Feature article written by Julia Alice

Upskilling yourself to prepare for the new era is now more of a necessity than an option. The reasons are simple. The new era- as we call it- brings about various challenges from the past decade. A glance at any posting on job boards or LinkedIn would amply prove, employers nowadays have very different requirements from candidates, compared over a year or two ago.

Therefore, to upskill yourself, let’s begin by defining the demands new era in 2021. That would provide a better sense of how to prepare yourself to meet these challenges and succeed.

Defining New Era Demands

The year 2021 marks the beginning of a new decade. And most of us have entered this new decade with uncertainties about the future. As employers grapple with vestiges of the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, it’s imperative for every jobseeker- fresher or veteran- to upskill themselves. Without upskilling, one risks being redundant in the new era as the demand for newer skills gathers momentum.

Therefore, the definition of demands for this new era would be one where majority of persons would have to work from home. Secondly, their skills have to be relevant for online work while being in high demand.  And finally, high productivity combined with capabilities to work under intense pressure are game changers in the highly competitive job market.

Upskilling for new era would also mean one gearing oneself for freelance work that’s becoming more widespread while finding side-gigs has become imminent. That is, if one were to earn incomes that could help avoid running into financial doldrums peculiar to 2020.

Therefore, let’s explore various vistas to up-skill yourself to prepare for the new era.

Ways to Prepare for the New Era

Over 60 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits by December 2020, according to latest figures from Bureau of Labor Statistics. The US national employment rate stood at 6.7 percent by end 2020.

These staggering figures make it imperative for everyone to upskill themselves. And here’re some ways to do so.

Learn an Additional Skill

As I mention earlier, finding a side-gig can help avoid financial problems while helping you to step up savings. Therefore, learning an additional skill could help you find a superb side-gig that could provide a secondary source of income. For example, digital marketing is a superb skill you could master through online courses.

There’re strong reasons for advocating digital marketing. It allows you to start blogging to earn an additional income while offering Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing among other skills, as freelancer. These are online processes that enable you to work from home or any other location.

Additionally, a superb digital marketing course can help you earn as many as 12 internationally valid certifications from top providers including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, to name a few.

Upgrade Existing Skills

While learning something new is fine to launch a side-gig, it’s equally important to upgrade your existing skills to avoid getting redundant in the highly competitive job market that’s emerging due to rampant unemployment triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020.

Figures above clearly indicate the number of unemployed persons in America. Hence, you can anticipate fierce competition for every single vacancy. In fact, it would be prudent to expect applicants with more educational qualifications, work experience and multiple skills to vie for the same vacancy.

There're several free courses on the internet from reputed American universities including Harvard and Stanford that provide an opportunity to upgrade existing skills. Additionally, they provide free certification too.

Unless your skills are the latest relevant in today’s job market, finding employment can prove an uphill task, regardless of your academic qualifications and work experience. Therefore, it’s worthwhile to invest on upgrading your existing skills through various online training programs.

Adapt to the New Normal

The new normal dictates work from home. This means acquiring certain soft skills too as part of upskilling yourself. While all of us do possess soft skills relevant to our work, the year 2021 dictates we have some newer ones while honing those we already possess.

Some of these vital soft skills include stringent self-discipline. This is the foremost soft skill for the new era since you’ll require superb self-discipline to work from home. While work from home or WFH offers the comfort of working on flexible hours, lack of self-discipline could doom your career.

Another soft skill is working as standalone employee. Prior to the pandemic, employers would look for employees capable of teamwork. The need for social distancing negates teamwork to a great extent. Instead, you’ll have to work as a standalone employee and perhaps engage in multitasking too. Because, employers are looking at trimming their payrolls and expect workers to assume several other functions too.

In Conclusion

Before concluding, I’ll add that upskilling yourself isn’t all that difficult as it may appear. Indeed, most of us have been upskilling ourselves over the years. However, these were before the pandemic. The Covid-19 scourge takes the definition of a new era to an entirely new paradigm. And the above tips should help you upskill.