Post: #1

Young guy, currently in college, but I question the worth and the utility of a college degree for giving me abundant employment opportunites and financial stability.

What kind of jobs that have a low risk of employment relocation? I changed my field of study after seeing, reading and hearing dismal stories about students counting on their low-skill, lightweight liberal degrees to find work, instead they work like dogs in mcjobs to assure their survival and debt alleviation. Looked at information technology/computer science and while valuable skill and extensive knowledge can be gained for good pay, competition is fierce because of low cost imported labor. Manufacturing sector? They are the ones who suffer the most from globalization.

I want to avoid such unfruitful paths and want to secure a job, who provides a quick learning curve, good pay, and mobility.

Thanks in advance.

Post: #2

Any kind of pseudo high end sales ie real estate, B2B, art etc.

Any kind of in-person work ie personal training, therapy, etc

Post: #3

some of the best advice out there for young people right now is to start your own business
the going will obviously be tough but you cant be outsourced!

Post: #4

Starting your own business is good advice, but not always practical for everyone. Generally speaking, jobs that must be done in physical or geographical proximity to the customer. Mechanic, plumber, electrician, surgeon or physical therapist to name a few (although surgery is quickly becoming available to outsource due to advances in remote and robotic surgery) . You can actually make a decent living doing a trade (typically six figures after a few years-not bad for an electrician). For women (and sensitive men, ahem), hair stylist, nail tech, florist, dental hygienist).

My company had outsourced its buyers to India, and I had a project where I had to re-outsource those jobs from India to Serbia and Cebu-anything done at a desk can be outsourced.

Post: #5

Commercial property management. Have to whip all the contractor and employee monkeys locally

Post: #6

Trucking as an owner operator.

You can run a flatbed out of say Louisiana, work 2 weeks on/1 off (make your own schedule really). Clear an easy grand (or two) every week you work once you own your own equipment. Go fishing in the Gulf on your week off in your gigantic boat.

Post: #7

Ditto G's recommendation for high-end sales and personal services. They seem robust to both outsourcing and automation. If one day we live in some world where nearly all of the work is done by robots or third-world outsourced employees, I would think those kinds of jobs would be the last to fall.

Despite global outsourcing/offshoring, there's still alot to be said for someone who LOVES their job. If you are drawn to tech or science, then go that route! You will be able to out-compete all the mediocre international competition who are just doing it for the money, because in these fields, loving your subject enough to live and breathe it is a big factor in being brilliant at it and getting paid accordingly (see: current Google engineer salary, 15 yrs after all coding was supposed to be outsourced).

Another thought is that, well, we just dont know how industries are going to change - everything is uncertain, disruptive technology can and will sweep away jobs we never expected it to. That's why it's disruptive, lol. So everything has a level of risk, and adaptability and general business and inter-personal skills will be increasingly key. Marketing and sales are absolutely essential to learn about, even just if for marketing and selling yourself.

Anyway, the ultimate skillset is entrepreneurialism. Being able to create happy-customer-factories (businesses) that output more $$ than they eat up is the pinnacle of transferrable, robust and even anti-fragile skillsets (i.e. actually gains from market disruption). But then, it's just tough. Not tough like medicine or law or programming... just tough in that it's so easy to miss your mark and not get it right, for a million different reasons.

Post: #8

A job that requires on site presence. Specifically, I'm an engineer working on a construction of a high speed rail. Other examples could be oil fields.

Factory based engineer is at risk of factory relocation, although high level engineers usually relocate with the factory.

Post: #9

Think of it this way: if it can be process mapped then it can be off-shored or automated.

Post: #10

(07-22-2013 01:35 PM)Tangent Wrote:  Starting your own business is good advice, but not always practical for everyone. Generally speaking, jobs that must be done in physical or geographical proximity to the customer. Mechanic, plumber, electrician, surgeon or physical therapist to name a few (although surgery is quickly becoming available to outsource due to advances in remote and robotic surgery) . You can actually make a decent living doing a trade (typically six figures after a few years-not bad for an electrician). For women (and sensitive men, ahem), hair stylist, nail tech, florist, dental hygienist).

My company had outsourced its buyers to India, and I had a project where I had to re-outsource those jobs from India to Serbia and Cebu-anything done at a desk can be outsourced.

I haven't heard of many electricians making 6 figures. Maybe it depends upon where you're located, but from talking to an electrician friend of mine they top out at 70-80k in most cities.

