Top 5 skills to develop before the end of 2020

“Your 1 month’s Netflix subscription can buy you Two - 10 hour courses online.”

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While we wait in anticipation for the year 2020 to end, we remain hopeful of a vaccine in 2021 that will put the misery of this year to an end. But we also know, there is no fixed timeline that we can attach to all of this. The best we can do is to remain resilient, learn as much as we can and just ‘survive’’. It is therefore become important than ever before to upgrade certain skills to remain relevant in a world that has turned on its head in the past few months and to catapult yourself from survival mode to a winning mode.

 As professionals, we tend to learn most of our professional skills at work and use them for a long time with very little upgrades to the existing skill sets as we go ahead in our careers. Our daily grind and hustle does not leave us enough time to learn New Skills. We do what we do, get back home, do our chores, take care of family, watch TV and go to bed.

If there is one positive that this pandemic has given us, it would be - Time.

 Time with family, time to read, time to cook, time to reconnect, time to get back in shape and more time. When all of this gets over and our lives get back to being safer, we will look back at all the time that we had and did not use better. The few fortunate ones will get back to their grind and continue doing what they were doing. But the majority of the global workforce will remain vulnerable as the opportunities to secure a steady job will be very very few. To be relevant in the near future, it is important to learn new skills. They may be a skill that you have been always thinking of learning or something that you got to know by reading a blog that inspired you to learn the skill.

Below is list of points to consider before picking a new skill to learn.

•  Pick a skill that you can learn now and benefit lifelong.
• Pick something that you can learn right now and implement right away. Not something that will take you number of years to develop, implement and see results.
• A skill set that has an immediate impact on your life, business or work.
• A skill that will make you highly relevant in the current work environment.
• Think practicality. The need of the hour. Could be a soft skill to make you a better person.
• A skill that you can learn at your own pace. You can choose to binge learn or pace it over days, weeks or months.
• Something that you can learn from the comfort of your home.
• At the end of it all you should be able to afford it, complete it and fully implement.

In my 18 years as a working professional, I have come across numerous challenges, but none of this magnitude. No one has. My connections often reach out to me to share their thoughts on the current life-environment (as I would like to call it) and also to seek guidance about how they can be more relevant in the current job market. These calls got me thinking and wondering what is it that has impacted the majority of the population and what will it take to make them come out of it and at least make a living.

 After giving it a good thought and investing in lot of research, below is a list of Top 5 skills that will help anyone become relevant and get a head start in their search for a job or do their own thing. To be successful, one needs to take action and taking action and practicing these skills will hopefully make your life more comfortable than before.

 1. Managing Personal Finances

Most of us are not very good with money. We live paycheck to paycheck and make extravagant purchases to keep up with people whose opinion actually doesn’t matter. We have also come to realize that the world economy thrives on non-essential goods. That is why few people make most of the money by making the general public spend on things they don’t even need. The single most factor that decided if families could survive the pandemic, starting with the lockdown was – Savings.

What we ‘Save’ is what we ‘Earn’.

Keeping a consistent lifestyle irrespective of your annual income-increases is so crucial to have a financial cushion when the going gets tough. Schools don’t teach us about personal finances and we somehow figure it out quite late in life and by that time we are victims of marketing. Here are few books that you can also consider reading to improve your personal finance management skills.

• The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
• I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi
• Unshakeable by Tony Robbins

Here’s some simple math that I would recommend you do: If you have been on a reduced salary due to the pandemic, calculate the total pay you haven’t received and ask yourself, would you have managed with this much if things were normal? Also then calculate the amount you could have saved. As they say “The What-Ifs are the worst.”

