Not a lot of surprises in the latest career trends report from Beyond.com. Healthcare and medical jobs are the largest segment represented on the 15,000 site Beyond network. They represent almost a quarter of the jobs posted to the network during the first quarter of the year. Beyond says it’s a top spot the industry sector has held for the last three quarters.
IT jobs accounted for the next largest group, but their 11 percent of the total showed the continued weakness in the sector. The job count was off on a year-over-year basis, decreasing almost 3 points from the 14 percent of jobs in the first quarter of 2008. Even so, they were up slightly from the last quarter.
By far, the largest number of jobs on the Beyond network are essentially entry-level. The report says 59.5 percent of the jobs during the quarter specified less than one year of experience. Another 22.5 percent sought 3-5 years of experience.
That’s bad news for the 68% of network candidates whose resumes show five or more years of experience. The largest increase in candidates was the 2.1 percent jump in older candidates — those with 21 or more years experience. The biggest drop was among candidates with less than a year of experience (1.62 percent).
While the percentages suggest that companies, when they hire, are looking for cheap labor, which typically means entry-level or close to it, the survey results are specific to the Beyond.com network. Big though it is (traffic is among the top 25 employment sites), Beyond.com itself is the only all-purpose site; most of the company’s job boards are regional or industry.
