Whether you’ve always loved learning or not, you should take advantage of the range of online courses offered by various prestigious institutions today. As a way of helping people survive quarantine at home, many universities, colleges, and learning institutions are offering free online courses. Most of these courses are short ones that aim to enhance and develop your skills. There’s no other time than today to start arming yourself with the skills you need in the new normal.
So, what exactly are these skills that you need to learn? How are these skills going to help you become more competitive and in-demand in the new normal? Consider this list a comprehensive overlook of the courses you need to learn to push the doors of opportunities wide open.
Information Technology
IT has been dominating the world in unimaginable ways. You just don’t know it yet but every time you open your porch lights via a remote control in your car, that’s IT. When you say “Hey, Siri” to your iPhone and it responds with “Hi. How can I help you?,” that’s IT. Technology has become more than ubiquitous. It became a part of your everyday life; so much so that one cannot imagine what life will be like without technology.
If you want to be relevant in the new normal, consider a job in IT. You can learn how to design apps, software, games, and reconfigure hardware. Your ability to understand the communication between devices will help you get ahead of your competitors.
Insurance Specialist
Not everything is about technology. The coronavirus pandemic pushed many people to finally worry about the investments they make. They want assurance that their families are going to be taken care of if something happens to them. You can take online insurance courses and classes. These courses will teach you how to approach a client with apprehensions about whether to invest in an insurance policy or save his money in the bank.
The courses are taught by insurance specialists themselves, so you will be getting a lot of tips and tricks on how to close a deal. This is especially important today because of the impact of the coronavirus on people’s resources. Finding out that your health insurance does not cover certain illnesses will wake you up to the reality that you may need to invest in better ones.
Foreign Language Training
Have you always wanted to move to another country and work there? This is the best time for you to learn its language. Not only should you enroll in online classes, but this is a great opportunity also to read and watch movies in the language that you want to learn.
You never would have risked your job to learn something before the pandemic. But because the pandemic made many people realize how fleeting life is and how unstable companies are, they now want to invest in themselves. They are now more willing to bet on what they can achieve.
Digital Marketing
Businesses moved to digital spaces during the height of the outbreak. Since they cannot operate their physical stores, many of them decided to 100% operate as a digital business. This is why the demand for digital marketers also skyrocketed. E-commerce is no longer a complement to brick-and-mortar stores. It is at the core of the retail industry.
Sure, you know a bit about digital marketing but how about search engine optimization, pay-per-click ads, and social media marketing? Though they sound the same, these pose different challenges to any digital marketer. Improving your skills in digital marketing will go a long way toward making you an invaluable asset to any company you choose to join.
Business Analytics
The e-commerce world runs on analytics. This means that every move any business makes on the internet has to be confirmed with someone who does their analytics. Should a company go on a sale this holiday season? What does that company’s web traffic say about its conversion rate? How about the bounce rate? These impact any business decision that you make.
Contrary to the popular belief, you do not need to be good at mathematics to learn business analytics. Thanks to technology, these numbers are going to pop on your screen. All you need to do is to analyze their impact on the business and make recommendations on how best to maximize these results.
The pandemic should have taught you that nothing is permanent. What you do have are opportunities to learn and improve your skills. You saw what the pandemic did to industries and how these industries are slowly getting back on their feet in the new norm. Make sure you have the skills applicable to the emergence of the new demands.
