So you are looking at the job market and wondering where you go from here! The only sure thing is that the next seven years will not be like the last seven. So what do you do about developing your career in these turbulent times?

There seems to be growing consensuses among pundits that people better get used to the fact that their future careers are unlikely to be linear or for that matter upward. Old paradigms of work are changing – many of us will not go to an office or other location to work when we can do it on the web, or we may not have only one employer at a time.

So is there anything we can do to prepare for this tsunami of change headed our way? Well one thing that people can do is to develop their skills in certain key areas such as problem solving, math, and computers.

The US department of Labor identifies the following areas as the highest in potential job growth: network systems, data communications, and computer software engineering. These areas are expected to grow by about 24% by 2016. This is more than twice the growth rate in other areas.

Even if you do not have the hands-on tech skills, people with the analytical and creative problem skills will be in high demand. So start working on those skills now. For example how many people do you know can use statistical techniques to solve problems – not many I bet. So why not take a stats course and impress your friends (and your next boss) about your ability to apply correlation and regression techniques to solve his problems. You may be glad you did.

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Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present. ~ Rudy Giuliani