Research Report: Top 25 Most Wanted Personal Brands of 2008

Most Wanted Personal Brand

I’ve spoken about how there is an economic recession and how there were 70,000 job cuts in January, which is the most since March of 2003. Well, I have good news for the personal brands that are in demand by companies.

Jobfox has released their “Top 25 Most Wanted U.S. Professions” listing, and was nice enough to send it to me first. The winners are: software development, nursing, sales and accounting. This didn’t surprise me even for a second. I didn’t have much knowledge about nursing being a hot topic, but accounting majors have always been in demand and software is really big now for tech companies (growing market).

Robert McGovern, CEO of Jobfox, responds:

“These are professions that are thriving and will continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future. While hiring activity is reportedly slow in some industry sectors – construction and manufacturing, for example – companies continue to go after a host of high-impact professions requiring degrees or specialized skills. The best time for professionals to uncover great opportunities is when they don’t have to look. Once you’re in a position where you have to find a new job, you are no longer in the driver’s seat. When you are forced to taking a new job because you have to, it can be real damaging to long-term career goals.”

The top 10 most active professions Thumbs Up Personal Branding

Software Design/Development
Nursing
Accounting/Finance Executives
Sales/Business Representative
Administrative Assistant
Corporate Finance
Networking/System Administration
Intelligence
General Accounting
Technical Customer Support

The climate for hiring remains steady overall, according to more than a 100 corporate recruiters:

43% of corporate recruiters say staff levels at their organizations will significantly or slightly increase during 2008.
19% say staffing levels will remain about the same.
21% say staffing levels will significantly or slightly decrease.
17% are unsure if staffing levels will increase, decrease or remain the same during 2008.

[Update] 30 fastest growing occupations for the year 2016 (Boston Globe)

This list was made possible by The US Bureau of Labor and their projections of the fasting growing career occupations. The total number of people employed in the US will have increased by 10% (15.6 million) between 2006 and 2016.