Best platforms to upskill yourself in 2021

Need to learn something new for that dream job? We’ve got you!

As many who know me are aware, personal development is a big part of what I do – whether it’s for work or just life in general, I love being able to learn something new.

In 2020, I spent 3 (what felt exceptionally long) months on furlough before joining Revoco. This gave me a golden opportunity to learn something completely new. I decided to learn how to code. My days and nights were mostly spent engrossed in learning to code as I found it fascinating, and it was so incredibly different to what I did in recruitment.

Fast forward 15 months and I’m in a similar position, spending my days and nights learning something new. Fortunately, it’s not because of furlough or redundancy, but because of my new career path in marketing.

Throughout this process, I’ve had the chance to use an array of different platforms and I thought I’d share my top 5 that I found the best.

1. Udemy

Pros:

• They offer a huge library of topics, covering everything from coding to fitness
• You get a diverse choice of instructors to choose from, allowing you to find the right one for you
• You can often land yourself a bargain (with courses going for as little as £12!)

Cons:

• It can be tricky to pick the right course with the extent of options available to you

2. Coursera

Pros:

• You have access to a wide variety of global university courses
• Many courses are free to do
• Course providers include companies like Google, IBM and Facebook
• Most courses offer an accreditation/certificate to showcase to employers

Cons:

• Some of the courses contain out of date information, so make sure you check when the course was released!

3. YouTube

Pros:

• It’s completely free (albeit with ads!)
• With the wide array of videos, you can learn specific topics without having to go through a whole course
• There’s constantly new videos being uploaded, meaning you’ll (almost) anything you need

Cons:

• Anyone can post a video
• Ads… what more do we need to say?

4. LinkedIn Learning

Pros:

• Courses are available in multiple languages
• Recruiters using LinkedIn can see the different courses you’ve completed and the skills you learnt during the course

Cons:

• They only offer a limited course selection, covering business, creative and technology
• You can’t purchase single courses, you have to pay a monthly subscription (for those looking to learn a lot, this can be a pro!)

5. edX

Pros:

• Courses are offered by the likes of Harvard, Berkeley, and Microsoft
• You’re able to take most of the courses for free (as long as you don’t want the certificate)

Cons:

• They only offer a very limited choice of courses, with most of their courses covering either computer science, engineering, data analysis and humanities
• Compared to others, it doesn’t have the best user interface

Are you after a hand finding that dream job you’ve been upskilling for? Drop Revoco a message!