What Jobs Will Be in Demand After Corona Pandemic

There are many discussions currently about the future of work following the corona pandemic with a period of economic turmoil and predicted a global recession. The digital economy, working remotely,  virtual offices, and gig workers’ rights,  are inevitably going to feature more in everybody’s life, but which are the fields that will want to invest in human resources this year, coming years and beyond? How can you prepare for the new domains of demand? Where will the opportunities be? And what skills will they require?

It has been painful to watch the tourism, travel, hospitality, and retailing sectors collapsing during the pandemic’s initial weeks. As the first victims, they may also be the first to recover in a post-corona world, where people are desperate to return to a more secure life. However, we may all be more conservative and cautious about our entertainment and travel choices until bank balances and confidence recover, which may take some time.

So, What Jobs Will Be in Demand After COVID-19? Here are a few jobs to start you thinking.

In the Health Sector

Never in the past have you relied so much on those in the front line of this crisis fight, and if lessons are to be learned, we can reasonably expect focus and investment on jobs in this field in the future.

  • Public sector roles, not just clinicians and nurses, but carers, pharmacists, health trust managers, and professional service roles, including finance, procurement, recruitment, and training within the NHS and demand management.
  • Research and management, health policy,  roles in government at national, regional, and international levels.
  • Digital health analysts including infection tracing specialists and data scientists.
  • Emergency services roles from the police to front line paramedics, with a need for strategists, leaders, planners, and crisis managers,  to ensure these services can respond in any future emergency.
  • Researchers and Scientists, including microbiologists and virologists  – in research and academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and private laboratories.

In the Supply and Demand Sector

You must have realized just how critical the effective, speedy supply of materials and goods is. Supply chains are often complicated and long, with many potential choke points and critical hubs, made even more difficult by cross border restrictions and regulatory red tape, so we need some sharp minds to better organize and simplify our supply of essential products from medical equipment to food.

Supply chain roles include analysts, planners, and technology specialists who can connect hitherto unconnected parts of the supply chain to offer a slick, responsive operation that can be dialed down or up depending on the requirement.

Logistics roles cover warehousing, fulfillment,  transport, and delivery management.  We are very reliant on organizations’ ability to transport goods from source to customer and how they must need the very best productivity, distribution, and analysts and data managers to be successful. 

In Politics and Government

Program and project management roles are crucial to the delivery of governments’ commitments, e.g., how to produce sufficient medical equipment to distribute within a short space of time or how to organize 900,000 volunteers into a productive, well-coordinated,  task force.

  • Disaster and crisis response roles, including the implementation and mobilization of specialist teams in a world where speed is crucial, and indecisiveness is the precursor to disaster.
  • Risk assessment and management roles cover financial, political,  and environmental as well as societal risks.
  • Government advisors to solve the health and economic challenges with labor market policies to meet the demand for new services and products that will require new skills, new jobs, and new approaches to education.

In the Manufacturing Sector

To create more national resilience, there may well be a renewed stress on local production capability for everything now viewed as essential, from Drink and Food to Pharmaceuticals. Organizations in the  Fast Moving Consumer Goods sector (FMCG) will doubtless be keen to secure new talent to support their sales, their production capability and marketing expertise, and their back-office functions such as human resources, finance, procurement, etc.

Green business or energy and especially renewable business roles may emerge to capitalize on the evidence of how the environment has benefitted from a decrease in pollutants caused by “pre-pandemic living standards.”  Meanwhile, “self-isolation” and “social distancing,” as new words in our vocabulary, have forced everyone to think about the need to be less reliant on others.

This has led to a rejuvenated focus in a more self-sustaining approach to the way we live our lives. Run this forward and demand for products that enable us to produce our food, generate our energy, create our leisure activities, manage our health, and so on in a domestic setting will likely boom.

In the Education Sector

There has been a quick transformation in the way learning and assessment occur with universities, schools, and education establishments, responding with lightning speed to the demand for collaborative educational tools, for distance learning,  and qualification verification following years or months of study. This appears to be working brilliantly and can provide the impetus for a different approach to pedagogy, which will, in turn, require a new set of skills for teachers and new roles for those offering the learning infrastructure.

Read: Best Online Jobs For College Students

In the Financial Services Sector 

Economists will be in high demand to provide direction to research institutes, government, businesses, and banks, as countries seek to resurrect their economies. But will organizations be able to afford the consultancy fees or think tanks that characterize the pre-corona economy?

In finance and banking, there will be multiple problems to solve, but there is also likely to be a more cautionary approach to large graduate intake programs.

In the Technology Sector

Without technology, individuals and organizations would have struggled to survive the social separation that COVID-19 normalized. In the future, communication, collaboration tools,  information, entertainment, data, and the multitude of other services provided by technology are becoming even more critical to the economy and society. Careers in technology will likely flourish in response.

Read: Top 8 In-Demand Technology Skills To Learn In 2020

Summary

So which additional skills will be most sought after for these roles?

  • Program and project management – the ability to make things happen and deliver results
  • Strategic leadership – the ability to see the big picture, understand the complexity, make connections, and make brave decisions.
  • Entrepreneurial and innovative mindset – to provide solutions that are needed to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems
  • Communication skills – the ability to find the right balance when providing information that is relevant and true  
  • Languages – to enable collaboration and connection on the global stage