Professionals looking to change jobs and pursue a better career path, might want to check out LinkedIn’s inaugural list of the “Most Promising Jobs of 2017” in the U.S. The professional social network analyzed its treasure trove of data to determine jobs with high median salaries, strong job openings with year-over-year growth, and jobs most likely to lead to career advancement.
[ Related: LinkedIn releases major website redesign ]
Workers are switching jobs at an accelerating rate and more than twice as often as their peers 20 years ago, according to LinkedIn. The top reasons for job hopping are career advancement, higher compensation and access to opportunities within the organization, according to a survey the company conducted in 2015.
[ Related: 10 top jobs by salary for social media pros in 2016 ]
LinkedIn ranked the 20 most promising jobs of 2017, determined the career advancement scores of each and looked at data from millions of member profiles to share the skills associated with each profession. These are the top 10 jobs in the U.S. this year, according to LinkedIn:
1. Hospitalist
Hospitalists earn a median base salary of $222,000 and job openings are up 87 percent year over year. Hospitalists enjoy a career advancement score of 6 out of 10, and the top skills are healthcare management, impatient care, electronic medical record, patient safety and internal medicine.
2. Pharmacist
Pharmacists earn a median base salary of $123,000 and job openings are up 45 percent year over year. Pharmacists can expect a career advancement score of 5 out of 10, and the top skills are medication therapy management, community pharmacy, patient counseling, pharmacy automation and immunization.
3. Sales engineer
Sales engineers earn a median base salary of $80,000 and job openings are up 159 percent year over year. Sales engineers enjoy a career advancement score of 6 out of 10, and the top skills are solution selling, sales management, project engineering, automation and sales engineering.
4. Site reliability engineer
Site reliability engineers earn a median base salary of $140,000 and job openings are up 93 percent year over year. Members of this profession can expect a career advancement score of 8 out of 10, and the top skills are Linux, Python, Bash, Apache and shell scripting.
5. Project managers
Project managers earn a median base salary of $97,500 and job openings are up 11 percent year over year. Project managers enjoy a career advancement score of 8 out of 10, and the top skills are product development, competitive analysis, product launch, cross-functional team leadership and marketing strategy.
6. Financial analyst
Financial analysts earn a median base salary of $64,000 and job openings are up 27 percent year over year. Financial analysts can expect a career advancement score of 8 out of 10, and the top skills are accounting, Microsoft Excel, financial modeling, variance analysis and forecasting.
7. Technical program manager
Technical program managers earn a median base salary of $129,000 and job openings are up 49 percent year over year. Members of this profession enjoy a career advancement score of 8 out of 10, and the top skills are agile methodologies, software project management, software development life cycle, Scrum and cloud computing.
8. Program manager
Program managers earn a median base salary of $97,400 and job openings are up 17 percent year over year. Project managers can expect a career advancement score of 7 out of 10, and the top skills are project management, project portfolio management, project delivery, vendor management and business process improvement.
9. Data engineer
Data engineers earn a median base salary of $105,000 and job openings are up 85 percent year over year. Data engineers enjoy a career advancement score of 8 out of 10, and the top skills are Hadoop, Python, SQL, big data and Hive.
10. Scrum master
Scrum masters earn a median base salary of $100,000 and job openings are up 104 percent year over year. Members of this profession can expect a career advancement score of 8 out of 10, and the top skills are agile methodologies, software project management, Scrum, requirements analysis and SQL.
[ Related: 4 simple LinkedIn tips to polish your profile ]
LinkedIn encourages its members to prepare for these opportunities by updating their LinkedIn profile, consider a new industry or role, learn a new skill and start searching for opportunities. The company says the job rankings were based on a weighted score across salary, career advancement, number of job openings in the U.S., year-over-year growth in job openings and widespread regional availability.
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.