How Continuing Education Helps You Get Ahead

You want your career trajectory to go in one direction–upwards. There are several things you can do to ensure that you keep moving onward and upward, and one of the most important is to pursue continuing education opportunities. You will never run out of courses you can take to enrich your skills, including those related to your career and soft skills that are necessary and transferrable to any job you have in any career.

Continuing Education–Is Your Employer Responsible?

Many employees see continuing education as something their employer should provide, but this is not typically the best way to approach your career. First of all, many employers can’t provide continuing education beyond the most basic training needed to complete daily tasks because their limited budgets don’t allow it.

Second, employers do not always choose the type of continuing education that will advance workers’ careers, either because they’re not interested in promoting from within or because they just don’t know that the worker wants to advance.  You really are not best served by letting your employer control your continuing education, but by self-directed planning that will be more likely to take you in the direction you want to go.

What Skills Do You Need?

When you invest in continuing education, one thing to consider is the skills you want to gain. Knowing where you want to go in your career will help you choose courses that will help you get there, whether it is more knowledge and skills in your field or other necessary skills.

There are all kinds of certificate programs and other courses that can augment or build your skills base in your field and create future opportunities to advance, be promoted or get other, better jobs. There are also courses that teach soft skills, which most employers now consider important criteria in the hiring process.

Interpersonal skills like communication are important for almost every career because of the level of collaboration required in today’s team environment. Other soft skills that are also required for career advancement in many fields are problem solving, evaluation and analysis, which are helpful in troubleshooting problems that occur during projects and maximizing effectiveness in getting them completed.

Continuing Education–More Than Just Advancing Your Skills

Besides advancing all kinds of skills, continuing education also has other benefits for career development as well. Taking courses gives you the opportunity to meet others in your field or other professional contacts that can be helpful to your career in many ways: support, mentorship, and referrals to new jobs, to name a few.

CCSU offers courses in many different career fields including certifications in project management, human resources management, and others. Courses in soft skills are also offered, along with enrichment courses related to many different hobbies that can offer work-life balance or a way to relax. To join the mailing list contact Christa Sterling at csterling@ccsu.edu

 

5 Reasons To Find Your Passion and Fuel Your Life & Career

Having a passion in your life for something good and worthwile is always beneficial, even if you wonder sometimes whether what you are doing matters in your life or those of others. You may already know what you are passionate about, or you may need to work on figuring it out some more.

1.  How Passion Helps Profession (Even When They Seem Unrelated)

Having passion for one thing always translates into other things because passion is exciting and contagious. It isn’t necessarily true that developing a passion will lead directly to a passion for your work, but it’s likely, and it will have positive results in some way, if not directly. Many people find that their passion for charity work or the outdoors or fashion or books–whatever it happens to be–translates into their work in several ways.

2.  Passion energizes you. When you have something in your life that you are passionate about, the energy your passion generates within you will come out in other ways, including in your work. After all, you spend more time at a full-time job than at almost any other thing in your life, except maybe sleeping (and often times, even that). Where else is energy generated by passion going to go, but into your work? At least some of it.

3.  Passion enlarges your perceptions. You begin to see more possibilities in different areas because of the passion in one area and how it changes your perspective on life. At work, this may mean being able to solve problems that stumped you before or just having a more positive attitude about work in general.

4.  Passion spreads joy. When you’re passionate about one thing, you tend to be happier and more joyful about everything in your life, including work.

5.  Passion makes you focused. When you have a passion you want to pursue outside of work, you may be more focused during working hours so work doesn’t cut into your outside passion through overtime or taking longer to get things done.

Your passion may even lead to a new career in that area as you desire to make your passion a bigger part of your life–or its main focus. But even if that doesn’t happen, there are plenty of other positive aspects of finding your passion.

One way to discover your passion is to take continuing education courses on topics that interest you. Continuing education isn’t just for career enrichment; CCSU offers many courses targeted to personal enrichment and interests outside your career. Join the mailing list by contacting Christa Sterling at csterling@ccsu.edu for updated information about everything we offer.

Professional Development Plus a Mentor Equals a Winning Combination

A mentor can be an important part of your career development plan and can work together with continuing education courses to help you reach your career goals for advancement and promotion. Having a mentor can help you with aspects of career development that you can’t accomplish on your own and can give you wise counsel that you couldn’t get otherwise.

Where to Find a Mentor

According to Chronus, more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have a mentoring program in place, and many smaller yet growing companies are following suit. Having a mentor from your workplace can be ideal in helping you figure out office culture and how to get ahead in your particular area. If there is no formal mentoring program at your company, you can suggest it to human resources as a good program to start, or you can try to find your own mentor informally.

When choosing a mentor, look carefully at people who are already doing the job you aspire to do in the future, and who you admire for their work habits and personal qualities. Look for someone well-respected by others and that has a good reputation both in their workplace and outside it.

If your company doesn’t have a suitable mentor, look elsewhere within your field. Just be sure not to reveal any private company information to a mentor if they work for one of your company’s competitors. While most mentors will treat such revelations ethically, it’s best not to take the chance that you might have misjudged someone or that you just don’t know them as well as you think.

