You may not have to dramatically rework your skill set to be useful for the Next Big Thing.
You might be among the top in your field, riding your career track like a runaway locomotive. But what if the demand for your work dries up? You'll need to switch your specialties, and pretty quickly, if you want to continue running full steam ahead. But the fear of retooling your skill set doesn't have to derail you.
Those who spent the last couple of years rewriting code, assessing networks,and testing remediated apps to combat the Y2K glitch, are finding themselves in need of moving on to the next occupational hot spot. So it's likely that many programmers and COBOL developers are wondering what their next job will be, and what they may need to do to catch up on Internet and advanced technologies.
There's no need to panic, say career specialists, since consultants and independents who have been slaving away at Y2K have time to figure out that next career step. In fact, for those who've grabbed project experience these past few years, job options are pretty rosy, according to industry reports.
Ride on into the next town
It's not that there isn't enough Y2K work still to be done. The shift away from Y2K is a business strategy based on economics and client needs - and the firm has plenty of company when it comes to transitioning its offerings.
Recent research from Forrester indicates that service providers are redirecting Y2K armies to ecommerce work for a slew of reasons - avoiding late, high risk Y2K projects; recouping heavy costs in Y2K tool sets, and the receiving the potential windfalls of the ecommerce movement, which is predicted to grow 71 percent annually.
And while COBOL developers can't turn into Java experts overnight, Y2K project managers face a much easier transition to the ecommerce workload by retooling skill sets.
Many Y2K portfolios offer analysis and conversion program test lab experience, and experience in "clean room" data center operations – experience that can easily transfer to conversion testing on specialized projects, such as the euro currency change, states Forrester's report, "Year 2000 Consultants Try To Do Ecommerce," released late last summer.
Stars on the map
Forrester's findings are in sync with the annual "Hot & Not" job list from Christian & Timbers. Ecommerce tech jobs were actually prominent on the 1999 list - seven of the top 10 overall hot jobs were IT-related. The role of ecommerce CFO, for instance, not only landed first for the technology industry, but took first place overall.
The "List of Hot Executive Jobs" profiles the top occupations, and the not-so-hot jobs for several industry segments, including consumer products, energy, financial services, technology, life sciences, and professional services.
In the financial services arena, euro-related risk management placed second for 1999.
"Euro risk managers do not abound, and any firm with a presence on the continent is on the hunt for one of only a few good men and women who have the capability to make this work," states the report. The study says the risk management job demand is akin to "finding an executive with past Internet experience in 1995."
Not the only game in town
Yet, not every independent or Y2K consultant has to even consider moving into ecommerce slots, says one IT recruiter. A big benefit of the Y2K scare is that many companies now realise the importance and value of knowledgeable consultants and want to keep a close tie with programming and mainframe experts down the road.
"There is no need for these professionals to panic. Remember, not too many schools are graduating mainframe specialists these days - or programmers - and the need for these workers is still strong," says Ken Gross, president of Data Search Network, an IS search firm.
While Gross recommends that independents continually learn new technologies and keep up with advancements, he believes there will always be mainframe work since so many big corporate entities are committed to the operating system.
"Y2K opened up lots of opportunity for older and even retired programmers and developers, and I don't see the Y2K issues going away next year or even the year after. Sometime during that timeframe, it would be a good idea to start considering possible job avenues, and needed training, if they haven't hooked up with a permanent position," Gross says.
Even Christian & Timbers acknowledges that Y2K work isn't going to die out anytime soon.
"These issues ... will continue to affect business well into the beginning of the next century," says Paul Brown, a Christian & Timbers consultant in the Professional Service Practice.
That spells an encouraging employment forecast for Y2K gurus in the next century.
