Six careers you didn't know were growing

Half of these booming fields actually come from just one industry.

Wondering which careers are entering their boom phase? Check out these six careers, for which experts see optimistic times ahead.

By Terence Loose
Are you considering starting a new career, but want to make sure it's one whose future will boom, not bust?
Good thinking - changing careers requires focus, dedication, and a good plan.
"It's important for people to dedicate themselves to finding the right career for them, and to make sure they make smart, rewarding choices," says Mary Jeanne Vincent, a career expert and strategist who spent years in the human resources business. She's seen people make every mistake in the book, including not pursuing careers with a good future.
So, we figured we'd jump in and help you avoid that mistake by identifying some careers that are projected to maintain growth in the future.
In fact, we chose six careers that are projected to have at least a 21 percent job growth rate from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Labor - a favorable forecast when compared to the total U.S. employment growth rate of 14 percent.
So read on to learn more about these six careers expected to boom into the future.

Booming Career #1: Human Resources Specialist
Projected Growth Rate 2010 to 2020: 21 percent*

Are you good at assessing people's skills and talents? You could be born to pursue a booming career in human resources.
Human resources specialists generally identify a company's hiring needs and then interview applicants, contact their references, and perform background checks, says the U.S. Department of Labor. Other duties could include keeping employment records and assisting with new employee orientation.
Why This Career is Booming: Susan Heathfield, a management consultant and About.com's guide to human resources, sees a greater need for employees in human resources.
"The war for talent is escalating," says Heathfield. "[Companies] have human talent that they want to manage and make happy. And trying to attract, hire, and retain people... is becoming a huge problem. But it's also an opportunity for the people who have human resources degrees."
The Department of Labor confirms an optimistic forecast for human resources specialists as companies continue to emphasize "the importance of finding and keeping quality employees."
Click to Find the Right Business Administration Program.
Education Options: Intrigued by this field? According to the Department, most human resources specialist positions require a bachelor's degree. But keep in mind that most employers favor candidates with a bachelor's degree in human resources, business, or a related field.

News Source: Yahoo

Big payday for painting found at Goodwill

A friend's hunch kept Beth Feeback from making a huge mistake with this thrift-store gem.
Beth Feeback had a really good weekend. The North Carolina woman who bought a painting for $9.99 from a Goodwill store sale saw it sell for more than $27,000 at a Sotheby's auction.
"It's a great return on $9.99," Feeback said Sunday night.
The sale price listed on the Sotheby's website, $34,375.00, reflects the final gavel price plus a premium the buyer must pay, she explained. The painting had been expected to sell for between $15,000 and $20,000.
Feeback of Concord bought the painting, "Vertical Diamond" by Ilya Bolotowsky, in April. She wasn't attracted to the style at all, but she wanted to re-use the canvas to paint cat portraits, which are her specialty.
A friend cautioned her to check out the labels on the painting before she put paintbrush to canvas, and after a few months during which the painting languished on the floor of her art studio, she did.
Now, Feeback has a whole new appreciation for Bolotowsky and his work.
"The first time I Googled that artist's name, I was like, 'This is the most beautiful damned painting I've ever seen in my life,'" she said, tongue in cheek.
The auction took place Friday, and Feeback gathered family and friends from a viewing party online.
She was nervous at first.
"I like to set my expectations low because … Murphy's Law is my religion and I was just afraid that it wouldn't sell at all … ," she said.
As she and the others gathered at her home watched the auction, she added, "we could see that some of the paintings sold for much more [than] the value that the auction house had put on them and some sold for much less and an uncomfortable number of them did not sell at all, so that's how come I was concerned."
Feeback doesn't know who the buyer was, but, she said, "I wish that person very well and I hope they re-sell it for twice as much as they bought it for."
Asked about her plans for her windfall, Feeback said she and her husband plan to perform necessary and long-delayed improvements to their home and pay down debts.
She also plans to do a series of knockoff "Vertical Diamond" paintings with big cat heads in the middle of them, she said.

News Source: Yahoo

Coach cons replacement referees

Jim Harbaugh of the 49ers outsmarts the novice officials during a key point in the game.
It was the officiating crew "led" by Ken Roan that proved to be a complete disaster in last Monday night's game between the Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos, and it was Roan's crew which made perhaps the most embarrassing series of mistakes in a day of football that was nearly overwhelmed by them.
Roan, who tried to corral a group of refs that seemingly would be under-qualified for junior high games, stood around while a series of meltdowns happened between the Broncos and Falcons, couldn't quite figure out what a spot foul was on two different occasions and frustrated coaches John Fox and Mike Smith to the point where the NFL felt that it had to step in and insist that coaches should stop hurting the feelings of the refs foisted upon us by the lockout of the real officials.
[Wetzel: NFL needs to come down hard on ref intimidation]
San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh, another one of the violators who was sternly advised, was incensed by Roan's crew early in Sunday's 24-13 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, when Roan called an illegal block ... on the kicking team. Unsure in retrospect how a kicking team could block in the first place, Roan tried to cover his backside by saying that "By rule, there is no flag on the play."
Technically, there's no blocking in this case, but we quibble.


News source: Yahoo

Olympic star's stunning revelation

Kerri Walsh Jennings reveals news that makes her third gold-medal win even more amazing.

What's more impressive than winning a third-straight Olympic gold medal? Winning it while five weeks pregnant. That's what American beach volleyball champ Kerri Walsh Jennings did during the London Olympics.

