How COVID-19 Taught us the Importance of Upskilling
Your skillset might be something you like to brag about. Maybe only a handful of your co-workers can even boast of such skills (luckily, you might even be the only one). Perhaps, it always comes in handy every time your organization needs that niche expertise. It saves your organization money, solves numerous clients’ problems, and makes your organization have an edge over its close competitors.
Congratulations, you are top-notch. You are exactly what every 21st-century organization craves.
But if that is not your situation, you might just find your current position under threat and on the brink of losing your job. Landing your next job role might also not be easy, as you would have to compete with numerous others whose qualifications are the same as yours.
That is the reason upskilling or reskilling is of utmost importance to every employee’s continued success on the job. It helps you have a competitive edge. The time you invest in upskilling helps you build your Unique Selling Point (USP) — that in-demand skill set that sets you above the rest and makes you attractive to potential employers.
What does it mean to Upskill or Reskill?
If your organization has ever sent you on training then you are conversant with the concept of upskilling. Upskilling is the conscious effort to deepen one’s knowledge about a particular field or subject matter. You want to know more about how you can do things better and more efficiently. Upskilling is usually done for upward work mobility.
Reskilling on the other hand is about going out of your field to gain expertise in a new area. This is more common among people who have decided to make career transitions. It is also common among people who seek to gain in-demand skills before moving abroad.
Whichever category you fall into does not matter. What is important is that you ensure that you gain the right skills to stay relevant and stand above the competition.
Why is Upskilling Important?
You do not need to rack your brain before you find out why possessing new skill sets is important. The main reason people upskill is to stay relevant as valuable assets in their places of work. Gone are the days when all you needed to stay relevant was your college degree.
The world of work is changing at such a fast pace that schools find it hard to keep up. Many companies have even shelved the notion of a ‘college degree as a requisite for employment. Google, Facebook, and many other top corporations now outline specified skill training that they consider important for job roles.
To this effect, Linkedin’s Economic Graph has been mapping global employment trends and the in-demand skills that employers seek for job roles. An insight into Linkedin’s report shows that many in-demand skills can be acquired without a college degree. Similarly, soft skills have become equally important to land job roles.
Nowadays, learning job-relevant practical skills — especially in tech — is the most likely route to becoming irresistible to potential employers.
Then…COVID-19 Struck
If employees managed to scale through and get on with their works in the pre-covid world, that changed when COVID struck. The economic downturn that followed meant that organizations had to put in austerity measures to stay afloat. Most had to lay off substantial numbers of employees — leaving only those whose roles were essential to organizations’ survival.
For those who did not lose their jobs, working from home, and collaborating with teammates over the internet became the new normal.
Our Unprecedented Embrace of Technology
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, usage of terms like remote working, virtual meeting, video conferencing, and cross-platform collaborations, have increased exponentially.
This is not surprising.
Technology has provided the platform upon which many organizations could continue operations. It became the single most important reason the world was able to navigate the collapse of the global economy
According to The Guardian (UK) Zoom’s video conferencing greatly served business purposes at the height of the pandemic. Additionally, the platform’s free version that allows for up to 40 minutes of free over-the-net calls was used by many for interpersonal communications. As stated by Guardian “a socially-distanced world reconvened in cyberspace with the help of Silicon Valley video conference app”.
As the world slowly emerges from the pandemic, we have fully embraced a new way of doing things. Working from home and the gig economy has become the new normal. Tech giant, Twitter went a step further in May 2020 to announce a ‘Work from Home Forever’ option for its employers.
It is now evident that tech expertise will continually grow in demand going forward. Similarly, staying job-relevant will become tied to the level of tech skills that one possesses.
If you are looking to upskill, or as the case may be, reskill, here are a few steps you need to take.
Know What You Want
It is very easy to get carried away by the buzz that surrounds learning new skills these days. All the nooks and crannies of social media platforms are flocked with advertisements encouraging people to hop in and learn something new.
As an individual, you must know what courses or which programs will work best for your upskilling and personal development. It is not enough to enrol because everyone you know is taking that step.
Ultimately, it boils down to what you want, and the future outlook of employment in your chosen field.
Online is the New Normal, Embrace it
If there is one other thing COVID-19 has made further clear, it is the fact that co-working or co-learning within the walls of an office or classroom is not sacrosanct. At the height of the pandemic, millions of people turned to online learning platforms to keep busy, while also gaining new skills that they deem important for their personal and career improvement.
Put simply, acquiring skills online is the new normal.
With a laptop or even a mobile device (as the case may be), and a good internet connection, the only thing that can stop you is YOU.
If your fears are about getting stuck at some point, there is no need to panic. Most online learning platforms have online communities that support learners on different course-related and topic-specific issues. So, you are never alone.
Learn In-demand Tech Skills
Just look at the extent to which you used technology at the height of COVID-19. From Zoom meetings to Trello collaboration, Slack communications, Google Docs, and Microsoft Excel file sharing. Even personal issues like online purchases and yoga classes were all made possible through technology.
It is crystal clear — the demand for tech skills has exploded.
Now that economies are opening up many organizations have even opted for online interviews and assessments in place of in-office discussions.
Let’s cut the story short, tech has become (and keeps becoming) an integral part of our everyday lives.
This also provides an opportunity in itself. If we rely on technology so much, then a tech career is certainly promising and rewarding. Tech fields like Data Science, UI/UX design, Cloud Engineering, Software Development, Software Testing, etc. are in high demand and are equally rewarding.
If you are interested in learning these in-demand skills, then you should consider upskilling with Ydev Academy. Courses on offer include all those mentioned above and other in-demand courses like Dev-Ops and Product Design. You can follow this link to learn more, sign up and kickstart a glowing career in tech.
Final Note
We must acknowledge that COVID-19 has greatly impacted the way we do a lot of things. At the same time, dwelling on the negative impacts of the pandemic only shifts our attention away from the changing realities, it has brought to our workplace.
For those who can see through the chaos of COVID-19, it is clear that the adoption and consumption of tech will never go back to what they used to be in the pre-COVID world. Now is the time to upskill; grab those new opportunities, and stay relevant. In the post-COVID world, those with in-demand, job-ready tech skills are well-positioned to run the world.
