Before Alison, I worked in investment banking and finance with the likes of PWC, Goldman Sachs and Paribas. I also worked for a long time for the Financial Times. I’ve had a couple of books published, one is a novel that teaches people about banking and one is a book about business writing. I’ve spent years and years writing reports, speeches, lots of different types of communications. Because I worked in the financial world but my degrees were in English I was always the person who was asked to write stuff. Through practice, I became the business writing expert wherever I worked.
COVID-19: LA PANDEMIA QUE TODOS NOS QUIEREN COBRAR
A nivel mundial se ha vivido una pandemia que sin duda todos conocemos, ante esta situación hemos entrando en una serie de gastos que no esperábamos, como por ejemplo: mascarillas, guantes, antibacterial, limpiadores, incluso hemos añadido más gastos, porque sin duda todo lo que usas se debe lavar al instante. Muchas personas lamentablemente han perdido su empleo y aun así han incurrido en los gastos antes mencionados. No obstante, esta nueva realidad nos ha cambiado la vida y ha cambiado toda la estructura de muchos negocios y empresas.
Actualmente los negocios para poder operar han invertido en productos para desinfectar todo el lugar de trabajo, más personal de limpieza, guantes, mascarillas, han reducido sus espacios de trabajo y espacios de espera, para crear un ambiente seguro.
Pero, la pregunta es ¿Quién paga por todo estos cambios y productos adquiridos por el Covid-19?. Bueno en mi país los negocios tales como: restaurantes, barberos, estilistas, dentistas, oficinas médicas, entre otras, están cobrando un cargo por esta pandemia llamado el “COVID-19 FEE” el mismo puedo fluctuar desde $25.00 hasta $50.00 dólares por transacción o a cada persona.
Esta medida tomada por los comercios nos está avalada por el gobierno y no hay ley que obligue al consumidor a pagar dichos cargos. Este cargo no es justo, ya que el consumidor ha tenido también gastos a nivel personal y a la hora de comprar tenga que incurrir en más gastos por todas las transacciones que realice. Cabe señalar que aún no ha pasado la pandemia y los casos positivos de COVID-19 siguen en aumento diariamente.
Otro factor que afecta y justica este cargo es que mucha personas están desempleadas sin poder generar dinero, en otras palabras no solo los comercios han sido impactados todos nos hemos afectado.
Entonces volviendo a la pregunta ¿Quién paga por todo estos cambios y productos adquiridos por el Covid-19?, debe ser el gobierno quien le dé un alivio monetario a las empresas y ayude a su pueblo, ya que, existen partidas de dinero para trabajar con esta pandemia y una prioridad debería ser esa. Como consultora me enfocaría en recuperar a nuestros clientes habituales y de ser necesario cobrar algún cargo, entiendo debe ser una cantidad mínima que no afecte tan significativamente la economía del cliente. De igual forma existen comercios que no están cobrando el COVID-19 FEE, porque no quieren perder a su clientela que poco a poco están saliendo de sus casas después del Toque de Queda.
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Author : Blanca Garcia |
Explore a virtual map of Ancient Rome
Italian silver screen icon Alberto Sordi once said that Rome is, “not like any other city. It’s a big museum, a living room that shall be crossed on one’s toes.”
Thanks to the University of Reading’s course ‘Rome: A Virtual Tour of the Ancient City’ you can now traverse the famous city on your fingertips alone – and learn about its rich history in the process.
Dr Matthew Nicholls has created a 3D virtual map of Ancient Rome, letting you explore the streets of the Eternal City, travelling inside and around some of the most famous examples of classical architecture in the world.
Join ‘Rome: A Virtual Tour of the Ancient City’
Take a tour of Ancient Rome
On the course, you can ‘walk’ around the virtual city – discovering for yourself what Ancient Rome looked like in its heyday. Dr Nicholls says that the virtual map,
Covers the whole ancient city within a 3rd-century wall circuit, the Aurelianic wall, though I have been careful to extend beyond that as I don’t want the wall to define the city limits as it is sometimes taken to do. It shows the city approximately as it appeared in 315AD, though in fact all the buildings appear simultaneously new.
The course, he explains, “begins with the foundation of Rome in 753BC, but is mostly focused on the first two centuries AD, when Rome was ruled by dynasties of emperors who built up the city to its greatest extent.”
