Five Of The Fastest-Growing Online Careers
Working from home requires discipline and requires a productive daily routine set in place. It can also provide the freedom of flexible working hours and a great lifestyle, especially if you don’t face a grueling commute to work and back every day like most of us!
Earning a living from an “online job” is one of the fastest growing employment types across the globe due to the availability of skilled labour in the online marketplace – allowing employers to source business requirements from virtually anyone with a PC and an internet connection. We’ve compiled a list of the five fastest-growing online jobs to provide you with an idea of what online industries are booming – and where you could potentially find a new employment opportunity!
Natural Language Processing
NLP jobs are usually concerned with the human requirement as part of the development of a machine learning program or software. The actual job titles range from “data mining specialist” to “data scientist” and if you’re new to the space, look for a role as a “natural language processing intern”. The job itself would involve mostly responsibilities such as data entry/extraction, query auto correction (finding and correcting mistakes made by the software) and collaborating with others to analyse performance. NLP roles are relatively easy to find, and often don’t require any previous experience. To make yourself a more suitable candidate, consider a short course in computer science.
Social Media Management
Social media managers are tasked with managing a person or brands online social media accounts, including platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more. In some cases the role would only involve the management of content publication (posting text, photos and videos across each of the social media platforms) but in some cases you may also be required to perform “community management” duties.
Community management would also include ownership of the two-way communication with the person or brand’s followers. You may be required to answer questions, respond to any complaints and ensure that a consistent “brand voice” is maintained across all channels. During the interview process for a “Social Media Management” role, experience will be critical to success, so make sure you become an expert on all popular social profiles and how best to use each one depending on your client’s social media goals.
Internet Research
Internet research (or online research) jobs are growing quickly, in fact they placed 8th in Freelancer.com’s study of the fastest growing skills online. The actual job requirements for an internet researcher will vary wildly between projects. In some cases it may be as simple as collecting information about a certain topic (e.g. what are the national birds for each state in America) or may require more extensive analysis.
Depending on the project, experience within a given field or with a certain tool/software may be beneficial. We recommend completing a few basic online courses in word processing, spreadsheets and search engines to maximise your chances of landing an internal research gig.
Copywriting
The internet runs on great, fresh and unique content. Most brands that have an online presence will at some point require the services of a copywriter to help them populate their websites with valuable text content. Depending on the project, copywriters may receive payment based on the number of hours completed, or based on the number of words that were written.
While a formal qualification in journalism would help open doors to copywriting opportunities, it is not critical. In lieu of any writing qualifications, you can demonstrate your writing chops through publishing your own great content on your own blog or developing a portfolio by publishing content on existing platforms in capacity as a “guest contributor”.
User Experience Analyst
Recent improvements in the number of affordable online user experience analysis and testing tools have resulted in the requirement for more “UX testers”. UX testers provide valuable feedback to web developers on their experience interacting with websites, apps and other digital products. This feedback is then sent back to digital marketing managers and developers to analyse and then use to test how making small changes to a website may improve the “conversion rate” (how likely someone is to buy a product or use a given feature).
As a UX tester, you would be asked to visit a website or app and perform a simple task, such as purchasing an item or downloading a file, while making observations about how user-friendly (or not) various elements of the website or app are. No experience is required to work as a UX tester, however with practise will come better insights.
There you have it – five great online jobs that have grown exponentially in recent years. Imagine working from the comfort of your own home while earning a great salary, without the inconvenience of daily commutes or intimidating managers. Check out some of the great options above and maybe you’ll be hiring an online employee of your own soon!
.
Main image via pixabay.