New research shows that 2024 will be a year of great change in the workplace, as 75 per cent of UK professionals are looking for a new job this year.
The same report also ranks the fastest-growing jobs over the last five years, and though the acceleration of AI and automation are making an impact, they don’t crack the top five list of roles most in-demand in the UK.
The analysis gives a list of the job 25 titles that are growing in popularity, and the top five, in order from first to fifth, are: sustainability manager, sales development representative, underwriting analyst, chief revenue officer and dental therapist.
Sustainability is top of the pops reflecting a surge in demand caused by several factors including environmental awareness, employee pressure, and regulatory changes. Business and consulting services, tech, information and internet, and real estate companies are most commonly hiring into manager, analyst, director, coordinator, and consultant roles.
Once an add-on, as sustainability becomes more integral to core business strategies, the demand for individuals adept at implementing and managing sustainable practices continues to grow, which will further fuel job opportunities in the field.
Also hardly surprising is the demand for sales development managers; securing client contracts, growing revenue and expanding market reach are always in fashion.
In an ever-increasingly globalised and cloud-enabled world, companies can compete in new markets faster than ever, and with advances in CRM and data analytics, this role can be laser focused. Modern development managers approach sales with targeted outreach strategies, and combine them with their own personal engagement style, a winning combination.
Despite many warnings that automated tech could eliminate certain roles, senior positions like chief revenue officers (CROs) are safe, and growing, as these jobs extend beyond sales and outreach functions. CROs work cross-functionally across sales, marketing, partnerships and customer success to drive strategic revenue growth, and this cannot be done by AI.
The industries most commonly hiring CROs are tech, information and internet, IT services and IT consulting and advertising services, while the gender distribution in 2023 was overwhelmingly male, accounting for 85 per cent of hires.
In the same research, it is flagged that skill sets for jobs are projected to change 65 per cent by 2030, a huge leap from the 25 per cent change in the last decade. This means that employees and job seekers would do well to upskill in topics like AI and cybersecurity.
In fact, artificial intelligence engineers took the seventh spot in the top 25 UK list, as organisations of all sizes seek to develop and integrate AI tools for various commercial applications.
Across AI engineer job advertisements, the most common requirements for these roles are knowledge of machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing (NLP).
This role has a huge gender gap; 87 per cent of hires were men, compared to 13 per cent women, and amid a huge AI skills gap companies are hiring from slim pickings.
Hybrid is the most popular working mode for AI engineers (42.2 per cent), though some 26.4 per cent of jobs with this title were available remotely.
In tandem with the rise of AI and the transition to cloud, another hot hiring area is cybersecurity. In the UK 25 jobs list, cybersecurity manager nabs the eleventh spot, while cybersecurity architect lands in fifteenth.
Cybersecurity managers oversee security compliance and monitoring inside an organisation, in addition to identifying potential security issues in goods and services. The most popular competencies for this position are vulnerability management, ISO 27001, and information security.
Cybersecurity architects design and implement security solutions for an organisation’s computer and network infrastructure, and the most commonly listed skills for these roles include: identity and access management (IAM), cloud security, and security architecture design.
It’s currently a man’s world in this sector too; 88 per cent of cybersecurity architect hires in 2023 were men, as were 69 per cent of cybersecurity managers.
Talent available in cybersecurity is sparse at the moment. So much so that companies are starting to plug the education and upskilling gap themselves, as Jeremy Broome, senior vice president of global talent at Visa, explains.
“It’s critical for organisations to invest in training and development, and work towards increasing diversity within the industry, including shifting our views on what the standard cybersecurity professional’s credentials look like.”
The multinational has created a Payments Learning Program that offers training and certification so that workers learn the necessary skills to build foundational knowledge of payments cybersecurity. Foundation and Associate courses are already available, while Advanced ones are coming soon.
Online courses in topics like data, cloud, AI and cybersecurity are plentiful, from recognised colleges and online education platforms such as Datacamp, Codecademy, Coursera, and edX, so take a look around before committing.
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