Careers Guest Speaker: Niamh Kelly

On Thursday 6^th February we welcomed guest speaker Ms Niamh Kelly, Director of HR Dept Shropshire. Ms Kelly who is an award winning human resources director gave a talk to students from Year 9 about career opportunities. The talk focussed mainly on job trends; students were asked to guess what they thought the top 3 careers were from recent years gone by, before being asked what they thought the top 3 careers would be in the year 2049. The discussion highlighted to the students how Artificial Intelligence is becoming a more prominent feature of the job market. Ms Kelly explained as an example, that in the past a human would have called customers to remind them of an appointment and nowadays computers are programmed to be able to send a recorded message. She shared that in the year 2049 the top 4 predicted jobs would be:

1) A Neuro-Implant Technician – this is a role which combines both elements of science and programming.

2) Health Care/End of life planners – due to increased life expectancy and improved healthcare we have a growing ageing population.

3) Professional Tribers – another term for project managers.

4) Urban Farmers – with the increase in population, it is predicted that there will be a greater strain on the worlds resources and as a result we will begin to use land within urban areas to try and increase food production.

We would like to thank Ms Kelly for visiting school and sharing her expertise in a very informative talk. The presentation really got the students thinking; these future trends may be something worth taking into consideration when exploring their future careers.