Tech skills are becoming an essential part of our professional life, even if you are not in a technical job. For a lot of professionals, it can be tricky to figure out what tech skills are relevant in their environment, and how to make them suitable for their career.
To help you dive at the heart of tech skills for non-tech people, here’s a summary of which skills are relevant in day-to-day life and which are not.
Coding skills
Why is it so popular to learn how to code? The problem with the idea that everyone should learn how to code is that it misses the point of what code is for. Coding isn’t the solution to everything. Coding is ultimately a language skill that enables you to tell a machine or an interface to do something. Where does this kind of skill apply in your everyday job? In a non-technical environment, you can use coding to customize some out-of-box solutions via the API when it is relevant to your needs, for instance. Alternatively, you can use SQL queries to dissect complex databases. In other words, if coding doesn’t improve your job, you probably don’t need to learn it.
Computing and coding lessons are, however, finding their way into school curriculums. This seems more a response to a current trend than a real need for the future. Does every child need to code to survive in the world of tomorrow? Probably not. Nevertheless, if you want to encourage your kid to write their first <hello world>, you might need to research and compare available coding programs, such as reading reviews about Whitehat Jr or watching tutorials for Codemonkey. However, don’t make it a must-have. Perhaps, if your child prefers learning music, this could be just as beneficial to them.
Start a website
There are approximately 2 billion websites. They promote a business, a personal blog, or even online services. Regardless of what you want to do with your career, a website is a definite must-have. Indeed, your website can help you promote your profile in your industry sector and control your image. Learning the tips and tricks to create a website and manage it are essential skills to learn. Thankfully, with platforms such as WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace, you can rapidly learn how to set up your presence, whether you’re launching a side hustle commerce or showcasing your professional portfolio. You can also seize the opportunity to add a free data analytics tool (Google Analytics) to your site and build your data analysis knowledge.
Learn to create beautiful images
Does every job require image creation and manipulation? To a certain extent, yes. You don’t need to become a digital artist, but learning how to rescale an image, create on-the-spot icons, or personalize branded graphics using Photoshop or an open-source tool such as GIMP can be crucial to your digital presence. As GIMP and Photoshop are interchangeable, it’s hard to understand the popularity of the latter. Nowadays, social media, websites, and even online applications require made-for-purpose images, so it’s helpful to be able to whisk something in a few clicks.
Is it time to add some desirable tech skills to your resume? Ultimately, some skills are more relevant than others, depending on your job. But, the truth is that you want to target skills that are useful in your progression, rather than following the latest trends.
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