Updated April 27, 2023
Trends for Job Seekers In 2022 – As we bid farewell to the great year 2020, the fantastic year 2022 lies ahead of us to make our professional lives count. 2022 is a blank slate waiting for us to rediscover ourselves, challenge our comfort zones, and make our mark. But how will you do that if you still determine what changes might occur in 2022, especially in the job market?
You may be the one who’s about to finish high school or the one who’s thinking of changing the job in 2022, or you’re planning to transition your career from an employee to a self-employed business owner. Irrespective of your plans for 2022, you need to pay heed to a few important things.
This article will discuss five trends for job seekers that are expected to happen despite your plans for the following year. Before that, we will briefly discuss the foundation of these trends so that things get easier for you to understand.
Attention Job Seekers !!
Why do you need to pay attention to upcoming trends in 2022?
Things have changed, better to say, transmuted in the last hundred years. For example, in the 1900s, people were hired to do assembly work. Back then, the individuals who were good at punching cards were good employees. They used to be experts at small things, and the concept of division of labor was popular.
But now those skills aren’t skills anymore – punching cards, attaching bolts to the machines, lining in the assemblies to do just one small part of the whole manufacturing are gradually becoming obsolete because robots and electrical machines now do those things!
Hundred years back, after completing their studies, people used to get a job and be happy doing it for their entire lives. But now, golden handshakes are being replaced by start-ups. People with education, knowledge, and technology are building their utopia without the help of anyone.
So, the only thing that changed is one word – “technology”- which changed the entire concept of jobs. Technology and the availability of information divided society into two equal parts, deleting the community’s middle class. The upper part consists of the ones who are educated, tech-savvy, creative, and ready to take risks. They’re the ones who are becoming solopreneurs or business owners of start-ups. The lower part includes the people still trying new jobs, not using technology to benefit, and not learning. They’re busy complaining about the changing dynamism of society and how bleak the chances are of getting jobs.
We can draw a distinct line between these two groups of job seekers. The first group is not job seekers; instead, they’re creating more and more opportunities for themselves and the people in the next group. And the next group is not getting jobs because they need to embrace the dynamism of the economy and technology and not learn what they should know.
Things are changing super fast. To have a grip on our time, you should know the warning signs ahead of you if you don’t take immediate action.
With that foundation in mind, let’s look at the top 5 trends for job seekers (job-makers) in 2022 so that more and more people can join society’s first (upper) group created by the community.
1. 2022 Will Be a Year of Linchpins
If you’ve heard the term “linchpin” for the first time, let us give you a brief background. Linchpins deliver excellence, the individuals who are at the top rung and are usually called the best. Marketing guru Seth Godin popularized the tour by writing a book of the same name. Seth explains – When you’re suffering from a disease and looking for a doctor? What sort of doctor you’ll look for? The best one! No one would pay heed to an average doctor or do just okay. So, if you’re not the best in your field, you will be left out in 2022.
This year would be the year of linchpins, people who put their heart, soul, and might into delivering excellence in offering products, services, and skills to customers and employers. So, if you fall under this category of job seekers, you better polish your skills, hone your knowledge and learn as much as possible. Because with the aid of technology, more people are getting better informed, better skilled, and better employees! Average and mediocrity are the acts of the past now.
But you have a chance. You can decide to be a linchpin by knowing your industry and working hard on your skills. Recruiters and companies are only looking for the best of the best. Thus there is no existence of average. Either you’re best or you’re worst. Do you need to decide which side you’re on?
2. More Jobs Would be Replaceable
What makes a job valuable? If you ask yourselves this question, you will realize that the job is less helpful than the people doing them. Jobs become valuable because people do them so effectively that no one can emulate them. And the more valuable a person would be in their position, the more challenging it would be to replace them.
But what if you fall under job seekers that anyone can do with minimum skill, education, or efficiency? It would simply be replaceable. Once your overhead cost becomes high to the employer, he would replace you with someone else whose cost (read salary) would be lesser than you. So if you’re looking for such jobs, think again.
Moreover, only some jobs are quickly becoming technology-centric. The business owners are still waiting to hire someone to count the cash when there is a machine. And guess what, the device is much cheaper than the human!
So what options are you left with in 2022 while searching for jobs?
Become more valuable.
If you only know how to do the accounts, learn the new software running in most companies. Then, go further and try to understand how you can reduce the cost of business and help the owner make more profit. That way, he will love to keep you.