If you're good with your hands become an FAA certified A&P (airframe and powerplant) mechanic. It's hard work with typical days not less than 10 hours but it isn't unheard of to start at 80k out of school and move up to more than 100k after a few years.

There are also ample travel opportunities. Once you have 6+ years of experience you can become an inspector and get a job in most countries that abide by FAA regulations. There are also jobs that involve travelling around the U.S. fixing busted up aircraft that pay more than the typical maintenance work.

Post: #11

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Flip the script.

Get a job that can be outsourced TO YOU.

http://www.codecademy.com

http://www.onemonthrails.com

https://www.udemy.com/building-custom-wo...m-scratch/

https://www.udemy.com/how-to-become-a-we...m-scratch/

You can learn these for cheap or free on your computer during your free time. You can start making money as a freelancer within weeks.

Don't run from globalization and tech disruption. This shift is permanent and happening so you can choose to fear it or to embrace and exploit it.

Other good skills:

-Copywriting
-Graphic Design
-SEO

Don't think about how to work in a position that can't be outsourced.

Build portable skill sets that are in sunrise industries and then become the person who is outsourcing or being outsourced to.

Program or be programmed.






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Post: #12

(07-22-2013 12:54 PM)Master Of My Own Kingdom Wrote:  Young guy, currently in college, but I question the worth and the utility of a college degree for giving me abundant employment opportunites and financial stability.

What kind of jobs that have a low risk of employment relocation? I changed my field of study after seeing, reading and hearing dismal stories about students counting on their low-skill, lightweight liberal degrees to find work, instead they work like dogs in mcjobs to assure their survival and debt alleviation. Looked at information technology/computer science and while valuable skill and extensive knowledge can be gained for good pay, competition is fierce because of low cost imported labor. Manufacturing sector? They are the ones who suffer the most from globalization.

I want to avoid such unfruitful paths and want to secure a job, who provides a quick learning curve, good pay, and mobility.

Thanks in advance.

Do not depend on your degree or university education to prepare you for the real world.

This is what I would do if I was in university again:

-Major in a language or in a business topic that would be practical

-Minimize my courseload so that I could focus and excel at the classes that I do take on

-Use my spare time to independently acquire skills off the internet that I could later use to build my own web business, such as copywriting, PHP/coding, SEO, social media marketing

------

My goal would be to graduate cum laude in a subject I enjoyed studying. That is the value in a liberal arts degree - it's for YOU not for the job market.

You need to independently develop digital or real world skills outside of the confines of university because university is the farthest thing from the world world possible.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMateri...l?mid=2334

This is a great talk called "Unlearn your MBA" by the CTO of 37signals and creator of Ruby on Rails. This will tell you everything you need to know about university in the context you are asking.

University is good for social networking opportunities and for gaining that degree. However, the financial and time costs are high.

Thus, focus on excelling in the minimum amount of courses you can take and raising your GPA.

Then use your spare time to learn new digital skill sets on the internet and using them to freelance or build small projects of your own. Many will fail but some of them will work.

--

If you are graduating very soon then you can move to Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and start paying off your student loan debt with 500-1500 USD a month or saving that money to invest in your business and picking up digital skill sets.

--

Graduating cum laude with a degree in Philosophy/Anthropology/Sociology and having an independent portfolio of websites you've done and small businesses you are running is a great package to be hired or to launch your own business.

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Separate college and career preparation in your mind. They are totally different things.

You need to set time aside daily for university studies.

Then you need to set time aside daily for independent digital skill acquisition.

This will develop you into a well-rounded learned person who also has hard technical skills that immediately add value to any company - whether it's your own or someone else's.

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Getting hired is being able to successfully answer the question:

Is the salary we pay you going to be more or less than the money that you make for us or save for us?

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Post: #13

Many major credentialed professions cannot easily be outsourced. A spinal surgeon, special ed teacher, orthodontist, social worker, tax attorney, veterinarian, psychiatrist, etc. isn't going to face direct competition from their counterparts in the Orient.

In fact, this is why the professional classes are so favorable to free trade - it only harms the plebeian masses. Behind walls of artificial professional credentials and licenses, they're protected from the free-for-all of laissez faire competition with the masses of cheap Asian, Latin American, and Eastern European professionals.

Post: #14

YMG, what exactly do you mean by copywriting?

Post: #15

(07-22-2013 11:28 PM)iWin Wrote:  YMG, what exactly do you mean by copywriting?

http://www.copyblogger.com/copywriting-101/

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/...iting.aspx

Post: #16

instead of thinking about jobs that cant leave your country, you should think about jobs that you can leave your country with.

