Contrary to what you expect ... these business fields have flourished in 2020 despite all the lockdown measures and bad events!
Let's admit that 2020 has not been a year of luck for job markets. Many entrepreneurs and professions were forced to close their shops and stop working for sporadically long periods of time during the year. According to the latest job market report from UK job site CV-Library, the number of vacancies in the UK decreased by 62.7% in the second quarter of 2020, according to the BBC. As for the jobs that are advertised, the competition is fierce, with the average application-to-job ratio increased by 84%.
Although many jobs were lost, some companies continued to hire nonetheless. In many areas of industries, demand increased and new job opportunities were created, such as home delivery and hygiene products. The Coronavirus has dramatically changed the market not only by reducing the number of vacancies but also by changing the nature of the opportunities available, as reported on The Guardian.
Here are 5 business areas that have blossomed in 2020 despite the coronavirus crisis.
1. Pharmacies
If there is one lesson that 2020 taught us it is that health is more of a priority than ever before. As the Corona pandemic spreads and people try to immunize themselves and stock up on nutritional supplements, cold medicines, vitamins and minerals, pharmacies may be the farthest from closing their doors. In fact, health awareness has sent pharmacies and health companies into a new wave of economic recovery.
2. Telework programs
Over the past five years, remote work has increased by 44%. Given that many countries were trying to adhere to social distancing and trying to implement home work laws during 2020, companies have completely moved to telecommuting. In order to successfully enforce a telecommuting culture, employees need wider access through video conferencing, online meetings, and mobile chat.
One remote work application company that shined in 2020 is Zoom, which has opened up different areas of employment in almost all of their teams including technical support, engineering, finance and customer service.
During 2020 Slack added hundreds of jobs on the accounting, customer service and sales teams.
3. Technical support
The closing of physical call centers and operating centers has left companies in need of agents to continue receiving customer calls and technical support, especially with the increase in remote work. Because they work from home, more people need support in setting up and pairing devices or troubleshooting devices. Let's be honest, not all of us are proficient at using our smart devices!
An example of a site that provides technical support is Support.com, which announced in 2020 that it has appointed an unlimited number of remote support agent roles. These functions will help fulfill the demand for technical support and call center support.
4. Delivery and distribution services
Since the start of the lockdown in March, we have all started shopping a lot of products online, which has led to an increase in the number of people hired in this sector.
For example, the online giant Amazon has created 15,000 new jobs in warehouses and delivery drivers full-time and part-time across the UK at order fulfillment centers where orders are processed, and in its logistics network.
So is the delivery company Hermes, which has created around 10,500 jobs, and is looking to hire 1,500 full-time employees across its delivery network and head office, and 9,000 freelance email couriers.
In Turkey, sites such as Getir also appeared, which provides home delivery services for most needs, including food, groceries and ready meals. Also, various shopping sites such as Trendyol and Yemek Sepeti added a new section in it, which it called a "fast supermarket", which sells and delivers all kinds of grocery products, achieving huge profits because of people sticking to their homes and shopping them online.
Trainers and supervisors
With the onset of the Corona pandemic, we saw two major trends moving in opposite directions: the employment rate was falling, but the learning rate was climbing; The demand for training supervisors increased by 183% during the last months of 2020.
The reason for this may be simple, for many companies that cannot afford to hire outside talent as they did before the pandemic to do various jobs, improving employee skills and recruiting from within can help them meet their needs while reducing layoffs.
This is in line with a recent survey of talented professionals that showed that nearly 50% expect their hiring budgets to be cut due to the coronavirus pandemic, but 66% expect their learning and development budget to increase or remain the same.