By looking at 2.7 million job ads published by employers, The Foundation of Young Australians identified 1000 different occupations in the Australian workforce, which can be grouped into seven new job clusters based on similarities in the skills required to do these jobs. The seven job clusters and the types of job skills they require are:
The Generators: Require high levels of interpersonal interaction, such as customer service roles in retail, hospitality, and entertainment.
The Artisans: Require skill in hands-on, manual tasks such as those related to construction, production, maintenance or technical customer service.
The Designers: Require good problem-solving skills and deploying skills as well as knowledge of science and maths to design, construct or engineer buildings or products.
The Coordinators: Require good organisational and customer service skills and involve process-oriented, repetitive administrative and behind-the-scenes tasks.
The Informers: Require good interaction and problem-solving skills, involved in imparting information, business services or education.
The Technologists: Require skilled understanding of how to manipulate digital technology.
The Carers: Require good interaction, problem solving and organisational skills, involved in improving the mental or physical health and wellbeing of others.
This research shows that when you change careers, you’re not necessarily starting from scratch. That’s because you don’t need to acquire completely new skill sets to move within jobs or careers within a cluster, as the skills you develop in one job are portable to another, and many of the skills demanded by employers are similar within a cluster. According to this research, when you train or work in one job, you develop skills that can be applied (on average) in 13 other jobs (The Foundation of Young Australians, 2017).
While you may lack industry-specific knowledge of the career you want to move into, you will already have developed strong transferable skills that will give you a jump start into your new career, as opposed to someone just entering the workforce for the first time. Likewise, you will probably have already developed a strong network who may know of people who can help get you in the door at your next place of work.
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