Jobs You’ve Never Heard Of

Organizations start small and over time, if they are successful, they tend to grow. In the abstract ideal the most successful organization would grow profits without needing to increase its cost base by hiring more people, occupying bigger offices, or investing in technology.

Such a business doesn’t exist, or at least if it does its owner has kept quite about it, and for good reason too as who wouldn’t want a business like that? In the real world, business that grow go through different phases. These phases are defined in the Greiner Growth Model.

According to the Greiner Growth Model each new growth phase of the organization is preceded by some form of crisis. The different crises that an organisation encounters, in order as they grow, are defined as follows:

• Leadership Crisis
• Autonomy Crisis
• Control Crisis
• Red Tape Crisis
• Growth Crisis

Only very successful organizations will ever make their way successfully through all stages of crisis.

Some of you may be wondering why I’m mentioning this when the title of this article is about jobs you’ve never heard of? Well, when organizations are small they are chaotic but easy to understand. You may well just have a few employees. One may be responsible for sales, another for product development, and that might be it. Simple.

However, when organizations grow and grow the need for ever more specialised roles increases. I don’t know at what point on the Greiner Model this starts to happen but its probably as early as the Autonomy Crisis.

I came across one such specialised role yesterday which I’d never heard of before – Catastrophe Modeler. People with catastrophe modelling jobs estimate the financial loss which could be incurred if certain catastrophic events occurred.

The type of catastrophes they estimate losses for include hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist attacks, and war, amongst others.

The results of catastrophe modelling are useful to all kinds of people. For example, insurers obviously need to understand their exposure across the portfolio they insure. Ratings agencies would need the same information too so they can accurately rate the insurers. The government would also use catastrophe modelling to help guide its strategy towards responding to and managing disasters.

So there you have it – catastrophe modelling. There is even an International Society of Catastrophe Managers. If you’ve recently come across a job you’ve never heard of before then use the comments section below to get in touch. I’d be really interested to hear about it.

Image by kakela