The 100 Best Jobs For 2013? Don’t be Surprised Where HR Ranks

When U.S. News issued its list of the 100 Best Jobs for 2013, its No. 1 criterion was hiring demand. After that came salary. Also factoring into the equation were work-life balance, stress, and the unemployment rate for individuals in each of the occupations.

Based on those factors, and a few others, dentist ranked at the top of the 100 Best Jobs list. Registered nurse was second, followed by pharmacist and computer systems analyst. Of the top 10 jobs on the list, six are in health care. The other four are in tech. (Telemarketer ranked at the bottom of the list.)

HR came in at No. 72 in the rankings, sandwiched between sales manager (71) and plumber (73).

Conveniently, U.S. News broke its entire list into six “best” categories:

HR specialist came in No. 17 on the business list, also right after sales manager and just ahead of real estate agent. It’s a little fuzzy from the description whether U.S. News means recruiters, trainers, or generalists.

Says U.S. News: “Today’s HR specialists hire and train new employees, ensuring their companies or organizations maintain credibility by recruiting the best of the best.”

Now, Wanted Technologies is taking a look each week at the number of jobs being offered in one of the categories. The firm collects job postings from tens of thousands of career sites, job boards, and elsewhere, analyzing the data and providing the analytics to thousands of customers, including The Conference Board producing its monthly Help Wanted On-Line Series.

This week, Wanted analyzed demand for the top five jobs on the best business list. In December, each of the five jobs posted no less than a 6 percent increase in the number of job listings over December 2011. Market research analysts saw a 28 percent jump in the number of postings during the month. That translates into more than 25,500 openings for research analysts online in December.

Accountant jobs topped 26,000 listings online last month, an increase of 6 percent over December 2011. Wanted says accountant positions are also the No. 1 most-advertised position among all corporate finance and accounting jobs it analyzed.

The other positions making the list are:

Personal financial adviser, with 8,000 jobs online, an 18 percent increase;
Compliance officer, 3,300 listings online; a 7 percent increase;
Bookkeeping accounting and auditing clerk, 28,000 jobs; 8 percent increase.

Wanted says it will offer job posting numbers for each of the six “best” categories over the coming weeks.