Over just five weeks you can journey with Dr Nicholls as he explores the growth of a small river settlement into a metropolis of a million people – and the centre of antiquity’s most powerful empire.
Dr Nicholls has long had a passion for the city, and he explains that his map-making was in part inspired by the pleasure of wandering the city himself on foot:
I love all of it – my favourite cafes and gelaterias, the walk across the Borghese Gardens to the British School, the cobbled streets around the Campus Martius, the distinctive ambulance sirens, the big lonely archaeological sites out on the Via Appia and the aqueduct park, the travertine weirdness of EUR, the layers and layers of history everywhere in the city centre.
It’s compact and on a human scale; a very good city for walking. Writing this makes me feel a bit wistful, three months into lockdown and with no imminent prospect of returning!
Explore Ancient Roman architecture
Part of the joy of taking a tour of the city is in exploring the buildings – some of the most striking and famous anywhere world. The course lets you examine the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Forum, among other legendary attractions.
Dr Nicholls credits the success of Roman architecture to the fact that the Romans were “great borrowers”, especially from the Ancient Greeks.
He also points to the “the wealth of the empire, a couple of centuries of relative peace in Rome and Italy, and the capability of emperors to command huge resources”. The emperors also needed to keep a large urban population entertained, which “drove innovation and scale.”
How did Rome deal with pandemics?
Health was also an important factor – a giant city with no knowledge of modern medicine needed to be mindful of basic sanitation, including having a continuous clean water supply.
These unglamorous needs “drove some of the most impressive innovations in aqueduct and sewer engineering.”
Practical innovations in water supply and drainage helped the city grow to around a million inhabitants without collapsing into constant endemic disease. Superstition and religion played a part in ‘warding off’ or ‘curing’ ailments, and widespread cultural habits like bathing showed an interest in good hygienic practice.
During the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve seen stories of wealthier urbanites fleeing big cities for country retreats, and it was no different in the Roman era:
Richer Romans tended to leave the malarial centre of town in the summer months and retreat to summer villas. Epidemic disease was still a problem, though, and famous outbreaks like the Antonine Plague caused serious and lasting damage.
What we can learn from Roman emperors
As well as health crises, the history of Rome is full of salient lessons about leadership. The empire is famed for its mercurial leaders, although Dr Nicholls assures us that the emperors weren’t all bad. His favourite is Trajan, although he concedes this isn’t “a particularly original choice”.
Under Trajan, who ruled from 98 to 117AD, “the empire reached its peak of prosperity and extent, some of my favourite authors wrote under him, and he built some of my favourite buildings; he was called ‘the best emperor’ even in his own lifetime.”
Hadrian also gets a mention, as does the first emperor Augustus, and Vespasian, who “rescued the imperial project after Nero and built some fine buildings, including the Colosseum.”
The Antonine Dynasty, Dr Nicholls asserts, “had the best beards.”
Nevertheless, the Roman pantheon is littered with as many famous tyrants as benevolent dictators – for every Trajan or Austustus there is a Caligula or a Nero.
For all the personal animosity between the Roman senate and the emperorship, real constitutional change was never once considered by Rome’s leaders, and the plebians in the city never had a say in choosing their leader (unlike the limited democracy of Ancient Athens).
The lesson for us today, Dr Nicholls says, is that:
Choosing our rulers is a privilege, a historical anomaly, and we should take that responsibility seriously. Bread and circuses are nice, but good government is important, and difficult. Good character matters.
The daily life of Ancient Rome
In recent months there has been a long-overdue reckoning with race and empire across the world. This has included reappraising the value of statues, monuments, and historical texts, in the light of the atrocities of slavery and servitude that Western empires were built upon.
However, historians of the ancient world seemingly had little to no interest in ‘ordinary’ voices – let alone the slaves who tilled the agricultural estates that fed Rome, and built the monuments we still marvel at today:
In all of Classical antiquity, Greek and Roman – even among great writers who enquired deeply into the human condition – there is startlingly little moral exploration of slavery or ethical discussion of its consequences. They largely seem to have taken it for granted.
To redress this in part, week four of the course covers the daily routine of working Romans – a world described by the poets of the age, who, unlike the historians of the time, “give us a vivid sense of everyday life: traffic, dirt, noise, the pleasures of the baths and the monuments, the hustle and bustle of the crowds.”