You can also find a mentor at professional conferences or continuing education courses that you take for professional development. Having a mentor and taking courses to further your education is a powerful combination for a few reasons.

How Mentors and Courses Complement Each Other

Professional development courses offer the latest information on the topic they cover and are meant to keep your skills and knowledge up to date. A mentor can be someone to share information with and can be a sounding board for what you’re learning in a course, and can also give you a different perspective at time from their own experiences.

A mentor can also help you set goals and hold you accountable, including goals for continuing your education more formally with an advanced degree, certificate, or courses. Most mentors take a personal interest in your successes and want to see you advance in your career. If they didn’t want this, they wouldn’t bother to be a mentor in the first place.

Both mentors and professional development courses can help you grow in your field, and together their effects are compounded to be even more than each one would be alone.

CCSU offers continuing education courses in a wide variety of career fields, some of which can lead to certifications or be used to satisfy continuing education requirements imposed by employers. Join our mailing list for information on our upcoming courses and available offerings.

Hard Data on ‘Soft’ Skills Learned in Professional Development

It is extremely rare that any employee has sufficient technical or professional skill to excuse them from the need for so-called “soft” skills like a positive communication style. Whatever your profession, you can safely assume that you will have more success if your technical skills are accompanied by excellent soft skills like listening ability, professional courtesy, and emotional intelligence.

Seventy-seven percent of employers in a CareerBuilder study said they valued soft skills as much as technical skills, and 16 percent said they valued soft skills even more. Soft skills are important to 93 percent of employers, according to this study, and should not be ignored in your career development.

Some people seem to be born with soft skills. They naturally relate well to people, communicate effectively, and people just like them. While having soft skills can be a natural thing for some, there is still hope for you, even if you are not the type of person who has natural people skills.

Soft Skills Employers Want

The soft skill most in demand by today’s employers is outstanding communication with colleagues and customers. Poor communication causes many problems in the workplace and is way too common a problem for many employers. Without good communication, misunderstandings occur that may cause mistakes, hurt professional relationships, and in general, get in the way of work being done. Employers know that there is a relationship between communication skills and productivity that can’t be ignored.

Leadership ability is another soft skill highly sought by employers, who want to promote from within when they can. Knowing how to lead a team, even when you aren’t the official leader, is a valuable soft skill that helps get the job done.

Other soft skills employers look for when hiring include time management, flexibility, professionalism, and motivation. Organizational skills are highly sought-after as well. These skills make a big difference in how work is accomplished and can mean the difference between know what you’re doing in a job and actually getting the job done.

Soft Skills Can Be Learned

Fortunately, many continuing education and professional development courses address these critical soft skills, which are just as important to maintain as technical skills. If soft skills don’t come naturally to you, there are ways to develop them so your lack of soft skills doesn’t hold you back in your career and make it harder for you to succeed.

Courses in soft skills may involve not only the presentation of information, but also modeling, role playing, and other techniques that allow you to see these skills in action and develop them yourself. As you learn more about these skills and their importance, you will want to add them to your growing skill set in order to make yourself a more valuable employee.

Soft skills courses are offered at CCSU for personal and professional development. To join the mailing list contact Christa Sterling at csterling@ccsu.edu.

 

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Why You Need Continuing Education When Your Career Is Going Well

When you have a career and it is going well, it can be tempting to ignore continuing education. It doesn’t seem very important to gain new skills when the skills you already have seem sufficient for the job that it seems like you will have for the foreseeable future.

There are several reasons why continuing education is equally important for those in a satisfying career and those who are in need of new skills to get a new job. Becoming a lifelong learner comes with benefits both for your career and for your personal development, no matter your level of satisfaction or job security in your present career.

Reasons to Invest in Continuing Education

One reason to take continuing education courses is to excel in your current job. Even if you have good performance reviews, there is always more to learn and ways to improve, and continuing education can help you find out how to continue advancing your skills beyond their current levels. The highest achievers never stop learning and take every opportunity to learn more so they can do more.

When you take continuing education courses, you will likely learn skills and knowledge that will make you stand out from your competition–both in your current job and across other jobs or companies. Continuing education can help you develop a reputation for excellence in your field that others will begin to recognize, admire, and want to emulate.

You may have a goal to advance in your career or get promoted, even if you are happy in your current career field or position. Whether promotion is a specific goal you have right now or not, you may find that advancement opportunites come your way because you have continued your education beyond its current level.

Keeping Your Skills Updated

The fact is that you never know when you will need to have the most up-to-date skills possible in your current position or career. Many fields are now undergoing a period of rapid change due to new automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that could impact up to half of the world economy, much of which is concentrated in the United States.

All this means that there is a 50-50 chance your current job will eventually be automated or replaced by AI techology. Even if your job is not replaced, it is bound to change in significant ways, and continuing education can prepare you for those changes so you can adapt to them instead of being left behind. Many of these changes may be sudden or unexpected, so having continuing education skills can quickly become a necessity rather than just a way to achieve more than might be expected.

CCSU Continuing Education offers courses that can extend and update skills for many careers and fields, keeping you prepared for all the changes that may be just around the bend. Join our mailing list to see the many courses we offer and find the ones that can help you keep your skills current.