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Top 7 contract skill sets in demand, this quarter

Freelance.com reports rising demand for contract skills in 3D printing, social media and digital design -- reflecting shifting technology priorities within businesses.
Written by Joe McKendrick, Contributing Writer

Freelance.com has released its latest analysis of more than 300,000 jobs posted in Q2 2013, revealing fierce competition for contract skills reflecting the business technology disruption affecting organizations large and small -- from digital design to social media to 3D printing.

Skills rising in demand during the second quarter include the following:

3D printing: 3D Rendering, 3D Modelling and 3D Animation showed significant growth, Freelance.com reports -- with demand increasing 17.3% from 1,570 jobs for 3D rendering, 12.5% from 1,774 jobs for 3D modelling, and 11.7% from 1,758 for 3D animation.

Digital design: Demand for illustration is up 19.7% from 1,501 jobs; Photoshop design work is up 19.4% from 1,241 jobs; banner design is up 14.4% from 2,131 jobs); and logo design is up 9.2% from 7,591 jobs. Fees are on the rise, too, Freelancer.com reports.  "We anticipate that this trend will continue as creative design professionals embrace online freelancing, while traditional design agencies join Borders and the Dodo in the annals of history."

App design and development, especially for Android: Demand for Android developers continues to outpace Apple iOS, the service reports. Android achieves 14.8% growth in this quarter (from 5,152 jobs), as iPhone and iPad lag with 10.2% and -2.5% growth  (from 5,552 and 2,266 jobs respectively).

Social media marketing: Facebook marketing jobs -- tied into online advertising -- grew 16% this quarter to 7,281 jobs. Demand for Twitter, however, stagnated at just under 2% growth (from 2,624 jobs), "as Facebook cashed in on its own version of Twitter’s hashtag feature and tweaked its commenting system to allow users to upload photos to comment threads," Freelancer.com says.

Telemarketing and email marketing: Telemarketing and email marketing jobs showed a strong 14.6% and 4.9% growth (up from 1,118 jobs and 1,206 jobs) respectively. Meanwhile, a Google Penguin update has delivered another crippling blow to SEO and link-building jobs (down 6.3% from 10,906 jobs and 6.8% from 7,531 jobs respectively), further damaging an industry that is struggling as advertisers increasingly diversify their budgets into social channels such as Facebook.

Accounting: Demand for his core business task is up 23.3% from 888 jobs.

Report writing and presentations: Demand for report writers is up 20.5% from 1,535 jobs; and the creation of powerpoint presentations is up 35.4% from 1,499 jobs. These tasks typically require in-depth knowledge of the business, Freelancer.com observes. At the same time, tasks such as copywriting, ghostwriting and PDF conversions that require little to no inside knowledge have suffered (dropping by 13.5%, 11.8% and 38.1% respectively).

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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