Learners love the Roman Empire
With its heralded histories, legendary leaders, and gruesome gladiatorial games, Ancient Rome remains enduring fascinating to modern learners – not least in part because of what their world can tell us about our own.
They’re just like us – city dwellers with running water, central heating, proper drains, busy lives and jobs, families, social networks, art and poetry, and propaganda and trade.
Moreover, we are drawn to studying the ancient world as much by its ‘otherness’ as its likeness to our own. Just as we can see ourselves in them, we also – as Dr Nicholls puts it – “hope they aren’t like us at all.”
Discover the history of Ancient Rome, and explore a virtual map of the city, in the University of Reading’s course ‘Rome: A Virtual Tour of the Ancient City’.
Upskilling During Difficult Times: How Do We Keep Employees Learning from Home?
By Rich Jacquet, Coursera Chief People Officer
What is the future of learning and development?
The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly and dramatically disrupted workforces around the world, leading to changes in the very fabric of how we work, collaborate, and learn on the job. Companies are adapting by streamlining workforces and shifting to remote models. While this is making it possible for businesses to continue operations, it is also introducing new demands from clients and customers, which, in turn, is pushing companies to quickly upskill their employees through the use of innovative learning tools.
Coursera’s Learning Leaders Connect webinar series brings together L&D leaders to discuss corporate learning and development strategies and how to manage employee upskilling during and after COVID-19 COVID-19. Guests for our most recent session included Lou Tedrick, the VP of Global Learning and Development (L&D) at Verizon, Laurie Lovett, the CHRO at Nielsen, Laurent Reich, the Learning Practice International Director at L’Oreal, and myself, in my capacity as Chief People Officer here at Coursera.
The case for upskilling (at the most challenging time)
Since the start of the global pandemic, there has been an increase in the demands on human resources departments. With the safety and health of employees a primary focus, making learning and development a corporate priority has been challenging. However, upskilling employees remains essential for the future of every organization, especially in difficult circumstances when available jobs and job planning needs are changing more rapidly than ever.
Many business teams, like us at Coursera, have used this time to promote internal resources such as blog posts and email newsletters. Popular topics we’ve focused on have included wellness and innovation, as well as tips on how to work effectively from home. Our company has seen a 38% increase in employee traffic to our internal learning courses as a result.
To further promote upskilling, companies such as Verizon and Nielsen have embraced new learning and development approaches into their long-term plans and strategies. For Nielsen’s Laurie Lovett, it was about determining the company’s critical roles, finding out how they were changing, and filling those knowledge gaps accordingly.
“This is the right approach for making upskilling an essential and scalable part of our future solutions,” adds Lovett.
Verizon has also engaged in proactive measures. With its three-to-five-year upskilling initiatives already in place, Tedrick and her team quickly worked to recalibrate their efforts to meet the changing needs brought on by the onset of COVID-19.
For L’Oreal, the need to upskill employees was essential to the future of the company—as a way to support employees and to continue meeting business goals. The company created a new program called Learning Never Stops, which stresses the criticality of continuous learning. This training has focused on helping employees learn more about e-commerce and changes in consumer habits during this unprecedented time.
For these companies, upskilling was integrated into their business models and essential to the health of their workforces. This continuity of educational programs provided their employees with the skills they needed to adapt to new working environments and a drastically changed economy.
Advice for upskilling at home
It’s become essential for most employees to work from home over the past several months and, in many cases, it will be this way for the foreseeable future. At the start of the pandemic, companies primarily focused on helping their employees adapt to the new working situation, while also taking steps to allow them an adjustment period.
“[The] advice I would give is to make sure you feel grounded in what’s going to make you successful in your current role,” says Verizon’s Lou Tedrick.
After the transition phase, Tedrick says employees were able to shift focus to professional goals. Verizon now offers several self-paced learning options, and employees are using this opportunity to work on personal development plans.
L’Oreal has also shifted its focus online. One of the benefits of digital learning is the ability to create more “snackable” content with shorter courses available via digital portals. The company is promoting a new program called “One One One,” which prompts employees to spend one hour learning every week, every month.
At Nielsen, the push has also been towards digital learning. The company has been rewarding employees by offering learning challenges and completion badges as motivation to take courses at home. This new environment has meant teams at Nielsen are getting more creative.
