e-lifeandwork: Learn New Skills Online | Online Courses & Real-World

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens in his 1859 novel “A Tale of Two Cities.” If he’d been writing today, that statement could very much apply to today’s IT personnel and hiring landscape.  For many of the hundreds of thousands who’ve been laid off by tech companies recently, this might well be considered the worst of times — especially with a recession looming. Yet there are plenty among them, and others in the workforce, who could consider this the best of times. Why? Because they possess the most in-demand skillsets and certifications. Despite the layoffs, cutbacks, tightening pursestrings, and general doom and gloom presented in the media, these IT professionals can look forward to higher pay, plenty of offers, perpetual headhunting inquiries and even the occasional bidding war for their talents. Below are some of the hottest skills and certifications in IT, in no particular order.  Filling the IT skills gap Firs...

The new year is a great time to help your business clients reflect on the past 12 months and strategize new ways to improve their bottom lines. This means giving them a deep analysis of their finances over the past fiscal year to help them understand the causes of any financial shortcomings and notable sales trends. More important, it is paramount that you help them pinpoint new ways to boost overall profits. If you can help your business clients discover new tactics to maximize their profits, you’ll set them up for greater success and growth. In my experience as the CEO and founder of CMA Exam Academy (a Certified Management Accountant exam review program), I have discovered some useful ways companies can ramp up their profits. Help Them Locate Waste in Each Business Process As they go through their day-to-day, your clients may not even know that costly waste is happening all over their enterprise. From too much manpower in a delivery fleet to wasted raw materials in a product...

Low-Skilled Workers Are An Untapped Asset If You Invest In Them Organizations around the world continue to struggle to attract the talent they need, with the shortage leading to intense competition between companies. This is prompting organizations to look wherever they can for the skills they need. A recent paper from Harvard Business School highlights how low-skilled workers are often an untapped resource, and that improving the skills of workers already on the payroll is often a more effective solution than looking externally. The report reveals, however, that low-paid workers are often criminally underinvested in by their employers, with many succumbing to the belief that there is a naturally high turnover of such staff, so there is no point in investing in them. "Most employers show little engagement in workers’ lives, provide minimal support for skill-building, give infrequent or unclear feedback, and offer almost no guidance on career pathways," the authors ...

As the jobs market remains tight (mass layoffs and hiring freezes in tech aside), companies are laser-focused on retaining staff. One of the areas they’re investing in is upskilling, which aims to teach employees new skills in departments with which they’re unfamiliar. For example, Walmart announced in 2021 that it would invest nearly $1 billion over the next five years to provide its employees with access to higher education and training. Unsurprisingly, “skilling” platforms have benefited enormously from these investments. According to Crunchbase, upskilling and reskilling startups raised $2.1 billion from VCs between early 2021 and 2022. One of the winners is GrowthSpace, founded by Omer Glass, which leverages algorithms to match individual employees and groups of employees with experts for development sprints. The company today announced that it raised $25 million in Series B financing led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund) and Vertex Vent...

A few years ago, I was listening to one of my favourite podcasts, Recode/ Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, a reportre-preneur who has been covering Silicon Valley’s tech and startup scene since the early 90’s. As she interviewed whatever founder, tech mogul, or politico she had on that day she made an almost offhand comment, “every job that can be digitized, will be digitized… it’s only a matter of time for the economics to work”. Wow! That was a game-changer that made infinite sense to me.  I found myself coming back to this notion many times in the days that followed, and wondering (probably more for the sake of my own job security than anything else): what jobs, then, will be left for the humans?  In 2018, the Royal Bank of Canada put out a white paper called Humans Wanted. The report studied what impacts technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics were expected to have on the Canadian labour force. In it, experts predicted that “by 2028 ...

Nicky Garcea, Co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of Cappfinity. getty Before the pandemic, it was business as usual: Everyone was tucked into their cubicles, being as productive as possible, and perhaps waiting for the next great opportunity to move ahead. Covid-19 changed that, possibly forever. Now companies need to rethink the kinds of talent they want or need to attract, and define talent slightly differently than they were accustomed to doing. Even here at Cappfinity, we’re asking that candidates describe their strengths, soft or durable skills in greater detail, rather than focus on a history of their past experience. What does this changing hiring landscape look like?  In the customer service arena, soft skills might include traits like empathy, patience and delivering stellar advice. If those skills were developed in a restaurant setting, but the candidate is applying to work in a call center, in the past they may have been considered a poor candidate. Now...

Current and aspiring cybersecurity professionals named cloud security, data analysis and coding/programming as the top three most important skills to possess if you’re looking to join the cyber workforce today. Those findings came from a new survey-based research report from the International Information System Security Certification Consortium, or (ISC)². For its “Cybersecurity Career Pursuers Study,” the non-profit organization polled 1,024 cybersecurity pros across the U.S. and Canada, along with 1,010 cybersecurity jobseekers looking to land their first position. Twenty-five percent of the former group and 19% of the latter group said cloud security was one of the two most important technical skills or concepts to learn. The study further validates cloud security as an imperative industry focus moving forward as organizations continue migrating business processes to third-party online services as a means to reduce cost and transfer risk. “While prior to early 2020, mig...

Machine learning, one of the driving components of artificial intelligence, has emerged as a leading factor in digital business transformation. As enterprises seek to harness the oceans of data and processes generated in this digitization shift, AI and machine learning have become valuable tools that allow companies to leverage that data to make insights and predictions that lead to calculated decision making.  As the adoption of AI in enterprises continues to grow, organizations have begun to see the value in establishing data science and analytics teams to elevate and expand the use of machine learning throughout the enterprise.  What is Machine Learning? A foundational factor in AI, machine learning is a type of data analysis that uses algorithms to identify patterns that allow systems and software to learn and predict outcomes without any programming.  Also, known as predictive analytics, machine learning is at work every time we scroll through recommendations...