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Charge Up Your IT Career by Upskilling

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For the last decade, career advice has boiled down to a simple maxim: if you want a promotion, you need to change your job.

As more top-tier companies work to retain top talent, this advice no longer applies. Now, upskilling is one of the best ways to change the course of your career. By seeking new skills and reaching for new opportunities, you can find ways to move laterally or vertically in your company or into a new one.

Here’s how you can get started with upskilling in your career.

Make It a Habit to Learn Every Month

Upskilling works best when you commit to it long-term. However, you don’t need to enroll in a new certification or course every month. Instead, using bite-sized learning opportunities to pick up a new skill every month can help set you up for career-long learning.

Find something you’re passionate about, and get to grips with it piece-by-piece. You’ll find that you keep your learning achievable while also finding new ways to apply your lessons to your work today.

Learn from Team Members

Digital learning platforms are all the rage among Fortune 100 groups, but they can miss out on important learning opportunities that are right in front of you.

Your team members have more knowledge and skills than you know about. You can work together to ‘knowledge-share’ as a form of upskilling, which allows you to swap technical skills and practice teaching.

Invest in Your Soft Skills

Whether you work with technology or in technology, it’s important to remember that tech skills aren’t everything. Soft skills are also in need of continuous development, and they often get neglected.

Dedicate some of your time to developing yourself as a leader and a co-worker and honing your emotional intelligence. These skills will help you make the most of your tech skills and better position you for new opportunities.

Upskilling Can Change Your Life

Upskilling can do more than help you take the next step in your career. It’s also an opportunity to develop your passions, grow your life experiences, and enhance your ability to work and connect with others.

So whether your current employer offers a complete continuing education program or you need to cobble your learning experiences together on your own, upskilling is a worthwhile investment.

Are you looking to share your skills with the right client?  Visit RightStone’s job board to see what opportunities await you.

Upskill Your Workforce and Bridge the Skills Gap

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Finding new candidates who have highly sought after skills is challenging. Competing for them is even tougher. But you don’t need to join the pile and wrestle your competition for every single new candidate. Instead, you can bridge the skills gap by upskilling your employees. 

 Upskilling allows you to train your current team in these in-demand skills while keeping them in the same role. 

You Can’t Hire Your Way Out of the Skills Gap 

One reason upskilling (and reskilling) is so important is because it’s physically impossible to hire your way out of the skills shortage. The problem is too vast, and in-demand skills change too rapidly to ever keep up. One statistic says only 20% of today’s workforce has the skills needed for 60% of the jobs that will arrive over the next five to ten years. 

What’s more, hiring for technical skills won’t necessarily work. You can teach or pay for upskilling in cybersecurity or engineering.  But finding those candidates doesn’t mean that they’ll also offer essential soft skills, like communication and creative thinking. And those things can be much harder to teach. 

Upskilling Contributes to Professional Development 

Surveys suggest that employees are already upskilling, but they’re doing it on their own time and without support from their employer. You might think that’s good news, but it’s not. 

Employers who don’t offer the kind of professional development that keeps teams learning, growing, and preparing for the future find themselves with unengaged employees.  

Employee engagement is critical for your business’ success, but as many as 70% of employees aren’t engaged at work. Disengaged employees are less likely to be invested in their work, and when they do upskill, they’re more likely to take all their handy new skills to your competitor. 

By actively pursuing upskilling programs, you’re making your current employees more valuable to your company and you’re making them feel more valuable. You’ll see that value quickly: companies with engaged employees have revenues that are 2.5x those companies with low engagement levels. 

The Best Time to Upskill is Now 

Upskilling your employees will help you bridge the technology skill shortage and make you more competitive. Not only does the practice address the root of the problem, but it’s also a valuable investment in your company’s biggest assets: your workers. 

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to start thinking about your plan for upskilling to complement your hiring practices. 

Are you looking for the right expertise for your team? Ready to add new skills? Want to know how we find and place skilled candidates with the clients who need them? Get in touch to learn how our RightStone 360 program can help you do all of the above.