Useful Tech Skills To Add To Your Resume

By Joe Issid
Monster Contributor

When I was applying for my first job in the mid ‘90s, I proudly listed ‘Internet Browsing’ and ‘Netscape Navigator’ as prominent technical skill on my resume. And I wasn’t being facetious. These were relatively uncommon skills to have at the time and helped boost the appeal of my application. How things have changed. The personal computing revolution has altered the way business is conducted and the relative skill sets of workers around the world. Where a ‘Computer Skills’ section was a mandatory element on a resume a decade ago, it is simply assumed that a candidate for any office-related job today has a fairly broad technical aptitude. Knowing how to use email or to perform online research is a given; almost akin to being able to write back in the day. But are there still some technical skills that the average non-technical office worker can benefit from? Can you bolster your career by taking on a new technical skill?

Improve on existing knowledge

There is a famous expression that claims that humans only use 10% of their brains. While this is debatable, it is inarguable that most of us use only a fraction of a particular piece of software’s overall functionality. A good example is Microsoft Excel. While most of use this spreadsheet software frequently in our office lives, most of us likely only use it as a simple data sheet and calculator. However, Excel is, among other things, an extremely powerful reporting and analytics software. Excel is capable of performing extremely complex tasks using relatively simple interfaces. The truth is that very few of us have ever taken a course on Excel, and, as such, are relatively ignorant about the things that seemingly simple software can perform. If you spend a good deal of time pouring over spreadsheets in your daily life, an advanced course on MS Office could be of great use to you.

Using Google effectively

Similarly, many people believe that the Google search bar is a very simple and basic tool that requires virtually no explanation. I mean, it is a simple text input field. How complex can it be? Right? Well, the Google search bar is actually a versatile tool that allows researchers the ability to perform refined and complex web searches. For example, did you know that you can easily perform negative keyword searches or synonym matches or search for results within a specific web domain using a specific date range? The limits are virtually endless. For anyone looking for a career in research, knowing how to leverage the full power of Google should be an indispensable tool.

Understanding databases

As mentioned before, Excel can be used for many things. However, it is often mistaken for a database application. While an Excel spreadsheet can store large amounts of data, said data is not formally described or organised in a relational manner (thus impossible to query in a meaningful way). A relational database system typically contains tables with data that have formal relationships with one another that tie common elements to each another. In such a system, extremely complex queries can be run to produce valuable data sets. Anyone in a research or analyst position would benefit tremendously from the intelligence that can be gathered from using even the simplest of database solutions.

Understanding basic web technologies

Most of us have heard the terms HTML or FTP or JavaScript but we may not actually know what they are. As the world becomes more and more virtualised, our daily work lives are becoming more reliant on web technologies. As such, it behooves us to have more than just a cursory understanding of how the web works and what primary technologies are used to create our online experiences. While we may not have the need to design complex a web application, many of us would benefit tremendously from being able to create simple web pages and to understand how to upload them to a web server. Being reliant on a technology that we do not understand can be a very dangerous prospect.

Basic networking

According to Statistics Canada, 1.8 million (11.2%) Canadian employees worked from home regularly in 2008 – up more than 10% from 2000. Clearly, the average Canadian worker has become a lot more self-sufficient from a technological standpoint. Having said that, the average IT Systems Administrator has likely spent more time troubleshooting remote access problems than at any other time in human history. To wit, how often have you felt completely helpless when your office VPN has gone down or why you can’t receive work email on your home laptop? Understanding basic networking principles will give you the tools to troubleshoot any networking issues that you may encounter when you are far from the office and don’t have access to your local IT guy. As our jobs become more reliant on existing and emerging technologies, our technical knowledge should expand at a similar rate. In an increasingly competitive employment marketplace, having a wide range of technical aptitudes can be the element that separates you from the herd.

If you have any questions or comments on this piece, feel free to reach out Joe at Joe@thescrib.com