The Importance of Following Trends - Industry Trends

[ChazzPrattUSAA]

Trending is best defined as the most popular topic. People talk excessively about anything that’s trending. You can almost hear the echoes of retweets of the trending topic resonating through the infinite spaces of social media.

But let’s talk about another type of trend? Industry trends.

What happens when something quite popular, such as a once hot job, becomes cold and stale? What happens when the trend wears out? What happens when a job trend comes to an end?

If you’ve set a goal of becoming a Travel Agent, a Photo Processor, a Farmer, a Postal Delivery person, a File Clerk, or a Florist, you might wish to pay close attention to these specific industry trends.

Would you say each of those industries is in growth-mode or declining?

Remember when the abovementioned jobs were trending? (Not that we described them that way.)

A Forbes magazine article cited the 20 Disappearing Jobs listed career fields that seem to be fading quickly. Backed by information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, you can see that significant changes in specific jobs mean less than optimal growth and opportunity.

For example, have you noticed that technology has made it a lot easier for you to get things done on your own? We seem to have an App for nearly every traditional task that once required human interaction.

A few clicks of a mouse on any travel-related website and you’re on your way to your favorite destination without the need to speak to a Travel Agent. We even have websites that compare several travel websites simultaneously so you can find the best deal out there. All that without uttering a single word to a LIVE person.

With digital cameras included as an integral part of any cellphone technology, that trip to get film developed rarely ever happens these days. Unless you stumble upon an old camera in your great-grandparent’s attic, you’ll probably point & shoot with your smartphone and even edit the photo on the same device – not to mention the new definition of “exposure” is how many hits you get on your favorite social media outlet.

Ever hear of the firm called Russell, Majors and Waddell? You might know them better by their involvement in The Pony Express! Since we now have the ability to send packages overnight and on weekends, fast forward to the current Postal Worker jobs that appear to be declining. With the advent of Instant Messaging and its predecessor Email, private companies seem to have overtaken this industry. And who knows? You might have a drone delivering your packages to you next time you order online.

So, with all this in mind, how do you follow the industry trends so you can avoid getting hired in a dead end industry?

Follow the trends.

Here’s a list of things you might take a look at when following industry trends:

• What’s making news headlines? Check the financial markets and find out which industries continue to grow and which ones have projections of long-term growth. This can be tough to do if you’re not savvy in the finance lingo though, so make sure you ask the right people.

• Who’s hiring? Who is firing? Who’s merging? What’s emerging?

• Ask your Friends and Colleagues who work in industries you might be interested in. Find out what they know about the long-term possibilities in their industry.

• Check out the job fairs and pay close attention to who is there hiring. If a company (or industry) is growing, they hire people. (For example, back in the mid-1990’s, the Pharmaceutical Industry had lots and lots of presence at job fairs. Nowadays, you rarely see a Pharma company at these events.)

• Which areas of study seem to pop up all the time from all those “Get You College Degree!” ads you see on television, print, and other media? You might discover some clues as to where the future looks brightest.

How do you determine industry trends? How do you use this information to select the career field that’s right for you?