Jobs and the Future of Work

The 10 industries most open to hiring candidates making career changes

Drake Baer
Reporter, Business Insider

Americans change their jobs every five years.

The research suggests that changing industries is super difficult, since hiring managers want candidates with specialized backgrounds.

But not every industry is the same, as new LinkedIn data indicates.

The professional network tracked every user who added a new position to their profile from January 1 to December 31, 2014, and identified the users whose new gigs were in a new industry.

Here are the industries with the greatest number of migrants:

top 10 industries hiring outside their industryLinkedIn

The results say a lot about the fields that are pulling talent from everywhere else.

“The internet industry is comprised of much more than just people with technical backgrounds,” writes LinkedIn operations analytics manager Andrew Kritzer. “While an integral part of any internet company is recruiting top engineering talent, our data shows an influx of brand specialists arriving from Retail and business development/strategy professionals arriving from Management Consulting.”

The other talent-attracting industry is venture capital, which provides a ready takeaway: If you’re switching careers, consider working for internet companies or funding the people that do.

This article is published in collaboration with Business Insider. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Drake Baer reports on strategy, leadership, and organizational psychology at Business Insider.

Image: A Japanese new graduate speaks with a counsellor. JAPAN-GENERATION/ REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao 

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