Category / Upskilling

by Nicolle

Start upskilling for AI now

In 2017, roughly 70,000 postings requested AI skills in the U.S., according to our analysis of job postings. That’s a significant change, amounting to growth of 252% compared to 2010. Burning Glass also found that demand for AI skills is now showing up in a wide range of industries including retail, health care, include finance and insurance, manufacturing, information and professional services, technical services, and science/research. – Burning Glass Technologies

I’ve been seeing AI skills pop up in random job posts. I’ve wondered if it’s part of a bigger trend. It’s hard to get perspective since I’m not in the job market. Amazon leads the hiring for AI skills by a mile but GM, Accenture and Deloitte are also investing heavily. The most in-demand AI skills:

software developer/engineer, data scientist, data mining/data analyst, data engineer, computer systems engineer/architect, medical secretary, systems analyst, product manager and business management analyst.

Medical secretary threw me for a loop. Maybe because they’re working with new AI medical technology? Regardless it’s time to upskill.

 

by Nicolle

I keep failing at upskilling so here’s profesh New Years Resolution #2

I struggle with upskilling. I’ve failed out of more Coursera courses than I can count. I struggle with procrastination and attention (it’s the online course vs. the entire internet vs. Twitter vs. Instagram). Five ago I completed a Financial Accounting MOOC from Wharton just to see if I could do it (I did). Since then I haven’t managed to make it through a coding class or a data analytics specialization, despite desperately wanting those skills and being quite curious about them).

Last week I found this wonderfully in-depth article on learning to code in 2018. It’s written by Andrei Neagoie, a senior software developer, who is currently “building the ultimate course to teach dev skills.” The article is written in a way that made me feel like I could most definitely absolutely learn javascript in 2018.  If you’re thinking about upgrading your technical skills (even if some say it might be too late for your industry), read the article.

I’ve signed up for his ultimate course. As a course designer I want to see his instructional design approach. As a career coach, I want to understand the process people go through as they try to upskill, so I can build better courses to help them do it. As a person who needs to get her shit together and upskill, I want to upgrade my technical abilities and build interactive websites.

So here’s to 2018, the year of the upskill! 

 

by Nicolle

So how you feeling about your future career?

“So what should we tell our children? That to stay ahead, you need to focus on your ability to continuously adapt, engage with others in that process, and most importantly retain your core sense of identity and values. For students, it’s not just about acquiring knowledge, but about how to learn. For the rest of us, we should remember that intellectual complacency is not our friend and that learning – not just new things but new ways of thinking – is a life-long endeavour.” Blair Sheppard Global Leader, Strategy and Leadership Development, PwC

60% think ‘few people will have stable, long-term employment in the future’. PwC survey of 10,029 members of the general population based in China, Germany, India, the UK and the US.

74% believe it’s their own responsibility to update their skills rather than relying on any employer.

Source: PWC Workforce of the Future report.

Upward mobility and clear career progression are no longer guaranteed. So how does this shape what we teach students about their careers? Learning to write a resume and taking career assessments seem quite pointless in the face of type of change.

by Nicolle

Harsh words, harsher realities

“You’re out of time. If you can’t already write a piece of code to find the longest palindrome in a string, you probably won’t be able to do so before the automation revolution deals a body blow to your banking job sometime around 2022. Cathy Bessant, the chief technology and operations officer at Bank of America, said as much in conversation with Bloomberg last month. If you’re a bank employee who’s technologically illiterate, Bessant said it’s no good rushing to do a few coding courses on the side. You’re too late: things are moving too fast. “The kind of skills that we’ll need have to be taught beginning at a much earlier age,” said Bessant. “Whether you can train the same worker at the same time you’re changing their job remains to be seen.” – Can’t Code? The only other thing that will save your job

Immediate thoughts: 

Does this include executives and leadership?

Are they doing any work to train their best and brightest in these skills?

Where will these bankers go now?

