Tuition-Free Ways to Expand Your Career Options
When it’s time for a job change, head to your library to advance your skills at no cost
One of the best ways to advance your career and gain more employment options is through education. With a greater education come more skills, and with more skills come more opportunities. The problem is that education isn’t exactly easy to come by as a working professional.
Learning new skills is expensive, time-consuming, and mentally taxing, so you must be diligent about it. Most don’t know, however, that their local public libraries have solutions that provide the same great information without any of the aforementioned drawbacks. Here are a few ways to do this without the expense of traditional college courses.
Keeping up With the Times
If you’ve been out of the workforce for a while, you may notice that things have changed a bit. The technology we use at work evolves with the times, so part of the trouble with your job search could be that you don’t have proficiency in the tech currently used at most workplaces. Fixing this problem is just a simple matter of learning your way around these new technologies.
Of course, the prospect of learning an entirely new software suite is a hefty task and a daunting one at that. But with the right resources, this seemingly overwhelming task becomes altogether manageable.
Take, for example, the New York Public Library’s TechConnect classes, a collection of over one hundred classes that teach everything from basic tech literacy to professional coding skills. By taking advantage of these classes, you can not only catch up with the times but also continue to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring that you’ll always have the tech skills you need to find a job.
Learning Freelancing Skills
If a 9–5 at a cubicle isn’t your thing, you still have plenty of options. For all of the inconveniences that the 2020 pandemic shutdowns brought, they did bring one interesting element into the mainstream: the gig economy.
With so many people stuck at home with nothing to do, countless side hustles and small businesses popped up, and the precedent set back then has continued to this day. It’s now easier than ever to become a freelancer, and if you’re cut out for it, going freelance can be a very lucrative career move.
Bear in mind, though, that there’s a pretty stark contrast between the skills of an office worker and those of a freelancer. If you’re transitioning from an office job to a freelance career, you’ll first need to get your bearings.
With freelancing being as popular as it is, information is quite easy to find nowadays. As always, your local library has a wealth of in-print and online resources that are freely accessible. Whether you want to get into a behind-the-scenes job like copywriting or editing or take center stage as an online personality, the library has everything you need to figure out your next steps.
Attending Career Workshops at the Library
For those just looking to advance their career in general, the library once again has options. Visit your local library’s website to see if you can find career workshops. While plenty of workshops teach tech skills, as we mentioned earlier, others include broader workplace topics like the array of job search skills and career classes at the Kenton County Public Library.
From management skills to learning how to focus, your local library probably has a class that’s right for you. All you have to do is join one! Want to learn more about how your local library supports job seekers and small business owners? Feel free to visit our Entrepreneurship feature page today!
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