing, or supply management, it’s based on buying, and there has been buying at least since the ancient Anatolians were trading obsidian circa the 9th century BC. We’re a consumer culture that constantly needs to trade (money, or equivalent) for what we need, so buying is never going to go away. Paper money might, as we replace it with digital bits, but the concept won’t.
Plus, being in Procurement implies that you will have the opportunity to take risks (and will have to if you want to stand out and advance your career quickly), expand your experience (as you will have lots of opportunities to travel to suppliers around the globe and work with them), go where the future is (as there is always a big focus on emerging markets), and think beyond — as the only real way to create lasting value is to continually innovate beyond the norm.