Does it even matter since this is the new reality:

“Huy Nguyen Trieu, the former head of macro structuring at Citi, told us he knows of a team of just four algorithmic traders who now manage 70% of the trades that were done by 140 people in 2010″

Luckily there’s a sliver of hope for bankers in form of soft skills:

“Not for nothing has Goldman Sachs president David Solomon been extolling the virtues of a well-rounded education that incorporates public speaking and communication. Just as banks need geeks, they’ll also need exceptionally charismatic individuals to act as the face of the new automated reality.”

Maybe I should launch a new workshop as part of my power skills series: How to Charm the Pants Off of Your Audience and Save Your Job

by Nicolle

GE helps employees make their internal moves

GE isn’t a company that comes to mind as innovative, yet their current work in talent development and helping employees navigate their careers is quite forward-thinking:

Using data on the historical movement of GE employees and the relatedness of jobs (which is based on their descriptions), the app helps people uncover potential opportunities throughout the company, not just in their own business unit or geography. Lots of companies post open positions on their websites. What’s different about this tool, says Gallman, is that it shows someone jobs that aren’t open so that he or she can see what might be possible in his or her GE career.

Showing employees what’s possible, regardless if the opportunity is available, is a smart move. It helps anchor the company in the employees mind, giving them a path to work towards. I left a few jobs because I had no idea of what was possible (and neither did my boss). Having multiple paths to explore can open up valuable conversations and go a long ways in retaining talent. Pair that with a new tool that “recommends the training or education someone needs to better perform his or her existing job and to progress.” GE is making clever use of new analytics and algorithmic tools to retain employees.

by Nicolle

The Future of Work from an L&D perspective

As stewards of your company’s value, you need to understand how to get your people ready—not because it’s a nice thing to do but because the competitive advantage of early adopters of advanced algorithms and robotics will rapidly diminish. Simply put, companies will differentiate themselves not just by having the tools but by how their people interact with those tools and make the complex decisions that they must make in the course of doing their work. The greater the use of information-rich tools, the more important the decisions are that are still made by people. That, in turn, increases the importance of continuous learning. Workers, managers, and executives need to keep up with the machines and be able to interpret their results. – Putting Lifelong Learning on the Agenda,McKinsey Insights

Here’s a company that’s living that advice:

“The future of learning sabbaticals at Buffer is closely tied with our desire to help create the future of work. There’s a quote from Stephanie Ricci, head of learning at AXA that’s really powerful in explaining how much impact learning will have for employees in the future:

“By 2020, the core skills required by jobs are not on the radar today, hence we need to rethink the development of skills, with 50% of our jobs requiring significant change in terms of skillset”

That is a huge amount of jobs that will require new skills and for organizations and workers that means a lot of learning and developing.”

– Why this company implemented a learning sabbatical for its employees, FastCo

by Nicolle

Treehouse masters career storytelling

I just flaked out on another Coursera course. I thought this would be the time I stuck with it; I even paid for it in hopes I wouldn’t flake. But flake I did.

I’m still focused on upskilling, so I joined another online school, Treehouse. I’ve used them before to learn html and css basics. I love their UX and the entire feel of their learning experience. I’m surprised that feel matters so much to me – but then again learning environments matter offline, so why shouldn’t it matter online?

So I’m onto a new online learning platform, this time focusing on skills that I need right now. I’m taking their WordPress track as all my websites are hosted on WordPress. I can cobble together awesome themes pretty well but I have no idea how WordPress actually works and Treehouse has a robust track that dives into everything I need to know.

As I was pursuing courses I noticed Treehouse excels in another area: storytelling. More specifically, telling the stories of successful career changers. Making a shift to a new career is a daunting task: you have to obtain the skills and convince employers that you can do the job, the latter of which can be even harder than acquiring the new skills. Career changers struggle with doubt, lack of self-confidence, opaque career paths, and lack of knowledge about hiring companies and opportunities. Treehouse uses profiles to share stories from a wide range of people – former customer service specialists, laid off professionals, personal trainers, urban planners – from across the globe. Seeing diverse stories of successful career changers helps learners visualize themselves doing the same. It’s even possible it gives them a bit more confidence. As they read, they’re likely telling themselves, hey, if they can do it, I can do it too. 

