The press loves nothing more than a story that supports people’s experience. It’s no surprise, then, that headlines say UK redundancies are rising at a record rate. It’s sadly true. Thousands of people are indeed losing their jobs as the Treasury’s furlough scheme tapers off uncertainly amid worrying Covid trends. But with digital jobs, is it a different story?
If you look past the obvious, you find something more interesting. While some sectors are being hit incredibly hard (travel, catering and entertainment), others are thriving. People haven’t disappeared or become inactive; they are just spending more time online. Our increasingly rich tech existence is becoming ‘the new normal’. Take online conferencing firm, Zoom. It posted a 169% rise in revenues, year-on-year, for the three months ending in April 2020.
Alongside this, the jobs market as a whole has so far been able to bounce back and we are seeing a record rise in the number of job vacancies in the three months to September. PitchMe we saw a 30% increase in new digital jobs vacancies posted in September and October compared to the previous two months.
These factors combine to create strong demand for digital jobs.
Even better, facing a worsening skills gap, we have found employers becoming more open to career-shifters, or people with transferable skills. Maybe you are looking for a job—or pondering a career shift—and thinking of adding tech roles to your job search.
If so, here are four digital jobs roles in demand on our platform right now.
If you are not immediately qualified for these jobs, don’t worry. Have a look at the free courses from our education partners that will help you on your way.
Full-Stack Developer
The “stack” referred to here is the hierarchical arrangement of programming languages used to build and/or run a web or mobile site or application. These are grouped into “front end”—the bit the user sees and including the design—and the “back end”, consisting of things like databases and other “moving parts.”
Front and back-end require different programming languages, to a large degree and a full-stack developer is one who knows enough of each group to create both ends. In practice, full-stack developers will a) probably favour either front or back-end development and b) know most front-end languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and possess a specialism in a back-end programming language such as Ruby or Python. They will also probably have web design experience.
With these skills, successful candidates can tackle databases, build user websites, and work with clients through the planning and implementation phases.
There are lots of courses online to help you strengthen either front or back-end programming languages, such as Full Stack Web Development for Beginners by Skillshare.
UX/UI designer
There is an increasing requirement among growing businesses for people who can support both the user experience (UX) and the user interface (UI).
What’s the difference? Well, while the UI guru is more focused on how a website looks, the UXpert is in charge of how something works and how users interact with it. If a digital asset were a rocket, UI would be how the components were designed and laid out, while UX would be how the resulting craft launches, flies and protects astronauts.
The person who can do both UX and UI will be able to analyse and act on research and data (UX) and practice good graphic design while understanding visual brand identity (UI).
To make a start, learn about creating an effective design system, step-by-step, with creative director Dan Mall over at Skillshare.
Digital Marketing Manager
“Digital marketing manager” is a LinkedIn top ten most in-demand job as of October 2020. As many of us are living more of our lives online, that’s no surprise.
“Businesses are relying more and more on digital marketing solutions for finding new customers, driving online traffic, building communities, enhancing customer engagement, branding and building narratives around their brands,” says Vivek Kumar Singh in India’s Tribune.
The aim of this role is either to drive traffic, brand awareness, increase leads and sales or a blend of these things. Successful candidates will have experience developing, implementing and overseeing long-term digital marketing campaigns as well as short-term advertising techniques.
Digital marketing is a broad area, and companies shouldn’t expect you to be an expert in every area of digital marketing. The ability to read and analyse web analytics to plan and measure the success of campaigns is essential, however.
Short courses like Digital Skills: Digital Marketing from FutureLearn can make help you get a feel for what’s required.
Sales Representative
It’s an age-old role which has adapted to fit the digital era. Working with marketing specialists, sales reps are now able to interpret a slew of data from email campaigns, written content and video demos in order to make sales via a customer relationship management system.
As ever, though, today’s successful sales rep is a good storyteller who can build relationships to turn cold leads into warm, and first-time users into repeat business. Commission-winning sales reps will be great communicators, helping to educate leads on how to use the product or service over a variety of platforms.
Keeping an eye on the competition is also key as well as remaining proactive in what is proven to work.
One way to adapt to the digital era is through Skillshare’s course on Excel Pivot Tables which can help upskill your data analysis ability.
These roles (and so many more!) are ideal for people looking for a new job and possessing transferable skills. And the pandemic is only creating more demand.
To find out if you could improve your job-search or if adding a couple of skills might make you a perfect fit for a tech role, sign up to PitchMe to see what your skillset looks like. You might match roles you haven’t yet considered!
This was how PitchMe user Darya transferred her skills from journalism to becoming a UX designer with no prior experience.