The more skills you have under your belt, the more you stand out as an attractive job candidate. No matter what age you are, you have the ability to learn timeless new skills that will have a positive impact on your life. The best part about learning new skills is that it doesn’t take much time, money or effort to learn something new. Take a look at some ideas of new skills you can start learning this month and start reaping the benefits.
Creative Writing
Writing is an in-demand skill that every job hopeful needs in order to take the next step up the career ladder. You’ll need strong writing skills for internal and external communications, generating reports, creating presentations and creating content for blog posts and websites. Even a confident writer can improve their writing skills with online tools that help with grammar, word count, spelling and paragraph formatting.
The Word Counter is an online writing tool that can help you figure out common questions like “how many pages is 1000 words” in no time. The number of pages depends on the number of words that fit on the page. Your page count depends on the font type and font size you use, like Arial or Calibri vs Times New Roman.
The margins, headings and subheadings, alignment and whether you use a double space or single space after a period also influence your page count. The good news is that most word processors like Google Docs and Microsoft Word have a built-in word count and character count tool. The best way to improve your writing skills is to use the right tools.
Photo and Video Editing
Digital marketing is everywhere you look, and when it comes to posting content on Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook, posting unedited content just won’t do. Nearly everything posted on social media these days is a photo or video with catchy hashtags and captions. You don’t need professional-level editing skills, but you should learn some basic Photoshop skills for photo editing and iMovie or Final Cut Pro for video editing. Knowing how to work with these programs will take your social media skills to the next level.
Conversational Basics of Language
Being able to speak another language is an empowering life skill to have. Learning another language helps exercise your brain and increase its efficiency. When it comes to learning a new language, a little bit goes a long way. Focus on learning the conversational basics of a new language related to your mother tongue and develop your skills one step at a time. Using a free app like Duolingo is a fun and effective way to start learning new languages.
SEO Optimization
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a fundamental skill when it comes to marketing and brand awareness. Optimizing your content to rank well on search engine results helps you to organically increase brand awareness and better reach your target audience. SEO works best when your employees understand the company strategy and what company goals to work toward. One of the best practices when it comes to SEO is to measure key results and individual performance with OKR software.
Workboard offers several OKRs examples that show how goal setting, conversions, metrics and overall performance produce measurable results to help reach your company goals. The right OKR framework is a good option to help align employees across the organization with company strategy so that your business stays on track.
New Professional Certifications
As a project management professional, it’s important to expand your project management body of knowledge. Earning your PMP certificate from a Registered Education Provider of the Project Management Institute (PMI) can help with your professional growth. Not only that, with the right study materials to help you make the most of your study time, preparing for the PMP certification exam can even be fun.
The PMP prep course from Brain Sensei helps project managers complete the contact hours/PDUs required to sit for the PMP exam. The story-based eLearning PMP exam prep course includes interactive lessons, practice questions, quizzes, mock exams, flashcards, and practice exams. The learning style, study guide, and course material can give you enough time to focus on specific knowledge areas so that you can pass your certification exam with flying colors.
No matter what your interests are, it’s always a good idea to learn a new skill that can benefit you personally and professionally, and there’s no time like the present to start learning!