Which industry is best for my career?

Written by Dominic Moore

In recent articles, I explored the idea that Product is the new Strategy and which consulting brand leverages best to leadership roles in industry.

Now, I wanted to address another market sizing question - which industry is your best bet for career opportunities? 

By this I mean which of the major industry verticals, such as Retail & Consumer or Financial Services, will give you the largest pool of potential opportunities to explore.

Using LinkedIn data of more than 6000 people, the following results came through:

The clear winners here are Financial Services and TMT (Technology, Media and Telecoms), with 29% and 28% of all Strategy, Transformation and Corporate Development/M&A roles residing in these two sectors.  This may come as no major surprise given our Big 4 Banks, Insurance companies, Telco and Media companies have large workforces that are transforming and work within industries that are rapidly changing.

Next comes the broad Industrials sector (14%), followed by Retail and Consumer (12%), Healthcare (9%) and lastly Energy & Utilities (8%).  The surprise here might be that Retail and Consumer only has 12% of roles, given how rapidly the industry is changing and the rise of ecommerce, but this is probably just down to the fact that Australia has 2 major retailers versus 4 major banks and 3 major telco’s.

Some other numbers to point out: if you like transformation roles then the TMT sector is the place to be with 33% of these roles residing in this sector.  Furthermore, if you like Corporate Development/M&A roles then Financial Services is the place to be with 36% of these roles residing in this sector.  If you like Strategy roles, then its an even split between Financial Services and TMT, with 28% of these roles residing in each of these.

It will be interesting to see how these numbers, in total and by segment, change over time.  We will therefore come back to review this in a few years time.