Always Be Learning: How to Gain New Career Skills

Career development doesn't end when you land a job. Nor does it become entirely your employer's responsibility. Lifelong earning about your industry and your profession (as well as adding peripheral skills) not only makes you more valuable to a current or future employer, but also provides new opportunities to network -- on your own behalf or on your employer's.

And recent HotJobs polls show that taking steps to gain new skills can really put yourself ahead of your career competition. When asked, "In the past year, have you enrolled in career-related classes or training (not mandated by an employer)?" 59 percent said no. And when asked how many career- or professional-development books they'd read in the preceding year, 60 percent said, "None."

So there are two good ideas right there: reading a book and enrolling in a class. And then after you read that book or take that class, think about how you can maximize your effort -- and advance your career or add some polish to your professional profile. For instance, you could:

• Start a discussion about what you've learned, in an industry forum.
• Write a book review or a class summary for your blog or for a company intranet or newsletter.
• Offer to create a presentation about what you've learned, for your colleagues.
• Start a conversation with the book's author on a social platform.
• Add the class's teacher to your professional network.

 

All of these ideas would allow you to use what you've learned to "show off" a little bit. And as long as you don't take it to annoying extremes, that's what professional self-promotion is all about.

But taking a class and reading a book aren't the only ways to learn new things. Here are some other ideas:

• Attend industry conferences and seminars (often, volunteering at a conference is a great way to attend sessions for free or for a discount).
• Look for online seminars (or "webinars"); these are often free or relatively low cost.
• Create Web alerts for terms related to your industry, so you can stay abreast of news and developments in your profession.
• Conduct informational interviews, or ask to job-shadow people in other professions or departments.
• Institute a knowledge-sharing program at your work, at which people share their field's best practices with other teams. (Or just start a lunch-break book club, at which you read and discuss professional-development books.)
• Study a language -- although English is an international language of business, knowing a little bit of a foreign tongue can be incredibly helpful in a shrinking world.

 

This is by no means an exhaustive list (for more learning ideas, see "Fun Ways to Beef Up Your Resume") -- but I hope it gets you thinking about ways you can gain new skills. Now share your ideas in the Comments section below.

Also, did you know you can get rewards for learning new skills and performing other career-building activities? Check out DailyFeats, a new community where you earn points, build community, and save money on real-life expenses, just by doing good. 

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