Educational Courses That Can Benefit Your Career

By Joe Issid
Monster Contributing Writer

I have previously argued that a traditional post-secondary education is becoming less and less valuable in today’s job marketplace.

Unless you are looking to earn a professional degree (i.e. law or medicine) or acquire a skilled trade (i.e. electrician or plumber), your overall career arc will render a good portion of your education irrelevant. Having said that, a post-secondary education provides you with a framework that allows you to develop invaluable skills that cannot be learned elsewhere, namely critical thinking, autonomy, decision making, prioritisation and team work.

But what do you do if you are mid-career and are looking for a change or a career boost? Most of us don’t can’t afford (or simply lack the necessary time) to go back to school full-time. This is an unrealistic endeavour for most people.

However, there are countless professional courses that are available that help many people learn a new skill and pad their resumes. Here are a few:

Communication

Time and again, I have seen very qualified people struggle to advance in their careers simply due to a lack of professional polish. A course on professional communication strategies can be extremely valuable to anyone working in a corporate environment. Learning skills about how to interact with colleagues in a clear, concise and constructive manner can sound a little ridiculous, but it is remarkable how many experienced professionals lack the ability to effectively communicate with their colleagues. Most universities offer graduate courses on communications.

Social media

Similarly, most people know how to use Facebook or twitter on a social level but few people are able to effectively use these tools to help enhance their professional lives. As someone who has given lectures on the uses of social media in a professional context, I frequently encounter students who are surprised that social media can be of great benefit to their careers. Taking a course on social media can teach you how to engage with people and businesses that are relevant to you and will help expand your professional network immeasurably.

High-level technical courses

For many people, computers, smartphones and tablets are a necessary evil of working in today’s marketplace. For most of us, a VPN connection failure or an Outlook error message can steal hours from our busy days. Rather than take a course on a specialised piece of software that will be outdated within 6 months, I would recommend taking high-level courses that can teach you the basics of computer networking, software/web design or graphic art. Understanding the theory behind, say, printer networks, could help you fix the seemingly hourly problems that you experience with your printer. Additionally, web or graphic skills can be extremely useful when performing presentations or building a valuable knowledge base for your team. These types of skills span across countless professional disciplines.

Web research

I long held the belief that performing detailed research online required little more than access to Google and a few well-selected keywords. While a basic Google query will provide most people with a quick answer to a question, performing detailed research online is a whole different ball of wax. Over the years, an enormous volume of human knowledge has been transferred to the internet and it is no simple task trying to disseminate it all. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are capable of constructing incredibly complex queries that can return hyper-specific collections of data. Knowing how to use these tools effectively is something that requires a good deal of knowledge and instruction.

Leadership/management

Without exception, every manager that I have ever worked under had received absolutely zero leadership or management training during the course of their career. In fact, many companies promote resources into management positions based on qualifications that are entirely unrelated to management. While some people say that you can’t teach leadership, you can certainly teach people the basic principles of management and how to effectively lead a team. Having never received any formal management training, I was initially overwhelmed when I began first managing a team of people whose livelihoods depended on me. For anyone looking to move into a managerial role, I would strongly suggest investing a few hours a week into attending a leadership class or workshop.

While going back to school full-time is an unrealistic option for many people, taking one or two night courses at a local college or university can make a dramatic difference to your overall career trajectory.

Not only are you learning a new and valuable skill, you are also demonstrating to your current (or potential) employer that you are committed to your career and motivated to continue advancing. I can assure you, making these investments in your career will certainly payoff in the long-term.