Age is no barrier to learning, and here we offer advice on how to add more strings to your bow by learning new skills that will be useful in your new career.
Why Learning New Skills is Important
Whether you are fresh out of school, college or university or you have itchy feet and are contemplating a new career later in life, learning new skills is important for your personal development. The more skills you have, the more adaptable you can be and the more career options this will open up.
And learning new skills is important whether you are happy in your job or looking for a new one. In order to change career you certainly need to broaden your prospects by improving your value to a potential employer in terms of your skills and knowledge. But in any job and in any position, we should always be looking to better ourselves and learn new things, if only to keep our brains active and perhaps make a mundane job more interesting.
Learning New Skills for a New Career
For changing your career, learning new skills is essential. Of course you can re-train and take online courses in the evenings or weekends or attend night classes, as you prepare to start a new career, and if you are taking a specific qualification to make you eligible for a new career. But there are many ways in which you can acquire new skills in your existing job – where this is appropriate – which can be transferrable to a new career and which will make you more valuable and more attractive to a prospective employer.
Of course some of these may not be possible in your existing workplace, but they are all practices and disciplines that someone wanting to change careers should want to get involved in. You should be dynamic, willing to learn, not afraid to take on something different and certainly not afraid of a challenge.
On top of these learning opportunities outlined above, most organisations have an involvement in IT, health & safety and environmental management, which are disciplines that are transferrable to other industries. And actively learning tasks involved in these areas, such as risk assessments, audits, inspection and monitoring, can all come in handy when you are faced with different environments and different careers.
