While every function in a business is important, and every functional area has their own relevance, there are positions and functional specialties, which are typically “hot” in almost all organizations. These areas may seem nothing different for other stuff that you do when you join a company from a b school, but within a few years of joining you start seeing the difference, your friends who accidently landed up in one of these areas – start growing at a faster pace and start making more money and they also start getting valued higher in other organizations.
These areas may be considered hot considering the lack of quality talent available and lack of good experience available in the area. To leverage the value that can be derived by most of these areas it makes sense to start early. If you are in the first few years of your career or in mid career looking for a shift, do your best to get yourself moved in one of these roles.
Corporate Level:
- Strategy
- M&A
- CEOs Office
Areas in HR:
- Compensation & Benefits
- Talent Management
- e HR Deployment
Areas in Finance
- Treasury & Investments
- Financial Planning & Analysis
Areas in Technology
- Product Development
- Engineering, R&D
- Research
Marketing
- Branding
- Product Management
Positives:
Most of the above functional disciplines / roles which may possibly have a better growth prospects for fresh MBA’s and management professionals.
You would notice that most of these jobs are SME (Subject Matter Expert) kind of jobs, jobs which are more on thinking and less on operations. These roles gives you a strong foundation for consulting role in future.
Limitations & concerns for Jobs in above areas:
Big limitation with this kind of jobs is that they are extremely fewer in number, and thereby the opportunity for growth starts ceasing to exist once you keep on moving to higher levels. You may get amazing growth starting your 3rd year of experience to your 10th year, but then the story may stop. If you have not adequately planned and upgraded yourself to be able to pitch in to some limited slots for senior level positions, you may find yourself doing the same kind of work for next many years.
Another limitation – Not all companies have positions for these kind of jobs, at least as of now. But we can interpret this as a good news also, since there may be many companies which may start building some internal teams around the above mentioned areas.