Jobs with Short History, Long Prospects

There is no shortage of "hot jobs" lists at this time of year. Forbes, however, went a little beyond by identifying 10 prime positions that didn’t even exist a decade ago. A few highlights from its story:

Industries on the rise offer something uniquely appealing to 20-somethings graduating from college and looking for jobs: the opportunity to seize brand new positions where competition has not reached critical mass. Jobs that did not exist a decade ago include app developer; market research data miner; educational or admission consultant; millennial generational expert; social media manager; chief listening officer; cloud computing services professional; sustainability expert; and user experience designer.

App devloper

The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the Android shortly after. Since then, more than a million apps have been put up for sale in Apples App Store and Android’s Google Play. Consider this: in 2011, Apple pulled in more than $15 billion in revenues from mobile applications, which shrink  programs that used to run only on desktop computers to make them work on mobile devices.

As demand surges for apps to run on iOS, Android and whatever operating system is waiting in the wings, companies are faced with a dearth of talent with the skills to develop for mobile. This means fresh opportunity for programmers and developers to break into a booming market. Currently more than 16,000 listings for mobile app developers are listed on job site indeed.com.

Market research data miner

As customer information becomes more and more vital to the retail experience, businesses are compiling data in droves—and hiring experts to make sense of it. From different datasets including structured (transaction), semi-structured (user behavior) and unstructured (text) information, data analysts and scientists look for behavioral patterns to help retailers and businesses predict future trends or to build recommendation engines or personalized advertising.

Educational/admission consultant

When a certain set of affluent parents watch their toddler stack his or her first set of blocks, they’re not lost in a moment of cute, they’re strategizing their child’s likeliness of getting into the right pre-school. These moms and dads will stop at nothing to secure the best education for their kids—which for many includes hiring an educational or admissions consultant to help ease the process of interviewing and testing into schools from preschool to college. Admissions consultants can be paid thousands of dollars for their skills—which often include personal connections with school administrators.