Post: #17

Sales - especially the psychology of and systematic sales systems - think Sandler etc http://www.sandler.com/ytpage/show/728 - I have begun to participate in a new biz networking group anchored by a retired CEO of multiple fortune 1000 companies who trades for his own account now after retiring his $55M hedge fund as he now only has the pressure he puts on himself - he makes a steady 10% a day on his laser focused trading platform. He was known as the sales CEO and every company onshore offshore or outer space needs world class sales - become a channel partner to huge companies that need to reserve their inhouse sales staff for other mega corp sales... SMB sales are almost always via Channel partners - who were salesmen who revolted against dumb sales managers who limited their accounts territories or incomes.

Best of all learn to sell products and services virtually to scale far beyond face to face sales.

The "Sales CEO" has agreed to allow me to write a summary business plan regarding his trading platform techniques and raise capital to implement the plan using my own automated knowledge engines... I was going to take refresher C++, PHP and HTML5 courses but he convinced me to think like a CEO and not do it myself but hire the best and manage them.

So I listen, learn and sell and then sell again and again and again...

People like to buy from people and companies they trust - guys calling up now with heavy India accents using bogus Americanized names like John McMillan or Gary Grant or Sandra Jones and then try to hustle in a barely understandable English (Yes all three happened to me recently) immediately lose credibility by thinking Americans are too stupid to see they are lying through their teeth and thus shoot themselves in the foot and kill any trust based sales opps they might have been able to develop had they honestly used their given names.

Sleazy biz practices are that just plain sleazy - the need for ethical competent trust based trusted adviser sales reps and trusted independent channel reps has never been greater and best of all great sales reps can sell any where on the planet there are customers as every business and company small or large needs great sales reps to survive, grow and prosper as NO sales equals NO income and eventual bankruptcy.

Post: #18

Security - the more the world globalizes the more the top 20% will not only need to feel secure but actually be secure - selling Security technology, systems and services - both digital and physical is also a real growth industry as the global masses become ever more restless.

Post: #19

Nice one Deepdiver. Yeah it's pretty hard to conceive of a world where sales isn't a highly valued role even with massive automation and outsourcing. As long as western humans are buying, then companies need western humans (or human-created materials) to do the selling.

BTW, what do you mean by selling virtually? Via teleconferences, sales videos/pitches, copywriting, etc?

Post: #20

(07-26-2013 12:12 AM)Deepdiver Wrote:  Sleazy biz practices are that just plain sleazy - the need for ethical competent trust based trusted adviser sales reps and trusted independent channel reps has never been greater and best of all great sales reps can sell any where on the planet there are customers as every business and company small or large needs great sales reps to survive, grow and prosper as NO sales equals NO income and eventual bankruptcy.

Great post deepdiver! My brain got a bit confused but worked out the kinks.

So in other words, one should aspire to become an honest salesman and not another sleazy marketer?

Post: #21

Highly technical government jobs that require a security clearance won't be outsourced to India. Things like what Edward Snowden did.

Post: #22

(07-26-2013 12:21 AM)RichieP Wrote:  Nice one Deepdiver. Yeah it's pretty hard to conceive of a world where sales isn't a highly valued role even with massive automation and outsourcing. As long as western humans are buying, then companies need western humans (or human-created materials) to do the selling.

BTW, what do you mean by selling virtually? Via teleconferences, sales videos/pitches, copywriting, etc?

LOL I am building a platform to enable real people to "brand" themselves and automatically sell their products and services virtually and embed all the advanced SEO and virtual sales tech and quality Google and Bing approved content into the platform so you can focus on doing what you know and love and do best. Stay tuned...

Post: #23

(07-26-2013 12:51 AM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

(07-26-2013 12:12 AM)Deepdiver Wrote:  Sleazy biz practices are that just plain sleazy - the need for ethical competent trust based trusted adviser sales reps and trusted independent channel reps has never been greater and best of all great sales reps can sell any where on the planet there are customers as every business and company small or large needs great sales reps to survive, grow and prosper as NO sales equals NO income and eventual bankruptcy.

Great post deepdiver! My brain got a bit confused but worked out the kinks.

So in other words, one should aspire to become an honest salesman and not another sleazy marketer?

At the end of the day people buy products and or services from people they trust - "Angie's List" built an empire from that principle alone.

In the internet age being sleazy will get you massive amounts of bad publicity and put you out of business. So just be the guy you would want to buy from and do business with.