HiQ Magazine | New professions

NEW PROFESSIONS Scan the QR-code to hear more about HiQ's view of new professions.

NEW

PROFESSIONS Old professions disappear; new ones take their place! Meet two employees who have jobs that didn’t even exist five years ago.

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DANIEL JOHANSSON, WORKS WITH VR

What does your job involve?

“I work on truck simulators, using VR to develop new truck models. For example, if we want to develop a new cab, it’s important that windows are placed to offer drivers the best possible all-round vision.

That can be difficult to ascertain until you’ve actually sat in the cab.

However, by creating a cab in VR, we can test ideas and make any necessary changes to the windows before building it for real. This also gives us an opportunity to identify any constructional errors and to examine how well matched components are before we produce them.

It all helps to speed up the development process.”

What led you to work in this particular niche?

“I started working with high-performance computing. When I first joined HiQ I was building aircraft simulators to train pilots. VR was still in its infancy at the time but I was curious about the different ways in which it could be used.”

How come VR has suddenly become so big?

“A few years ago a VR headset cost around 50,000 euros and was such a tight fit that it gave you a headache. Since then the technology has made great strides. Now the challenge is to think of ways of using VR to simplify all sorts of tasks. Things have progressed so quickly because of the keen interest shown from consumers.”

What’s the most difficult thing about your job?

“The hardest part is to make everything look like it does in reality.

To be convincing VR needs to work in the way you expect everything around you to work in real life. That’s a challenge. You need, for example, to create trees that look, act and move just like real trees do.”

What kind of qualifications do you need for a career in VR? “It depends on what you’re going to do. I have a degree in engineering. But it’s also useful to have skills in computer graphics and image processing.”

How will we be using VR in the future?

“In all sorts of ways! I can see VR moving closer and closer to reality. Let’s say, perhaps you’d like to enjoy five quiet minutes by yourself in surroundings that uplift and inspire you before you step out onto the stage. In the future this will be possible thanks to virtual reality.”

So yours is definitely a profession for the future?

“Absolutely. Although I’m not sure VR will be regarded as a separate profession. It will soon play such a central role in technology that people won’t have to be VR specialists. It will simply be knowledge that everyone will need in their work.”

Do you enjoy your job?

“I do! It’s great fun, fascinating and intellectually challenging. It’s incredibly motivating to know that what you’re doing makes a real difference. You’re so much more than just a cog in a machine.”

JEANETTE ÖSTERMAN, WORKS WITH SOCIAL LISTENING

What is social listening?

“It is media intelligence, monitoring social media to find out what people are saying about a particular brand. I monitor who is talking about my customers, what they are saying and which channels they are using. Then I analyse the results. My analysis can later be used to steer future messages from the company or to determine which social media to focus on to reach a particular target group. In this way I can help my customers to focus their efforts more effectively and achieve a stronger impact.”

When did social listening become a marketable service?

“It has been around for a couple of years now. To begin with it was quite rudimentary; for example, you could receive alerts every time a relevant term was mentioned. Today the service is greater and broader, as we also interpret and analyse what it being said. The unique thing about the technology here at HiQ is that it is a self-learning system that can be trained to listen only to relevant discussions. Previously this has been difficult as terms and phrases can be used in so many different ways and not everything that is said about a company is necessarily relevant. Today we can filter out all the ‘background noise’ and focus solely on what is relevant.”

Why has HiQ chosen to focus on social listening?

“Social media has become so important in today’s society. It’s not unusual for customers’ opinions to be more widely spread through social media than a company’s own market communication. Consequently various forms of digital analysis have become a key service to offer companies. Social listening is one of them.”

What kind of qualifications do you need?

“Social media monitors have different qualifications, but you do need to be able to interpret statistics and put them into context. A lot of social media monitors have a background in communication. In my case, I have a Master’s in Business and Economics where the emphasis was on marketing.”

How do you think your job will develop in the future?

“They say that the next stage in social listening will be image analysis. More and more companies and private individuals are choosing to communicate via pictures, for example on Instagram. The next challenge will be to gather, categorise and analyse the content of the pictures that people take.”

Do you enjoy your job?

“Yes. It’s enjoyable work and very creative, especially in terms of deciding how best to make use of the information you’ve gathered and the conclusions you’ve reached.”

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