Unlike the majority of sectors, the E-learning industry has been booming at an unprecedented rate in the COVID-19 era. According to a CNBC report, BYJU, a learning application “has recorded a 150% rise in enrollments in March.” UpGrad, a learning platform for working professionals, also clocked in a record of 4,000 enrollments during April.
This all stands for E-learning as the best medium to upgrade, update, and acquire new skills anytime, anywhere you wish to. Whatever your goals are for 2021; to take on a bigger project, start a new job, or lead a team, learning new skills can help you stand out for that next opportunity.
We dug in the newly emerging positions, the job market requirements, and the most standing-out careers in 2020, to create a guide for you that includes 7 key skills you need in order to prove yourself professionally in 2021, and how to acquire them through our selection of adequate online courses.
So dive into the list and start learning in-demand skills to future-proof yourself and adapt to the rapidly changing world!
1- Project Management & Business Analytics
Managing a project can form a stepping stone in your career, but doing so in such times of disturbance proves to be a challenge. The course we’re recommending to develop your project management skills is:
Suggested course 1: Yassin Tounsi’s Manage your IT Project with Key Templates & Checklists course. What makes this course special is that it applies the Agile methodology in a practical way, allowing you to directly implement the introduced tools in the course on whatever project you’re assigned to manage.
On another note, data has become the foundation of every single business: recruiters want talents who can make sense of it and uncover insights that drive the best business decisions. Business analytics made the most significant jump of any skill in the last years; it’s one of the few hard skills every professional should have, as most roles require some level of business analysis.
That’s why we picked a course that covers the main areas of business analysis you need to learn, which is:
Suggested course 2: 365 Careers Introduction to Business Analytics 2021 course. This course emphasizes data visualization, analytics lifecycle & stages, and a practical case study.
2- Digital Marketing & Branding
Today’s marketing strategy completely depends on Digital Marketing; It helps businesses with Branding, driving Sales & Revenue, and building a better relationship with their customers/prospects. Additionally, digital marketing has wide and dynamic career opportunities, which gives you a huge scope and a multitude of job options right in front of you.
While the Digital Marketing field is massive, we recommend these courses to learn the key principles and elements of Digital marketing:
Suggested course 1: Rob Percival and Daragh Walsh’s The Complete Digital Marketing Course – 12 Courses in 1, which are mainly an encompassing guide for digital marketing strategy, social media marketing, SEO, analytics, and more.
Suggested course 2: Dwayne K. Sutton’s The Climb: 6 Steps to a Powerful Personal Brand course, thoroughly explains how to grow your following, boost your career, and skyrocket your income with a powerful personal brand.
3- Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) augments the capabilities of the human workforce. The people who can harness the power of AI, machine learning, and natural language processing are the ones who will help organizations deliver more relevant, personalized, and innovative products and services.
To be one of those people who will take their organizations a step forward into the future, we recommend two courses:
Suggested course 1: Hadelin de Ponteves, Kirill Eremenko, and SuperDataScience Team Artificial intelligence Masterclass, presenting how to build and implement an AI, Meta-Learning, and practically everything you need to learn about Artificial Intelligence.
Suggested course 2: David Valentine’s Introduction to Machine Learning for Data Science, which is a simplified primer on machine learning for data science.
4- Cybersecurity & Ethical Hacking
Cybersecurity is very important for any company that collects sensitive customer information or sensitive data of its own, to keep its networks secure. The Cybersecurity Specialist job position has a 30% annual growth rate in the US, according to LinkedIn 2020 Emerging Jobs Report.
Along with Cybersecurity and under the same field of IT security, Ethical hacking is seeing unprecedented growth in recent years as growing industries in every sector are in need of ethical hackers to keep their systems safe and out of the reach of black hat hackers.
In this context, we recommend two courses to be your stepping stone into IT Security:
Suggested course 1: Alexander Oni’s The Absolute Beginners Guide to Cyber Security 2021 series, to Learn your way from Information Security to Cyber Security Awareness.
Suggested course 2: Zaid Sabih’s Learn Ethical Hacking From Scratch course, introducing how to become an ethical hacker that can hack and secure computer systems.
5- Full Stack Development
While not a new job, the rapid pace of technology change has made full-stack developers a valuable asset for any company. Both front-end and back-end developers have high demand in many countries, but full-stack developers have even greater demand.
If that’s where you see yourself in the future, check out:
Suggested course: Mark Wahlbeck’s new Beginner Full Stack Web Development: HTML, CSS, React & Node course as a starting point. Mark’s course includes a practical explanation of HTML, CSS, Bootstrap 4, ES6 React, and Node.
6- Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR)
Extended Reality (XR) is the collaboration of both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Many industries, such as entertainment, education, health, manufacturing, and advertising, have already adopted XR technology.
So in 2021, XR technicians are sure to be in high demand. To conquer this field, take a look at:
Suggested course: Debayan Dey’s Augmented Reality in Depth 101 course. This course discusses both AR and VR, emphasizing the differences between the two, their application areas, and their implementation methods.
7- Blockchain
Blockchain is not only used for cryptocurrency, but it is also used for peer-to-peer payments, crowdfunding, file storage, identity management, digital voting, and so on. Therefore, more companies need developers who understand blockchain, smart contracts, and can build decentralized applications.
To be able to perform such tasks, we picked:
Suggested course: Tom Serres, Bettina Warburg, and Dr. Bill’s The Basics of Blockchain: Ethereum, Bitcoin, & More course. As the name suggests, the course is a complete guide to Blockchain basics, connecting the dots between the business, economics, and technology of Blockchain.
Conclusion
To make a place for yourself in the brutally competitive job market, you need to stay updated to the changes of different industries and fields, and accordingly, work on adapting to those changes by having the skills recruiters are looking for.
Finally, we can say that an exciting and fulfilling career is waiting for anyone who masters the skills we included in our guide.