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5 Critical Skills Needed to get an Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics Job in America

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America has a shortage of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals. As the economy continues to recover, companies will need technical professionals who have well rounded skills and the ability to produce results. If you are looking to get hired early in the American economy’s upswing, it is vitally important that your resume showcases your achievements,  ]experience and skills in at least three of the following five skill areas:

  1. The ability to create and manage business relationships: In America, money follows relationships. Top technical professionals use their expertise and interpersonal skills to create beneficial relationships with the clients, stakeholders and sponsors of a project. While they may not always be the key person in the sales relationship, their ability to communicate technical information in layman’s terms and management of expectations will play a critical role in delivering a successful and profitable product, service or solution.
  2. Strong Technical skills: A top technical professional understands the basic and advanced technical skills of their profession and can execute them in a corporate setting even as an entrepreneur or freelancer if necessary. There is a market for freelancers in any economic situation.
  3. Financial Management: A top technical professionals understands the financial objectives of their managers, clients and stakeholders. They know how to manage budgets and can present their ideas using Return on Investment (ROI), Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and other financial calculations. This skill will be important since investors will be cautious about their investments.
  4. Management: Managing people, processes and policy takes leadership, empathy, adaptability and diplomacy. A top technical professional is concerned with  recruiting and mentoring talented employees; efficiently using resources and ethical business practices while maintaining profitability. In their eyes, the quality of the people, project, product or service under their charge is a statement of their character and company.
  5. Strategic Leadership: Top technical professionals anticipate new markets, types of customer needs and new applications for their product or service. For them, it is not enough to build the solution for today’s problem but to develop the next generation of upgrades, patches and innovations before the market moves.

One of the biggest issues in the current STEM job market is the “Skills Gap” where unemployed job seekers do not possess the necessary education and skills for the available jobs.  Once job seekers acquire the education and skills, they should make sure they continually take classes to keep their skills up to date.

Further Reading

 4 Ways Job Seekers Can “Skill Up” In the Post Recession Economy

Top 17 Key Job Skills Employers Want In 2012

Hinton Human Capital Careers

 

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The Federal Employment Crisis: Apply For Your Job Now

Many of us have seen the trouble the Obama administration has had filling key government posts. Qualified candidates have had to withdraw their names because of past mistakes which came out in the vetting process. We are also learning that the fraud scandals on Wall Street were partially caused by the inadequate number of staff at the regulatory agencies. Now I am here to alert job seekers to new opportunities which will be exacerbated by the stimulus package.

It has been widely documented that the federal government is experiencing a staffing shortage and all agencies of government are critically affected. In a year 2000 report, “Report to the President: The Human Capital Crisis” Senator George Voinovich pointed out that:

“In 2004 over 50 percent of 1.8 million federal employees will be eligible for retirement” and “at the 2004 retirement rate, in 2010 over 660,000 employees will have retired.”

A March 2001 hearing called “The National Security Implications of the Human Capital Crisis”explored the ramfications of employees losses in the DOD and other national security related agencies and concluded that :

“The amount of knowledge and experience that is literally going to walk out the door by the end of the decade is unquantifiable. Perhaps even more concerning, government service is no longer a career path of choice for young Americans for a variety of reasons. There is no government wide plan to reshape our workforce so that it can respond to the problems of today and the challenges of tomorrow”

 The federal government will need to hire large number of people to keep pace with its losses and to be able to manage the money from the stimulus package. If the government does not hire appropriate numbers of people, it is possible for the stimulus money to become bottle necked.

 We believe that the federal government will have some great job opportunities in the coming months. Don’t you think it is time to consider a government career?