Education can be a shortcut to a better career — but you need to know what type of education to pursue to boost your career prospects. Fortunately, you do not need to invest years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars in a formal degree program to reap the rewards of education. There are plenty of short courses online from prestigious universities that can offer you the skills and knowledge you need to help you attain the career you have always dreamed of. Some courses you should consider pursuing today include:
Resume Writing
Resume writing is an incredibly valuable skill, considering that it is typically your resume that gets your foot in the door during the recruitment process. Excellent resume writers can win interviews for almost any job opening to which they apply, which means they tend to be a major step ahead of their competition.
Resume trends shift every few years, so if you are in the habit of job-hopping to advance your career, you might want to enroll in a resume writing online course every so often to keep your resume looking sharp.
Digital Marketing
A decade or two ago, digital marketing was a brand-new concept, but today, businesses cannot survive without effective digital marketing strategies. Because experienced digital marketers are in such high demand, building and maintaining this skill will make you more attractive to small and medium-sized businesses, which rely heavily on successful marketing to grow.
If you are interested in entrepreneurship, it is imperative that you have some digital marketing skills. Fortunately, digital marketing online courses are relatively easy to find.
Project Management
Many companies organize tasks into projects, and they utilize the expertise of project managers to keep teams on track to achieve shared goals. A graduate diploma in project management requires specific knowledge and skill beyond typical business management; managers usually need additional training in the field of project management to function effectively in this role.
However, pursuing this extra education can be valuable as project managers earn strong starting salaries and are well-positioned for further promotions into business leadership.
Accounting
You might want to take a few courses in accounting as a means of shoring up your own personal finances, which will help you in your pursuit of wealth.
In your professional life, accounting skills earned through an online course can be applied to business leadership roles, where you will need to understand how to balance budgets to keep your team expenses under control. However, if you are hoping to become a credentialed accountant to work with clients, you will need to enroll in a more formal accounting program.
Economics
The economy is incredibly influential on almost every aspect of modern life, from the price of gas to the availability of jobs. Business leaders can study microeconomics to better understand consumer decision-making and tailor their products and marketing to their target audience.
Leaders can also study macroeconomics to learn how broader economic factors, like interest rates, affect business opportunities to hone their business strategies. Economics is easily among the most useful fields for business professionals looking to get ahead.
Technical and Copywriting
Though many people view writing as a talent you are (or are not) born with, writing is actually a skill that anyone can attain through practice. Yet, because many are unwilling or unable to develop their writing abilities — and because artificial intelligence has not yet fully mastered this creative task — confident and capable writers remain in high demand.
Technical writers can help individuals and businesses document complex and often jargon-heavy processes into comprehensible language. Meanwhile, copywriters generate text for almost anything, most usually marketing materials like blogs, webpages, and product packaging.
You can also find online courses for copyediting, which involves proofing written works for errors before publication.
Coding
Last but not least, you can enroll in an online course to learn to code. In the digital age, businesses need and use a variety of computer programming skills, which are easy to learn online through free programs and plenty of practice.
Web development and design, in particular, are practical skills that are likely to serve you well throughout your career. As more and more organizations undergo digital transformations, advancing your familiarity with digital technologies is a good way to make yourself valuable to any employer.
You can find an online course for almost any type of knowledge you might need in your career. Yet, if you are looking for help with your career direction, you will find plenty of value in any of the above skills, which are widely available through online education.
