Upskilling in the Time of Coronavirus

Do any of these describe you?

• You’re employed but have more time amid the stay-home edict and want to up your game so you can improve your career trajectory
•  You’re employed but worried you’ll join the 16.6 million people, one in 10 workers, who have lost their job in the past three weeks because of the economic shutdown.
• You’re unemployed and amid that vastly increased number of unemployed people, you’re deferring looking for a job, and in the meanwhile want to upskill to improve your prospects of landing good work when the job market improves.
• You’d like to do something more useful with your time than playing board games, cleaning out your closets, and making elaborate recipes.

My Psychology Today article today offers some ways to upskill.

Learning Better: Doables toward a better college or graduate school experience

Of course, many people go back to college or grad school mainly for the piece of paper. 

But it’s an awful lot of money and time just for a piece of imitation sheepskin. You might as well extract as much useful learning as you can, right? My PsychologyToday.com article today should help you do that.

Many such articles are overoptimistic about how much students are willing to do. This article, like the others in this Doables series focuses on what most people are actually willing to do.

You U: A solid alternative to State U, let alone Private U

Of course, some careers require a degree, notably in the health fields, but many careers don’t. Sure, in other fields, employers tend to pick degree holders but that preference can be trumped by the self-driven learning process I describe in my PsychologyToday.com article today. I call it You U.  And once you’re in a career, the case is even stronger for You U over State U, let alone Private U.

 

A Workover: A Caller Has a Stale Skill Set Yet Wants Higher Salary

A caller to my radio program had a stale skill set yet wants higher salary. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation. At the end there also was an interesting point about the art of communication.

Real Hope for the Long-Term Unemployed?

My editor at The Atlantic issued me a challenge: "For your column this week, can you propose something that would offer real hope to the long-term unemployed?"

HERE is what I wrote.