Testimonials about impact are important for prospective online students. But the full stories that dive into the learning journey and offer advice serve a purpose too: to motivate career changers. Treehouse puts out a clear message to career changers: everyone’s doing it and you can to.

So bravo to Treehouse. Here’s hoping other online schools invest the time in career storytelling too.

by Nicolle

I received a MOOC certificate and all I got was this lame email

Coursera (and other online learning platforms) push hard to get users to pursue a certificate. I’ve flaked out of plenty of MOOCs in the past with the certificate option completely off my radar. This time I enrolled in the Interaction Design Specialty on Coursera a paying subscriber, so I automatically received the certificate.

I completed my first course, Human-Centered Design: an Introduction, and received my certificate announcement via email. The email arrived paired with suggestions on how I can take advantage of my certificate. The suggestions were terribly underwhelming. The only concrete advice beyond viewing my grade: Add it to your LinkedIn profile.

This is precisely where Coursera misses the boat on helping users connect their learning to career success. Some users may know exactly how to talk to their bosses or future employers about the skills they’ve learned or mastered. But in my experience with career changers and even mid-career professionals who are positioning themselves for promotion, most people don’t know how to talk about their new skills or successes. They don’t know how to position themselves or create a story about their new accomplishments.

There are several opportunities here where Coursera can make a difference. A few of note:

  • Give guidance or language on how to talk to employers about your certificate and new skills
  • Show a video interview with a recruiter who talks about the value of these skills, how they’re applied in the workplace, and so on
  • Share a list of employers that value this qualification or link it to entry level jobs in this field
  • Offer video interviews of successful Coursera students who used their certificate to get a job or promotion

Imagine if Coursera did this early on in the Specialization to get users excited about new career opportunities and motivated to complete the course. Showing users how employers view these skills could help learners develop a framework for talking about their new skills as they learn them. Coursera could add value to the learning experience by helping users understand their future career opportunities.

P.S. With 200+ mil in funding, you’d think Coursera would be able to hire a few designers to snazz up that congratulatory email. I’d love a little more flare to pair with that congrats.

by Nicolle

My Coursera specialization experience summed up in 7 tweets.

I came. I tried. I tweeted.

These Twitter reflections read like a stream of complaints. And in a way they are. But they serve another purpose: reminding me about the challenges around creating online learning experiences that are engaging and motivating.

I’m building online courses for students. Right now they’re on-demand and asynchronous. In the future I aim to move to a hybrid model. I’m constantly thinking about how we improve engagement in online learning.

A note on forums: Courses rely on forums as their interactive element. While there is interaction (in some forums), the experience isn’t enjoyable. In fact, it’s often more work. When I get stuck, I have to search for the correct forum and skim through elements to find my answer. And not all courses have active forums, as evidenced by the last tweet. This Coursera course had run before so most responses, if there were any, were old.

 

 

by Nicolle

Confessional: I’m a half-ass MOOC student

Self-reflection notes on completing my first two courses in the Coursera Interaction Design Specialization

I waited until the last minute each Sunday to complete my homework. Now I know what it feels like when I tell students to complete their job applications before they are due.

I didn’t watch all the videos. A friend told me it’s easier to just skim the text below for key concepts needed to complete the homework. It was.

Sometimes I took the time to review other students work, a requirement to get my own homework graded. Other times I just clicked through. There is so much ambiguity in the grading process, especially across cultures, that I didn’t put much stock into reviewing others work. When I did, the ideas and homework were interesting. But without a way to talk to students about those ideas and ask questions, I quickly lost interest in the review activity. I felt bad, but not too bad – I have no connection to this community or class due to the distance effect and lack of community building in Coursera classes.

Even when I pay for the specialization, sign up for a skill that I’m passionate about learning more (user experience research), I still struggle to get the work done. Despite being obsessed with online learning and building courses for students, I struggle to complete online courses. I don’t enjoy the experience. The lack of connection to the professor, students, and learning environment leave me deeply unmotivated.

I am a half-ass MOOC student.