Immersive ways I learn new skills

Have you heard of these? Here's 14 (random) ways to learn new stuff, fast.

While building Shift, I typically write for a veteran audience learning ways to translate the skills they learned in the military to things that make sense to potential civilian employers. Military vets do great work in fast-paced, immersive environments like code academies and startup accelerators, probably because it feels a bit like boot camp! Here are a few ways to fast-forward your knowledge that are broadly applicable beyond veterans. Would love to hear your ideas as well ???

Product Hunt Collections allow you to quickly learn about a bunch of products within a given theme. This is a killer feature I use all the time for product discovery when I find a really interesting collection. The best part is the author will usually do a nice job keeping them up to date and they grow over time. Here’s a collection I made of veteran-founded startups, and there are plenty of fascinating ones like Brain Music or Spectacular Writing Tools.

If you want to go deep around a specific industry (i.e. “Marketing”), Product Hunt Topics are a great way to immerse yourself and quickly learn about all the new products launching in that industry every day.

This is an all-timer from Mark Suster, “Why You Need to Take 50 Coffee Meetings”. If you want to quickly learn about a new industry you’re doing yourself a disservice if you stick to books and blogs. Carve out time each week and do a few in-person meetings, or go all out and do 50 in two weeks. Try to find people who are just a few steps ahead in your prospective career, ask them for a connection to someone else in their industry at the end of the meeting, and start growing your network from there.

Say you’re leaving the military soon and you’re stationed at the Pentagon. It would be a great idea to learn what a banker does if you’re considering a transition to that industry! LinkedIn makes it easy to find other veterans who would love to help you out face-to-face with filters and targeted search.

For $29 you can jump into any of the immersive courses at One Month that range from programming skills to content marketing. While you probably won’t be able to get a job as a Rails Engineer after trying out Ruby for a month, these courses take true beginners from zero to programming their own web applications really fast. Some of the more immersive courses cost $299 and allow for 1-on-1 instructor interaction and to meet and build with fellow students (great if you’re trying to find co-founders). I’d personally recommend “Programming for Non-Programmers” as a fast intro to modern web frameworks for anyone thinking through whether they should join a technology company. My referral code gets you a 10% discount ??

Free Code Camp by Quincy Larson and team is another excellent resource for immersing yourself in programming and databases.

Marketing School, by Neil Patel and Eric Siu, brings you 10 minutes of actionable marketing advice every single day. If you listen to all 168 episodes, you’ll get the equivalent of a semester-long immersion in coursework you can’t learn in any degree program. I’m really hoping they repurpose all this great content into a book like Tim Ferriss did with Tools of Titans.

Slack is a collaboration tool that many teams use to communicate and get stuff done. But entire communities of like-minded people have sprung up around topics and interests, offering you a way to grow and learn fast. I love being part of the 1,000+ strong on Operation Code (pictured above) and helping other veterans think through their next career or build up their Upwork profiles.

Jeff Morris Jr. put together an outstanding collection to discover other Slack communities at Chit Chats.

I found out about SkillTests the other day and I’m hooked. What’s it like to interview as a Personal Banker at JP Morgan? How about an Account Strategist at Google? There are tons of tests and it’s easy to lose a whole afternoon learning about different career possibilities.

One thing we’re all pretty excited about in the talent industry is the potential for platforms like these to educate potential hires on what the actual job will be like to increase retention and ensure candidates know what they’re getting into. It’s a win for everyone.

I don’t think there’s a better resource for finding thought leaders with deep expertise than Quora. The knowledge is organized around topics you can follow to stay up to date with the latest trending questions. I personally get geeked about Buying Domain Names and Real Estate. To me, learning is about finding focus around one topic with endless discovery. Quora nails this.

It’s not publicly released yet, but I’m super excited for Mix which accomplishes a similar dynamic for news and fresh content. The team is super responsive and you can request a beta invite here.

Breakout List is a curated collection of fantastic opportunities at companies that are growing like crazy. I’m sorry in advance, you’re probably going to lose another afternoon immersing yourself in this resource. It’s also nice to see a company like Flexport on there who is really serious about hiring veterans to solve some of the most complex global supply chain problems.

I’m a big fan of daily and weekly newsletters because they’re a great way to keep your fingertips on the pulse of things you care about and allow personal growth to become a daily ritual. Pictured above is Raise the Bar by Nick Frost and Danielle Morrill of Mattermark. It’s a newly-created newsletter compiling the best marketing, sales, and growth-related content from across the Internet, and I’m loving it so far.

Starting your own email newsletter is a great way to make a commitment to learning and producing content about a specific topic. What better way to learn how to make an email list than check out Product Hunt’s Topic on Email Marketing?

Finally, check out Inside if you just want to go newsletter crazy ??

That’s all for now. I hope it was helpful ???

Mike Slagh is the founder of Shift, a recruiting pipeline built inside Expa that gives companies direct access to exceptional military veterans. Our talent advocates translate military experiences into traits that make sense to private sector hiring managers. We give recruiting teams a clear view of veteran skills, talents, transferable experience and more.