Upskilling Resources to Land Your Dream Job
Career Advice ...
Whether you’re looking for a new job, have been out of work for a while and ready to re-join the workforce, or generally looking to better yourself, there’s something to be said for upskilling. Upskilling looks to take what you already know and make it better, or to learn something new to fill a gap in your knowledge.
There are many different benefits to taking the time to learn a new skill. Not only can you achieve a sense of personal satisfaction, but it can also help your career prospects when you’re searching for a new job and give you an edge over other candidates going for the same role. Being able to demonstrate willingness to learn and acquire new skills always gets looked upon favourably and you might just have upskilled in something that employers are looking for.
Upskilling might also assist in a transition to a different career. Building on your own experiences with additional courses more in-line for more senior roles or in a different industry altogether can help advance your career quicker than what you might expect to achieve otherwise.
And it doesn’t have to be for a change of career either – you might be perfectly happy where you are and want to get better at more transferrable skills such as public speaking, persuasion techniques or time management. There are many different courses and there’s something for everyone.
Free Resources
Learning something new doesn’t have to be expensive. We’ve compiled a list of resources you might find helpful. All of the below resources take place in your own time, meaning you can choose when to learn and fit it around busy schedules.
Alison.com
Alison.com offers 100% free online courses with certificates and diplomas you can add to your CV when looking for your next role. It provides comprehensive training across a multitude of industries, fields and careers and has a discover section if you’re not sure what you need to improve on or what careers would suit you. The courses are free, however, you have to pay for the certificates and diplomas for the courses you take, costing anywhere between £10 - £30.
Alison also have comprehensive career guides, showing which courses they recommend people to take if there’s a particular industry or career they’re interested in.
Reed Courses
Reed offers a range of courses for people to take, with 180 of those being free on their platform. If you’re willing to pay a little extra to train, there are 60,000 courses costing between £10-£50. Their free courses are self-paced, and include HR and management skills, IT and business. Reed also offers CPD-accredited courses and regulated qualifications for those looking for something extra to put on their CVs.
OpenLearn
The Open University offers free courses via OpenLearn, a free platform covering both academic subjects, and skill development. The courses are all at the learner’s pace and works towards a statement of participation. The statement of participation doesn’t carry any formal credit towards a qualification, though there are over 1000 free courses, interactive content, videos and games to look at.
The OpenLearn resources don’t just cover work – it also covers health & well-being, family & relationships, and money & finances to help elevate your personal development.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning runs on a subscription-based service but gives people access to thousands of well-reviewed courses from experts in their industries. As with the rest of the above, the courses are all done on someone’s own time. It offers personalised content, matching learners' current skills with what they would benefit from and employers can arrange to pay for their employee’s subscriptions if they feel they would benefit from additional training. LinkedIn offers a free month’s trial for LinkedIn learning, so feel free to try it out.
What we’re doing
At Yolk, we believe learning is never over and is a core component of becoming bright, bold and better. Our helpful colleagues are always on hand to help you secure your next job.
Nicole Smith from our Legal division is on hand to provide guidance in the form of CV workshops, interview preparation and market research, and team Engineering have been proactive in helping some of their candidates get around difficulties with using video conferencing software for interviews.
Internally, we’re always making sure we’re leading the way in our training programmes helping us to give our clients and candidates the best service possible. We offer people who join our business an intensive training programme to give them the best chance of success, support and get whatever they need, regardless of whether they’re new to recruitment or well-versed in sales.
We’ve supported our own staff even when they are flying the nest. We’ve put our administrator through a finance course, helped a receptionist with her HR qualifications and backed a consultant to become a financial advisor. In our last employee engagement survey, 94% of our colleagues felt there was someone at work who encourages their personal development.
How can we help you? Get in touch with our teams today to land your next role.