Better yet, if you have the resources, start moonlighting. Have a job that pays your bill. Additionally, do something part-time that you can do, eventually making you more efficient in earning a full-time income. Once you can earn full-time with your freelance gig, leave the employee life behind.
Don’t tell me it’s impossible! With the aid of technology now, you can start something part-time. Just keep on looking for good opportunities.
3. University & School Education will Gradually Become Obsolete
The Internet has come to us as a boon. If this sounds silly, go to YouTube and type in the search box about anything you want to learn. You will get at least a hundred videos; if you need help finding the information, you’ll know where to find the information. We have so much information these days that school education has become redundant. Moreover, if you enroll in any school, you must pay fees; but you need your time, effort, notebook, and willingness to finish something with the Internet.
Thus the approach for job seekers has been changing. The candidates are becoming more knowledgeable, more tech-savvy, and more skillful.
Ask Scott Young, a mid-20 guy who completed the entire MIT Computer Engineering course in 1 year without enrolling in MIT. If you’re new to this, you must change your outlook.
At MIT, this course takes four years to complete. So Scott took things into his own hands. He knew it would be hard. But its cost was only $2000. So he bought a few textbooks and watched the videos of the lectures given by MIT professors, which are free to download from the MIT website.
What would happen if you took this kind of challenge? How would it help job seekers in 2022?
The answer is obvious. You will rock. In 2022, skills will be more important than the name of the schools you will get through. Do people imagine how come someone receives a salary of a million dollars for a year in a company? Simply because they are more valuable than the rest of us! They would generate a billion-dollar profit for the company. So the company would pay them a million without any question.
In job seeker 2022, your school’s name won’t matter much, but your skills will. Are you ready?
4. Recruitment would be based more on Data than Qualitative Assumption
Human resource is an area where most things are intangible. It was challenging to measure the performance and motivation level of the people working in the organization, the efficiency level in a ven project, and how much effort they put into getting things done. But as human resources evolved and reached a strategic outlook, data has measured everything.
Indeed with data analytics from end-to-end recruitment, understanding an employee’s motivational quotient becomes much more accessible.
In 2022, recruitment primarily would be based on data. Meaning the better your records look, the better your chances of selection. You’re in great danger if you’re among those who hop jobs every 2-3 months.
What’s the solution?
It would help if you also become more data-driven.
You must pull out things you can present to prove your efficiency in the job you’re applying for. It would help if you spent more time preparing yourself for the job than usual. In 2022, even experienced employees would only handle issues if they’re at par with the industrial demands and constantly learning new business rules.
A job and its contents have been changing every year and so drastically that if an employee holding the position needs to make an effort to upgrade themself, it would be their time to get replaced by someone better and more skillful. And that can happen just in a year or less time.
The best way to start being data-driven is to track your learning and growth while in a job. Check to ensure the tracking is not dependent on speculation or qualitative input but rather something you can measure and improve upon. Someone said so well – what gets measured gets improved.
Recruitment will get measured at all levels, and naturally, the processes and techniques of screening will also improve.
5. Millennials will take over Jobs Across Industries
This is a fantastic time of opportunity. Thus, more and more young people are taking the reigns of the companies in the world economy. Pick India. In 2020, India’s average population would be under 29 years, whereas China’s average age would be 37, and Japan’s average would be 48. In India, 2022 would be entirely the year of Millenials.
According to research done by Upwork, it is evident that 30% of employees worldwide are millennials. And not only that, millennials are now in top positions in many companies. So when are millennials asked what they prefer most before choosing a company? Their answer was classing. They said their work matters and want to work with companies with a sense of purpose rather than companies whose sole goal is profit-making.
Most of the job seekers in 2022 will probably be millennials. But if you need to learn what millennials are all about, here’s the brief. Millennials are the Gen Y born between the early 1980s and 2000s.
The job seekers market is yours now if you’re among millennials. So be ready to take over.
The trends we mentioned above are just the outlook for the future. But they’re still determining. Things may change; opportunity may explode into something we can never imagine immediately. But one thing would never change in this age; it’s disruption. Every tech company creates new jobs yearly, offering new roles, making new positions, and facing new challenges. So job seekers must open their eyes and ears and learn whatever they can. A glorious future awaits you if you’re willing to tap the opportunity.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to Trend job seekers. Here we discuss the introduction and top 5 job seekers (job-makers) trends. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more.
