LinkedIn Learning have published a list of the skills companies need most in 2019 and how to learn them. We’ll get to the list and provide course suggestions, but first it’s worth knowing that LinkedIn Learning is in fact the old Lynda.com, which LinkedIn acquired back in 2015 and re-skinned as LinkedIn Learning.
“I don’t have time for mindfulness and meditation!” says everyone with a job ever. “I’ve got too much to do!”
This is ironic. A mindful mind is more alert, efficient and productive than a non-mindful one, and this creates more ... guess what ... time in which to get things done. Plus an uncluttered mind doesn’t get stressed, feels better, listens better, and does better.
What skills do employers value most? The ones that fill a hot current skills gap, like blockchain or cybersecurity? Sure, you can snap up a job right now in one of those areas if you’re skilled up, and probably a well-paid one too. But if you start out now on the learning path hoping for a slice of the action, maybe by the time you’ve acquired the skills – which could take years – the market might be flooded with prospectors who’ve had the same idea and the opportunity could have flown the roost.
Sometimes simple demographics can lead to a genuine business opportunity. In 2010, there were 17 million Americans between the ages of 75 and 85. By 2050 that number will reach 30 million, according to the National Institute on Aging. Right now it’s the last of the Silent Generation and the first of the Baby Boomers who are beginning to enter that age group, and by 2050 it will be Generation X (the “Baby Busters”). This age shift, known as the Graying of America, means there will be more and more demand for residential assisted living as time goes on.
Corporations began trumpeting their Corporate Social Responsibility in the 80s and 90s following a series of landmark corporate scandals that gave Big Business a bad name. The corporate psychopath had emerged into the collective conscious as a new bogeyman, and companies fell over themselves to avoid being tarred with that image. Fast forward to 2018 and CSR is more crucial than ever, with pressure to toe the line coming from all sides.
2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road was all about water scarcity, how it can be exploited in order to wield power, and how desperate people can get when their access to water is restricted or cut off. The film predicts a future in which violent despots can gain control of water supplies and use them to manipulate populations. This futuristic conflict is based entirely on access to water.
If we really want the cool stuff we see in Science Fiction Movies, we are going to have to train more people in nanotechnology: the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular and supramolecular scale. We’ve already got graphene, bendy screens, hydrophobic coatings and bandages infused with silver nanoparticles to help heal wounds faster. Those are cool. But where is Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? Where are the sci-fi chairs that grow out of the floor and disappear when you stand up?
In 2010, Katy Perry walked into the MET Costume Institute Gala wearing a dress that constantly changed colour. 3000 shimmering LEDs created the effect, with Perry lighting up like a rainbow in the couture dress designed by wearable tech company CuteCircuit. Back in 2009, Sony Ericsson and the London College of Fashion ran a contest to design digital clothing, and the winner was a Bluetooth-enabled cocktail dress that lit up when a call was received.
When we go into a restaurant, we put our trust in its staff to give us food that’s in tip-top shape. Our health and happiness depend on procedures like maintaining the cold chain, cleaning surfaces, sterilizing utensils, checking cooking temperatures and a lot of other details that can make the difference between healthy and dangerous. A chef can kill a customer with a bad scallop, and even if everything is impeccably clean, you can still kill an allergy sufferer with a fragment of peanut. Hence the need for a tightly-regulated catering industry.
The macros function within Excel is such a powerful feature that only the initiated can handle it. You are ready to enter the realm of Excel macros when you are a confident and experienced use of Excel and comfortable creating formulas and manipulating spreadsheet data. A little experience in Visual Basic won’t go amiss, either. You will have mastered most of the functions that come as standard with Excel and be ready to create your own.
If you are into comic books, it can seem that their creators are so far beyond the rest of us in skill and imagination that only they have the divine right to produce comic books. The fantastic epics that roll off the presses and into comic book stores seem to be born in another realm to which mere mortals have no access. Yet if you stop to think about it, those people had to start somewhere and were once shaky novices producing forgettable work.
