Many children raised in America hear a question time and again from adults, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answers vary from the outrageous “I’m gonna be an astronaut and a chef,” to the thoughtful, “I got hurt when I was really little, so I want to be a doctor.” The fields of endeavor are wide open. Some require extensive scholastic work and on-the-job training, like a doctor or an engineer. Others require innate talents that can’t really be taught, but can be improved through learning techniques, such as video game designers and actors. Most children’s ideas of adult life fall somewhere in the middle.

Every year, what reigns supreme in the job market in America changes. Now that we’re almost halfway through 2017, let’s look at where to find the best money, how to best balance work and play, and what are the happiest places to work.

Money Makes the World Go ‘Round: Top Salaries, Top Onboarding

According to a report in the Business Insider, the top money-making jobs for 2017 are physicians (median salary $187,876), pharmacy managers (median salary $149,064), and patent attorneys ($139,272). That isn’t much of a surprise, as the fields of healthcare and law have a long history of high salaries. Other jobs in the “top 10” money-makers include corporate controllers, physician’s assistants, and enterprise architects, all making in excess of $100,000 per year.

Analysts are projecting that the health care industry will, through 2021, account for at least three out of every 10 new jobs created. The ASHHRA (American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration) has been diligently pursuing ways to bring healthcare HR personnel into the 21st century. In an ASHHRA e-News Brief, many of the suggested moves can be applied to employee hiring and retention across the board.

• Technology is your friend. Use it to post job openings, attract candidates, track candidates through the initial screening and reference checks, stay in touch with candidates through emails, and make job offers
• The top HR managers both create and nurture a qualified pool of candidates for current and future positions.
• Employee onboarding through active integration eases the process from start to finish. Introduce the new employee to the team s/he will be working with, perhaps with a team lunch.

A Balance Bar & HR: Recruiting, Assessing, Encouraging

But what if a job seeker is looking for a balanced “professional life/personal life” position? According to Maddy Kearns in the Apr 13, 2017 issue of Verily magazine, top honors in the “balanced” hot jobs goes to Corporate Recruiters. Corporate recruiters review resumes, shortlist candidates, and conduct the initial interviews. Quite often, they have the option as to where they work. The number two and three positions, as noted in the end-of-year 2016 Glassdoor blog, are UX (user experience) designer and data scientist (analyzes and interprets complex digital data to assist a business in its decision-making). Human Resources have tools at their disposal to make a work/life balance happen at a company:

• Put out an anonymous employee survey to discover their needs. Anonymity means employees can be more honest and open about needs and wants.
• Initiate a flex-time policy for the business. It not only boosts employee satisfaction, it has become so popular that HR pros are using it as a recruiting tool.
• Make sure the work/life balance is maintained throughout the year, through discussions and seminars, to maintain a healthy feedback loop.

Happy, happy, joy, joy: Employee Retention

Full-time employees spend at least a third of their waking hours at work. So why not work somewhere that makes you happy? Jeff Kaufman from Forbes looked to the year 2017 by finding the happiest workplaces in America. The three top companies? Bristol-Myers Squibb, Amgen, Inc., and Keller Williams Realty. The employee happiness stems from positive work environments, healthy management relationships, growth opportunities, compensation, and satisfaction with their specific position. Human resources is the cornerstone to making good things happen. Here’s three of the many options HR can put in place:

• Be transparent, from announcing and sharing successes to identifying where there’s room for improvement
• Create and maintain a positive work environment, such as arranging group lunches to celebrate a team’s triumph with a complex job
• Always say “thank you,” a phrase that is truly worth its weight in gold

Each year, both industries and companies jockey for the top position on “the best of” lists. Some companies have meteoric ascents to the top. Others plummet, with stock prices and reputations tanking, such as American Apparel, Sears, and Twitter. Human resources people are in the position of being able to critically access not only the best and worst within a company, but also the industry at large, and guide a business to be the best it can be.