For you to move forward in your career, you need to know how are professionals developing skills for today’s demand, and for you to develop your professional skills, you need to go through trainings. Employers are looking for candidates who had training to a specific skill that will meet their requirements on a job role.
As technology moves faster, you need to keep your skills current to maintain your value in your company.
You must improve your skills to be competitive not only with your colleagues but also for other companies as well, especially today that you are facing plenty of stiff competition as companies are outsourcing because they get the best value for their money.
Developing your skills will not only help you identify your skills gap and hone it to excel in you work strategies, but it will also provide you with major benefits: secure your relevance in your line of industry, give more employment opportunities, enhance the opportunity to develop your career, help you build networks, innovate solutions to the company you are working for, and widen your knowledge of your industry.
But how would you know what skills to develop so can you stay ahead of your competition and move forward in your career?
Tips on ow professionals are developing their skills
- You need to find out what are the current high-demand skills in your industry. Identifying these will help you know whether the skills that you have is up-to-date, or if you need to go through further training.
- You may also upgrade your other skills even if those are not the current in-demand skills in your industry as long as it is relevant to your career or has a contribution on your career goal.
- Enrolling to refresher courses and workshops will also help you discover what are the current required skills in your industry and how you will maintain your skills up-to-date.
- Plan early and enroll in courses that will enhance your skills if you are already aware that you need to keep your skills up-to-date.
Once you have identified the skills you want or need to upgrade, the next step to develop your work skills or hard skills by gaining knowledge.
Developing professional skills by enrolling to online courses
One of the most popular forms of gaining knowledge nowadays is by enrolling to online courses. This is because taking online courses has a lot of advantages.
Taking online courses will help you save your time from driving or commuting to your class. You do not have to go to a physical class to attend to study. By studying online, you can choose the time and place where you will take your class: whether it’s in your bedroom, your favorite café, and even by listening to lectures via podcast while running or while you are driving.
Taking online courses also help you save money. Since you do not have to go to a physical class, it will cut your transportation expenses. Most online courses are also low in cost and sometimes cost nothing at all. Lastly, most of the materials and modules for your course are available online and you do not have to buy anything.
There are thousands of different courses available online. You have the control on what course topics you want to choose. You can learn anything and whatever triggers your curiosity. Skill Success, for example, offers over 1,000 different topics and they have over 35,000 video lessons that are accessible 24/7 on your computer, tablet, or mobile phone. Their membership service called All Access Pass also allows you to learn anytime, anywhere.
In addition, you will develop self-discipline because you are responsible with your learning. Since you are learning by yourself, you will be more focused on your assignments and deadlines. You will also become self-motivated and will not need pressure from others to drive you to do things.
Developing your soft skills is also important because these skills are always in-demand regardless of what position you are in.
What are the top soft skills that companies seek from their employees?
1. Adaptability Skills
This refers to a person’s capability of changing his course or approach in order to adapt into a new situation.
2. Creative Thinking Skills
Creativity is not only for artists. It also means that you are able to come up with innovative ideas or solutions.
3. Time Management Skills
This is the process of organizing and distributing your time well by planning how long you spend your time on an activity.
4. Persuasion and Influencing Skills
This is the ability to negotiate and convince someone to agree, commit and follow a course of action.
5. Computer and Technological Skills
The ability to use computers and technology efficiently is considered to be a very important skill to possess since most employers use computers to run their company.
You need to learn new things to remain relevant in our rapidly changing world of technology and just like the importance of food giving nutrients in your body, gaining knowledge is important as it nourishes our minds.
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