Are you in a Recession-proof career?

After last weeks Sunday Times Careers front-page article referring to the Jobs Bloodbath I thought it would be inevitable that this week would follow suit with more articles spreading the doom and gloom of the job situation in South Africa. So, I went out and got the Sunday Times first thing today and true to form, the front-page of the Careers section headline read ‘Recession Busters’. This article however placed a more positive employment spin for those holding “in demand” qualifications, trades and skills.

So what are these “in demand” qualifications, trades and skills?
According to the article (and subsequent articles carried throughout the same publication), the most in-demand careers for South Africa are:

1. Those holding specific trades such as artisans, plumbers and electricians.
2. Engineers; Specifically mechanical, civil and then electrical engineers.
3. Information Technology skills such as software engineers, developers, network engineers & administrators as well as those IT Managers who can demonstrate that they are able to align IT strategies with strategic business objectives.
4. Sharp managers! Meaning those managers that are able to communicate, motivate and build high-performance organisations through strong leadership.
5. Academics, teachers, nurses and doctors will always be in demand in South Africa as a result of the former brain drain that literally ‘drained’ South Africa of these most needed (but often underpaid) skills.

What do the job advertisements say?
After reading the predictions of two articles for two consecutive weeks regarding who will survive the recession and who should be concerned, I decided to flip through the rest of the Careers section. Pen in hand, I circled those jobs and qualifications or trades that appeared most frequently under this week’s vacancies. On page 1, just slightly below the ‘Recession Busters’ article was a fairly large ad for a mining giant promoting bursaries offering hope to Matriculants holding a 60% average in maths and science for a future in Mining, Electrical, Mechanical, Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering as well as other promising careers in the mining industry. This being an industry identified in last week’s publication as one of those who are most likely to lay-off employees during the coming Recession. Alongside the mining advertisement was another large advertisement recruiting for an Information Services Architect in the Petroleum industry, who should hold a degree or 3-year diploma in Computer Science or Information Technology accompanied with no less than 7 years technology architecture experience.

So that’s what the front page of the Careers section said, but what about the rest of the publication? A number of positions popped up frequently for Financial Managers – qualified CA’s – with between 5 to 7 years experience. This was not identified as one of the ‘in-demand’ skills, however judging by the number of job advertisements for Financial Managers; this too might be a promising career. I also spotted at least five job advertisements hiring CEO’s of medium to large size organisations with most of these vacancies requiring no less than a post-graduate qualification in business administration, or more specifically and MBA with 10 years plus experience.

What about all those Government Positions? Over the last few months or even years I have grown quite accustomed to seeing the majority of job advertisements in the Sunday Times Careers being for Government positions. I was surprised to see that the number of vacancies being advertised for the Government had reduced significantly – and as a result, so had the number of pages of the Career’s section. What did stand out is that the Department of Health is still advertising a large number of health jobs in the publication. Positions for Academics and teachers are also still featured rather prominently throughout the publication.

In support of last week’s predictions that the pharmaceutical and medical industries will not be retrenching, I noticed quite a few job advertisements in these industries. I also noticed that throughout the Careers section there was definitely an increase in the demand for Engineers holding BSc degrees with between 5 to 15 years experience, therefore supporting the comments in the headline article stating that those engineers with qualifications and skills will be more likely to survive the recession.

Looking at the content of the job advertisements throughout the publication it clearly demonstrated that those ‘in-demand’ careers mentioned above are, well … clearly in demand.

Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Hot Job or Not, The Employment Times, Top Tips for Job Seekers, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.