5 Skills You Can Learn in 1-Month to Make Career Moves
Looking to do something new? Try one of these popular skills.
People often want to break into business or technology, but worry they don’t have the degree.
Please don’t go back to school, save your money, and try one of these first.
No fancy certifications, just hard skills that can be learned for free or at a very minimal cost, on your own time.
Note: You could probably learn some of these in less than a month- time permitting.
1. Excel
Don’t roll your eyes!
Everyone writes Excel as a skill on their resume, but do you really, REALLY know how to use it?
I’m talking pivot tables, formulas, and macros.
You can learn all of these by watching YouTube videos. Start with these 3.
There are loads of in-demand jobs that require advanced excel skills and that pay pretty well. Give yourself a few projects and think of fun ways you can use excel in your everyday life to practice. Think creating your own budget or keeping sports stats for your favorite team.
Top excel users can earn up to $70,000 a year to start.
2. Business Intelligence Tools
Tools like Power BI & Tableau are extremely popular and many companies hire people specifically to create these digital dashboards. It is so crucial for senior leadership at companies to be able to quickly visualize large amounts of data and the skills to build these boards are hard to find since no one teaches it in school.
Tableau tends to be more expensive, but there are a few certifications you can earn if you head to the Tableau site and have the funds. https://www.tableau.com/learn
Power BI is free and you can take a Udemy course for $18.
This is another tool you can make a fun project for your own personal budget or any other large data sets.
A business intelligence analyst salary is $85,000 a year on average.
3. Agile
Agile is a software development methodology that nearly every company is using to some extent. It is the philosophy around how software should be developed and no software engineering experience is necessary to understand the process.
Someone who understands agile could become an Agile Coach or Scrum Master to a software team. These people are responsible for making sure teams are following the Agile process and that the project is moving smoothly.
A typical coach or Scrum Master earns $95,000 a year on average.
You can earn a basic certification in Agile that can open doors called the PSM 1 for about $200 (which I know is a steeper investment than the top 2).
To pass, you just need to understand this short scrum guide very thoroughly.
You can learn more about what Agile is here.
4. Email and Content Marketing
It takes a bit of study to understand how to create a good content and email marketing strategy. Every company needs it though and lucky for you, Hubspot offers free certifications in email, content, social media, inbound marketing, etc. I’ve done a few of these and the time to completion is definitely worth taking a look.
These will give you the foundations you need to jump start your career in Digital Marketing.
A digital marketer can earn on average $60,000 a year.
5. Python
If you want to get into programing, python is an extremely versatile language that is considerably easier to understand than older languages. It has applications in machine learning and AI (very hot areas in tech right now), but also applications in growth hacking/marketing and simple automation.
Being able to automate mundane tasks alone can land you a great gig and is a great place to start with programming.
An automation analyst earns on average $70,000 a year. While full-blown python developers earn around $90,000 on average to start.
You can learn Python online 100% for free using Codeacademy. Or if you don’t mind spending a few bucks, this Udemy course is highly regarded for $18.
