2.2 STEM occupations and skills

In a recent government report (UK Commission for Employment and Skills, 2015), 38 high level STEM occupations were considered critical and likely to be areas of increased recruitment. Table 1 lists these occupations.

Table 1 Critical STEM occupations for recruitment

Rank	Occupation
1	Programmers and software development professionals
2	Production managers and directors in manufacturing
3	IT specialist managers
4	Information technology and telecommunications professionals (not elsewhere classified)
5	Engineering professionals (not elsewhere classified)
6	Mechanical engineers
7	IT business analysts, architects and systems designers
8	Design and development engineers
9	Civil engineers
10	IT project and programme managers
11	Electrical engineers
12	Production and process engineers
13	Electronics engineers
14	Information technology and telecommunications directors
15	Quality assurance and regulatory professionals
16	Web design and development professionals
17	Engineering technicians
18	Biological scientists and biochemists
19	Health and safety officers
20	Research and development managers
21	Quality control and planning engineers
22	Electrical and electronics technicians
23	Natural and social science professionals (not elsewhere classified)
24	Waste disposal and environmental services managers
25	Building and civil engineering technicians
26	Planning, process and production technicians
27	Laboratory technicians
28	Production managers and directors in mining and energy
29	Environment professionals
30	Science, engineering and production technicians (not elsewhere classified)
31	Environmental health professionals
32	Quality assurance technicians
33	Physical scientists
34	IT operations technicians
35	Chemical scientists
36	IT user support technicians
37	Conservation professionals
38	IT engineers

(Adapted from UK Commission for Employment and Skills, 2015)

Activity 3 Thinking about your skills

Allow about 30 minutes

Using Table 1 as a prompt, draw a spider diagram (sometimes called a mind map) of your skills and experience matching them to the kinds of jobs that are likely to be available in your field. Also note where you think you might need additional training if you were going to enter this area of work.

Figure 4 Spider diagram

You can draw your diagram by hand or using a mind-mapping tool such as FreeView that is free to download and use.

You’ve researched different areas of growth in STEM employment and thought about which areas are likely to match your skills. You might also want to consider going to further study or training to update your skills and knowledge.

◄Contents►Next: 2.3 Update your skills or study for another qualification

OpenLearn - Returning to STEM
ou logo Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.