While I was both an undergraduate student in business school at the University of Colorado and, later, an MBA student at the University of Denver, I heard a common mantra: Many of the jobs you will be doing in the future don’t exist yet.
Training young people, as well as the existing workforce, for new careers created by technology is a problem for schools and employers around the world.
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Exciting Opportunities and New Career Paths
I consider myself a professional blogger. The idea of a “pro blogger” arguably originated around 2004 when Darren Rowse founded a blog of the same name. At that point, I was a sophomore in college getting a degree in finance. If you had told me I would write for a living, I would have laughed at you.
Another interesting and new job that didn’t exist a decade ago is a telemedicine physician, a position with a whopping $214,315 annual salary according to a recent GOBankingRates study. Other six-figure titles include cloud architect, data scientist, AI engineer, machine learning engineer and mobile app developer.
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Outside of the six-figure tier, there are many other emerging opportunities to make a living, or even grow your income with a side hustle. Some side hustles or new jobs could even start as a hobby, just like my career as a blogger. Jobs like that include social media manager, podcast producer and content marketing manager.
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Does Your Next Job Exist Yet?
A report from Dell Technologies offers a jarring figure: 85 percent of jobs that will exist in the year 2030 don’t exist today. That means over half of us will be doing something we can’t even imagine just a decade from now.
To ensure you are ready for the future job market, you have to continually work to improve your skills and learn more about upcoming technologies and changes in your industry. You must also make your personal finances a priority so you can navigate any future career change without an added financial struggle.
Some modern careers, including those focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning, seemed like something only from a science fiction movie not long ago. We can only imagine what the future holds.
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How I Built a Job I Love That Didn’t Exist When I Went to College
I went to school for finance, earning two degrees in the subject. That led to a great start with a job as a bank manager before I moved into corporate finance and accounting for about 10 years. But when I left the job at the bank, I started on a side hustle that turned into a six-figure income.