Up-skilling, the process of harnessing additional training to build and enhance one’s proficiencies, can be achieved by a number of means including taking a course, understudying a mentor, and self-directing one’s learning.
Skills, they say, are the new currency. Where your qualifications might not take you, your unique abilities and talents might. It is therefore imperative to take advantage of every opportunity to expand your skillset, whether as a new joiner, one looking to switch careers or roles, or just generally desirous of professional advancement.
If you have never given serious consideration to up-skilling, these five points might be the inspiration you need:
- You’ll be relevant: With the global workforce being unpredictable, up-skilling is one way of staying ahead of the curve, ensuring your skillset (and even you yourself) does not get obsolete. Several years ago when everyone was fixated on medicine, banking and engineering, who would have thought that social media influencing and digital marketing would be regarded as professions today?
- It’s a way to become more valuable: It is never enough to desire becoming an asset to your organisation; you must be ready to pay the price, growing through the ranks. Of course, the price comes with some benefits including gaining greater visibility and earning more in terms of remuneration. By up-skilling, you’d be more productive, truly considered as a problem solver and positioned to take on more elaborate responsibilities.
- You’ll better harness growth paths and opportunities: Up-skilling shoots you out of your current league and makes you benefit from some “extra” — whatever “extra” means in the your field or for your career. It becomes easier to gain a better standing in relevant fields and helps you expand your network. Simply put: it will change your life!
- It is journey of self-discovery: As you can already tell from earlier points, up-skilling is a way of ensuring your life never remains the same again — for good. As an opportunity to unlock your potentials, you’ll expand your horizon to things you thought you could never do, never knew existed or thought would not interest you. Imagine what that would do to your confidence level — it would send it miles up! And you will experience holistic growth!
- A chance to meet a need: With the world of work ever evolving, up-skilling gives you the opportunity to meet market needs, especially in the knowledge economy. While acquiring a new proficiency, it is crucial that you contextualise it within the reality of problem-solving. Not only is up-skilling necessary, it positions you as a knowledgeable and versatile employee.
Extra: If you do not up-skill, your level of expertise today would likely remain insufficient to sustain you in the future of work.
A Reminder: Until recently, there were no professions like content creation, product management, social media analysis and data engineering. Times have evolved and it’s only necessary that you do too in order not to be left behind.
You can explore these helpful resources below to start:
- Udemy
- Utiva
- Coursera
- Alison
- Oxford Home Study
- LinkedIn — Certified courses available, but for Premium accounts.
- Harvard University
- Stanford
- EdX
- Khan Academy
- SkillShare
- Code Academy
PS: While most offer free courses, some come at a token.