2.   Communication Skills

Life is a series of communication. It is the most important personal skill that one needs to develop to succeed in life - at family and work, both. Those who develop strong communication skills do well in life and the ones that excel are the ones who put in effort to keep improving every day. In a technologically advanced world, mastering face to face communication will not be enough. We communicate via various mediums; lectures, web meetings, whatsapp, social media and so many more. There is a myriad range of videos and affordably priced courses available online that one can invest time on to gain relevant knowledge about this skill. Your start point has to be all four of the following:

• Reading
• Listening
• Watching
• Communicating

 The basics will always remain the same but your mastery on the mediums will differentiate you from others. You could opt for courses like Business Communication, Communicating confidently, Corporate Communication, Marketing Communication, Creative thinking, Public Speaking, Communicating on digital platforms, Image Management etc.

 3.   Digital Marketing Skills

Digital Marketing ranks among the top 5 most searched skill development courses online during this pandemic. People have come to realize that harnessing this skill adds a lot of value especially in a scenario that involves working from home or remotely. Technology has rapidly transformed the marketing industry. While the demand of traditional marketing is saturated, there a huge demand for digital marketing. Digital Marketing is therefore a very smart skill and career choice to develop. If you have the right mix of skills, you have the potential to become one of the most in-demand professionals in the world. But it’s important to remember that as technology is transforming every industry, types of jobs that need to be done and the skills required is constantly changing. Here are few skills that are relevant for digital marketing that you can invest in:

• Google analytics
• Content strategy
• How to leverage videos
• Podcasting
• Managing Social media for business

 Getting a hang of these relevant topics will add a lot of value and will arm you with the necessary tools to make your mark.

 4. Technology

There are millions of courses available online on topics ranging from making and editing videos, optimizing online presence, excel, powerpoint skills etc. One of the top topics very soon will be 5G technology and how we can improve business. 5G is going to drastically change the way we communicate across mediums and it’s a worthwhile topic to be aware of. Here is a list of top skills we can learn immediately:

• 5G
• 3D Printing
• Internet of things
• Cybersecurity

These are the popular and trending technologies that you need to learn in order to make a good alternative career in 2020-21.

 5.   Copy-writing (different to Copyright)

Copy-writing is the ability to use the written word to persuade someone to take an action. There is a lot of writing involved in this profession. Copy-writing is a unique skill; which if mastered well, will ensure that you will never have to worry about not having work. Copy-writing is undoubtedly a career that many people pursue, but being successful in this particular line of work is more challenging than the average office job or salaried role. There is a lot of hard work involved. With the growth of online media and heavy consumption, there is immense need for content and content providers. Any company who does online marketers will need a copywriter. Copy-writing is a learnable skill. You get to work from the comfort of your own home at your pace, but deadlines can be very demanding. Prior knowledge of the following skills are important before you embark on your journey of becoming a copywriter.

• A high level of language skills are a must. Any language of your choice.
• An eye for detail and an ability to spot errors in your own work.
• Ability to research
• Good vocabulary
• Open to different perspectives
• Ability to listen well

 Copy-writing is a multi-trillion dollar industry and still no one knows that it exists. If you have the skills, learn more about this discipline and start by looking for freelancing copywriter assignments to build up a body of work. Once you have some work to show, you will eventually get more work. Copy-writing skills come in handy if you have aspirations of becoming a social media influencer.

In summary, while we wait for things to get better, it will serve us best that we invest in learning whatever we think is relevant, just to be in the game. All of these skills can be learnt for as little as $10 online. I have shared a list of websites that you can look through to choose a course of your choice.

• Diverse learning - Udemy.com, Coursera, CreativeLive, UnAcademy.
• Coaching – Coach.me, The Muse
• Languages – Babbel, Duolingo
• Online Training – OpenSesame, Thinkful
• Practical Skills – Code Academy, GeneralAssembly, SkillCrush, Skillshare, Udacity.

If this post inspired you to take action, please don’t forget to let me know.

These tough times call for tough measures. Rising up and taking action is the best you can do.

Do something...

Just start!

Thank you for reading. If you liked this article, do share your thoughts in the comments section and share with your network. Also, please feel free to reach out to me if I could be of any help.

 Happy Learning!