Five Career Paths to Earn Six-figure Salary after College

"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death" — Albert Einstein

Thank you for being with me. I have little more than million subscribers now (cumulatively). No matter which channel/website of mine you are following, this articles is important, because there is something happening that you must know. 

I am currently working in US—based company as Content Specialist. I can really see things changing. Lots of skills are getting obsolete. But there are skills that can get you six-figure salary in coming days, which nobody knows about. People needs to upgrade their knowledge. Graduation degree won’t have any value. Because the repetitive, no-brainer tasks you could do with just a degree won’t be there in next five years. So, after graduation, you have to do some certification or courses to get the right skills. I would rate few of the in-demand skills based on difficulty and time required for learning.

First, Big data engineer or analyst. 

Difficulty level: 7.5/10  and time required: Minimum 12 months 

All of us are online. We are giving away our data to every company we connect to. But, this data tells a lot about our habit, ambition, character, economic status etc. Data analyst or data engineer get these data in raw format such as csv. Then they analyse data to find patterns, so that companies may target you with right product, advertisement, or propaganda etc.

Average salary: 0.5 mn per annum in India, 72,000$ per annum in USA

Path: Online Certification

Note: You may need to learn Python, R, or SQL. Data interpretation and visualization would require significant practice.

Second, cyber security expert. 

Difficulty: 9/10 and time required: Minimum 24 months 

Next war would be online. Countries can target you with propaganda to topple democratic government or to create social unrest. Hackers can target you anytime for sensitive information. Hence, cyber security experts would be like soldiers in coming days. Basic cyber security expert salary is 0.6 mn per annum in India, 78,000$ in USA. You need to have basic programming knowledge like python for this. Every country desperately need more cyber security experts to be future-ready.

Path: Graduation, online certification

Third, firmware engineer. 

Difficulty: 7/10 and time required: Graduation 

Well, you need to go through graduation for this, generally computer science, like I did. But, you have to focus on firmware, such as logic gates, assembly language, timers, microprocessor etc. Basically, you will be writing codes that directly interact with hardware. Average salary is way over 1.2 mn/annum in India and 100,000$/annum in USA. 

Path: It is not very hard. You need to practice and gather experience of working with transistors, timers, logic gates, microprocessors etc. So, if you are computer science student – well here is your million-dollar job plan.

Fourth, Instructional designer. 

Difficulty: 5/10 and time required: Minimum 3 months 

Instructional designers create eLearning courses and training modules for adults. They are magicians when it comes to eLearning. They rule online training industry through eLearning portals like Udemy, Coursera and so on. In India average salary is 5 lacs. But, instructional designers grow a lot. You can create your own digital product and sell online too. 

 Path: Online certification 

Fifth, Digital marketing. 

Difficulty: 6.5/10 and time required: Minimum 6 month 

As all businesses are going online, whole marketing industry must shift online too, common sense! But, digital marketing requires separate study of each platform. For example, you have to study Facebook pixel, google ads, amazon ads, social media marketing and so on. Average salary is low, but you can launch your online business as side-hustle. 

Path: Online certification 

But, to sale, you need a product. So, you can learn instructional design to make your own product and use digital marketing to promote it. The “Million-dollar skill” has been consistently provided value and changed lives of its learners. This assignment-based course demonstrate use of adult-learning theories to create digital products.  In Udemy, it is over $99. But, you can get it at 80% discount if you buy directly from website.