 
(Getty)vealed on the "Today" show that she and her husband Casey Jennings are expecting their third child. With a due date of April 9, Walsh Jennings was five weeks pregnant when winning another gold medal with longtime partner Misty May-Treanor.

Walsh Jennings said she was "moody and touchy" during the Olympics, which is odd for the normally happy-go-lucky athlete, and her period was late. Those symptoms could be attributed to the stress every athlete encounters when at the Olympics. However, May-Treanor figured it out before Walsh Jennings did, telling her partner, "You're probably pregnant."

News Source: Yahoo

Sports event that 1.5 billion will watch

One of the planet's biggest competitions just started, but most Americans have no idea.

It will be the world's most-watched sporting event of 2012 – aside from that little summer shindig in London – yet the chances are you have never heard of it.

The T20 Cricket World Cup began this week and over the course of the next 16 days will be watched by an estimated 1.5 billion people, or around a quarter of the global population.
 
India takes on Afghanistan in a T20 Cricket World Cup match.The tournament will captivate the top 12 nations in cricket, of which the United States is not one, perhaps the primary reason why the sport and its showpiece competitions float by without registering so much as a blip on the American radar.
It was not always thus; trace back a couple of centuries and the U.S. was a powerhouse of cricket, even taking part in (and losing) the first ever international match against Canada in 1844.
Nowadays, cricket in the U.S. is mainly played by expats, although there is a smart new stadium in Lauderhill, Fla., where 16,000 watched an international game between New Zealand and the West Indies – representing several small Caribbean islands – a few months back.
Given the diverse cultural topography of this country, the market for cricket (immigrants hailing from India, Pakistan, Australia and the United Kingdom) is still solid, strong enough for ESPN to broadcast every match of the T20 World Cup on its digital platform.
And while cricket may come laced with tales of bamboozling rules and customs, there is actually plenty to like about T20 – the most action-packed and exciting version of a game thought to have begun more than 300 years ago.
As times have moved on, so has cricket been forced to evolve. Even if you have never seen a bowler hurl down a googly or a leg-spinner, you have probably heard of one of cricket's most bizarre quirks: the fact that it takes an extraordinary amount of time to play.
Test cricket, the most prestigious version of the game, involves matches lasting up to five days, with often seven hours of play per day. And at the end of it all, there is no guarantee there will be a winner, if the weather or the nature of the match slows proceedings. Yep, that's 35 hours of playing time with the possibility of no result. That's more than a boxer might spend in the ring in his entire career or twice as much as most NFL players will spend on the field in a season.
Such elongated affairs were all very well when the game was played by the genteel classes in Victorian England, but they aren't so conducive to the modern world. Hence, in the late 1960s, a reduced version of cricket that spanned a single day was invented. This also sparked such innovations as colored clothing instead of the traditional all-white uniforms, an easily visible ball (white instead of red) and music instead of polite applause paired with tea and scones.
The 21st century, though, is the era of the ever-dwindling attention span, and it became clear even a full day was too long for the younger generation. As attendances dropped, cricket's organizers responded and a special task force borrowed heavily from Major League Baseball to come up with T20 – short for Twenty20 – a version of cricket that can be completed in around three hours.
The "20" comes from the amount of batting time each team is given. In all forms of cricket, six balls (or pitches) constitute an over. At the end of each over a different bowler (or pitcher) takes "the mound," which in cricket is a playing strip situated in the middle of the field.
T20 gives each team just 20 overs to score as many runs as possible, as opposed to an unlimited amount of time in Test cricket or 50 overs in regular one-day matches. The reduced time frame forces batsmen to take greater risks and attack freely rather than adopt defensive measures aimed at trying not to get out.
At first T20 was a domestic competition, beginning in England, then spreading around the cricket-playing world. Authorities soon realized it was a huge money spinner and quickly packed the schedule with T20 games. In 2008, the Indian Premier League formed as a strictly T20 league. Today, the IPL attracts the best players in the world with two-month contracts worth over $1 million to play for club teams in various Indian cities.
"Whether you like it or not T20 has revolutionized cricket," respected Indian broadcaster Harsha Bhogle told Yahoo! Sports recently. "It means big business, big money and big audiences."
 
A general view of play during a match between West Indies and Australia. (Getty Images)The current World Cup is a collection of the best national teams in the world. England is the defending champion, having won two years ago, while Australia, South Africa, Pakistan and the West Indies are all highly fancied.
Host nation Sri Lanka has little pedigree in other sports, having won just two Olympic medals in its history, but is utterly obsessed with cricket, and bumper crowds are expected to cheer on its world-class team.
The shortened nature of T20 means it can sometimes be a bit of a lottery and it is not to the liking of some of the traditionalists who prefer batters to score with deft placement rather than hefty swipes of brute force.
"T20 has evolved a lot, though," said legendary Australian bowler Shane Warne. "The game has changed over the past few years and there is a lot more intricacy to it now. Before it was just about trying to smash it over the fence, but now there are a lot of different tactics and you can never stop thinking."
Cricket in the U.S. continues to be largely a non-entity, although the national team has shown some signs of promise in recent times, having gained promotion to division three of the World Cricket League – two steps below the top international standard.
So while large sections of the world, especially the Indian sub-continent, will revel in all the World Cup action over the next two weeks, the American market will be largely oblivious as one of the biggest sporting events of the year drifts by making barely a murmur.

News Source:Yahoo