What careers can the broadband sector offer young people?
There are many broadband careers on offer, and some should be immune to encroachment from AI.
Youth is wasted on the young.
Our teenage years are among the most responsibility-free and self-indulgent periods of anyone’s life, second only to retirement.
Nonetheless, from an early age, young people are under pressure to identify the type of career they’d like to pursue.
This tends to influence their choice of secondary school exams, further education courses, voluntary or vocational activities, and the first jobs they apply for on a full-time basis.
Yet expecting a child to identify a career they’d like to follow throughout adulthood is a huge responsibility, often complicated by a lack of advice and discussions around options.
It’s also not an easy decision, at a time of real volatility in the jobs market and the relentless encroachment of AI.
As broad’ as it’s long
Home broadband is as much of a staple in most British homes as mains water supplies or gas.
Although nearly three million people live without internet access at home, this number is dwindling all the time.
The UK broadband industry extends into many seemingly unrelated sectors, consequently supporting a spectrum of job opportunities for young people – or anyone looking to retrain.
These are some of the technical and non-technical broadband careers worth considering…
Engineering
Because it’s physically cabled into our homes, broadband requires a huge array of networks and systems. These in turn require engineers to design, build and maintain them.
Engineering roles range from the road workers who access subterranean cable networks through to the field engineers who install full fibre broadband on new-build estates.
The servers and data centres which store website information and host cloud services also require electrical engineers, among other disciplines…
Computing
Broadband is a digital industry which relies heavily on programmers and software developers, so there are loads of computing-based broadband careers on offer.
Job boards are awash with opportunities for people who can code in specific programming languages or assemble and manage hardware, software and networks.
Other computing sectors encompassing broadband careers include cybersecurity, in-house IT technicians and even call centre support roles to assist customers with technical problems.
Sales
At any given moment, an estimated 60 per cent of UK broadband customers are out of contract with their current broadband provider.
One of the best ways to minimise this is through sales, and broadband companies will always welcome motivated and personable staff into their sales divisions.
There are also frontline sales roles ranging from high-street stores to contact centres, whereas corporate sales personnel tend to negotiate contracts with bigger clients like housebuilders.
Creative industries
Sales is often combined with marketing, while advertising and PR are related disciplines. Ad agencies may specialise in representing computing brands or ISPs, for instance.
More specialist creative roles such as technical copywriters might be required as well. Those product brochures don’t write themselves, and neither do tender bids or annual reports.
Honourably excepting off-the-shelf solutions like generic WordPress templates, bespoke websites need teams of writers, designers and developers to create and maintain them.
Management
Is management a profession? It certainly can be, once you’ve amassed knowledge in a particular discipline and gained the confidence necessary to motivate and inspire colleagues.
From altnet broadband firms and engineering subcontractors to software developers and data centre providers, almost every business requires managers, usually at multiple levels of seniority.
Many people gravitate into management later in their careers, but there are plenty of management qualifications on offer to younger people, especially at post-graduate level.
