April 1, 2024
What exactly does it mean to upskill yourself? It's about investing in yourself, enhancing your abilities, and becoming a more valuable employee or skilled business owner. This empowerment is the key to unlocking your potential and achieving your career goals.
Upskilling your abilities has many benefits. From career advancement to increased competitive skills, more confidence, job security, higher earning potential, career satisfaction, and more, there are many upsides to developing who you are as a person and what you're capable of.
But how do you upskill exactly? The trick to upskilling yourself is to ask why you are doing it and what you are doing it for. What is the end goal? This will dictate the skills you need to learn and how you approach them, whether for personal or professional reasons.
Suppose you are considering advancing your career or preparing yourself to run a business. In that case, provisionally upskilling yourself will be massively beneficial now and for many years to come. It will assist you on your trajectory and give you what you want and need from life.
Let's take a look at some ways you can upskill yourself and make yourself a more attractive proposition in your sector.
In the first instance, before you do anything else, you need to set yourself some realistic and actionable goals. They need to have a timeline and be something you can achieve and aren't pressured into doing. You need to take into account your current skill level in what you want to learn, how you need to go about learning the skills, and what length of item it will take. Some things can be learned over the weekend, and others might take years to perfect and become proficient at. Factor all of this in. Set your goals, and then break them down into manageable bullet points that can keep you climbing, not sliding all the way back to the beginning. In a game of snakes and ladders, you need to be climbing those ladders, not sliding the snakes and this is exactly the same.
Not all skills require returning to the classroom to gain the necessary knowledge and know-how. However, in many cases, this is essential or highly recommended.
Depending on what you want to know and learn, you can benefit from enrolling in a course or two to help you get the professional qualifications you need to support what you do and show that you are committed and driven and will be placed to take on the role.
From full-time college courses to e-learning courses and apprenticeship work experience, there are multiple training options for you to consider so you can move forward with the right skills and knowledge.
But if you don't want to, can't for any reason, or don't actually need professional qualifications, then online resources that can assist you in learning what you need know can be beneficial. It might be you attend industry seminars, network with others to help you learn from the best in your sector, or use free resources and tools online.
Skills like coding, for example, can be learned both in an educational environment and at home from other coders and experts online. There is a thriving community online and plenty of places where you can develop your coding skills, whether you are a complete novice or need to refine your skills. Whether learning python entirely or uncovering how to change pdf to html python is something you want to get to grips with or want to move into UX design, app development, or anything else; there are many ways you can do so in your spare item to leo you upskill your tech knowledge and put you in a better position for employment.
These days, soft skills are just as valuable to employers as physical skills. Soft skills are those personal behaviours and attributes that make you who you are, from how you build relationships with others to how you deal with different scenarios in life.
For employers, those with enhanced soft skills can be great team players and be instrumental in supporting teamwork work, collaborating, or becoming great leaders.
Soft skills in demand, include communication skills, active listening, critical thinking, time management, networking, teamwork, and more. While hard skills, such as technical skills, will also support career development growth, soft skills are just as important to empower those who need to build a cohesive team.
Even if this isn't on your agenda and you want to be your own boss one day, soft skills are still an important aspect of a great business owner. They allow you to build effective relationships with others, rapport, and an excellent reputation, thanks to how you approach and engage with those around you, from your employees to peers, suppliers, and more.
Self-awareness is a crucial aspect of upskilling. It's not about being critical but about understanding your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This introspection is the key to your growth and development.
A great way to assess where you currently stand is to do a SWOT analysis on yourself. Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Once you know these details, you then need to ask others for feedback. Honest, constructive feedback can help you make the necessary choices to get where you are now or where you want to be in the future. Without this period of self-reflection, you might not know where you are doing wrong and will be unable to start with strong foundations for change and improvement.
Upskilling is about preparing yourself for all aspects of your career, and that means looking forward, not back. To facilitate this, you need to understand how the world is changing, what trends and skills are in demand right now, and what could be in demand in the future. There will always be valuable skills, but some will become obsolete in a few years.
Some skill sets to consider can include digital literacy, data literacy, emotional intelligence, analytical thinking, empathy, complex problem solving, resilience, flexibility, curiosity, and a whole host of other hard and soft skills, as mentioned above.
Career-wise, some future-proof industries you can develop skills in include cyber security expert, data scientist, marketing healthcare, social worker, teacher, chef, and human resources manager to give you a few examples of careers you can aim towards or develop skills to succeed in.
Upskilling yourself means being aware of what your industry needs and wants before it wants it. Even if you are planning on changing careers, understand your current one to help you gain valuable transferable skills and your new one to slot in seamlessly as if you've been there your entire working life.
The more you know and can preempt what businesses and employers need, the better placed you will be to move forward and keep climbing to your preferred position.
Research the industry, look at past changes and innovations, and identify future developments or skills and changes you can be in front of to position yourself as the prime candidate. Check job listings even if you are not ready to apply for them. This can give you a more accurate idea of the job roles and what employers are looking to prepare you to get on the right track. The more you know them, the more you can tailor your learning and skills to meet requirements.
What your plan is for progressing within your current role is redundant here. You need to know how you are currently doing to enable you to develop skills, learn more, and become more inquisitive. Ask for additional duties, question why things are done to understand the why behind the actions, dive deeper under the hood, ask for feedback, and generally use what you are currently doing to help you build on your skills and knowledge to enhance your career regardless of how that works. Treat every day as a learning opportunity, and be open to trying new things and learning new aspects of your current employment.
Even if not all skills are transferable, you will likely have learned valuable lessons and proven yourself to be a forward thinker and a go-getter, which will only benefit you in the long run.
Whether you're looking to one day become your own boss and open a business of your very own, or you want to climb the ranks and have other career ideas in mind, being able to identify where your skills lie, what you need to improve on and how you can move forward will serve you well in the long term. Putting in the effort before progressing in your career means giving yourself the best chance of success by having vital skills and knowledge already at your fingertips to develop and utilise when required. Be thorough and methodical, and understand the intricacies of your sector to marry this with your capabilities for the perfect storm in upskilling yourself and making who you are the person everyone wants in a professional sense.