“I think during this period, many of us have seen such enormous amounts of creativity and collaboration going on as our world turns to Zoom calls and Hangout calls and such,” says Laurie Lovett. “So, in the learning space, I really feel like we have promoted and supported a surge in the creative space.”
Remote working hasn’t only been an opportunity for remote employees to be creative but also a learning opportunity for the people administering these programs. For myself as an HR professional, this has been the biggest growth period of my life. There’s no playbook I pulled off the shelf on how to deal with this and how to help people to learn and grow, and I know we have all been going through that.”
Adapting training to a new environment
Online collaboration has been a key tool for organizations during this global pandemic, and L&D groups have had to move fast to shift to digital first. At Coursera, we made the decision early, in order to easily scale and grow our internal offerings—something that has proved very useful during this time.
Verizon also moved to virtual curriculums and platforms. The shift to working from home resulted in a big push for the team to move all learning materials to a virtual instructor format. The company is also focusing on “snackable” content such as videos and articles that allow employees to learn at their own pace.
L’Oreal reports that, prior to the pandemic, about 90% of internal training was taking place in person, with about 10% taking courses online. With those numbers now shifting significantly, the company has implemented a MyLearning platform and is constantly updating content that includes a mix of short-learning modules as well as live webinars with subject matter experts. The final step in the digital transformation for L’Oreal will be the creation of online classrooms—future learning programs will feature a blend between in-person training and this new online platform.
It’s this kind of blended approach that will also be the future for Nielsen. Its teams have been relying heavily on new tools and assets, such as a leadership series where leaders give short lectures on topics of interest. Eventually, Laurie Lovett says, there will need to be some in-person learning, but it will never be the same.
“The mindset has always been that you have to go to our big center and train people in person, spending hours and weeks spent in that same facility,” says Lovett. “That has all, within a 72-hour span, shifted to virtual. I think that’s where the transformation is. I don’t know if the organization would ever go back to the old way—the way we used to think was the only way.”
Learning and development roles in a post-COVID-19 world
So, what will the roles of learning and development professionals look like in the future?
Lou Tedrick says L&D employees will need to retrain employees and find them new roles in a shifting economy. He likens the current period as the beta phase of the new L&D role:
“We’re all going to have to sharpen the tools we use to determine learning effectiveness. As we transition to a post-COVID era, what was good for the triage period may not be right for what comes after, and we may need to look for different approaches.”
The next phase will not only mean L&D teams need to stay engaged, but also focus on keeping employees engaged. Lovett says that leaders will need to help support employees during this transition period:
“Emotional intelligence has been a critical asset for managers and leaders during this time, and interpersonal skills will continue to be incredibly important going forward.”
For Reich, this has meant thinking of the L&D department at L’Oreal in terms of four separate roles:
- An Architect to create a learning path
- A Curator to discover and create the best content for individual employees
- A Producer to develop online learning events
- An Activator to engage people with the content
She says L’Oreal will now organize its department around these roles from now on.
Managing change of this kind can be difficult—both for the people administering the training, as well as those taking the training. Supporting HR departments, managers, and employees is critical to the future success of all businesses. Empathy and understanding of how our employees are working through this period of time is unbelievably important, and it’s both challenging and exciting as we L&D professionals seek to create an environment that allows employees to focus on what really matters: learning.
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Register for the on-demand webinar, Verizon, Nielsen, & L’Oreal: Preserving Employee Learning During a Downturn for more strategies to help your organization prioritize learning during this time of unprecedented change and disruption.
How Amie launched a new career in IT during COVID-19
We’d like to introduce you to Amie Hanbury. In the story she shares below, Amie describes how COVID-19 caused her to reevaluate her career, and how learning on Coursera gave her both the confidence and the skills to pursue a new opportunity. With the support of her family, and driven by a desire to make a positive difference in the world, she overcame her self-doubts and landed a fulfilling new role in a new field.
My name is Amie Hanbury, and I am a Field Service Technician at Core Technologies Inc. in Virginia. Prior to enrolling in the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, I had taken a few classes at my local community college. After I got married and had kids, between family and work, I didn’t feel like I had time for classes anymore. For most of my life, I was either in the Marine Corps or working for my local Police Department as a dispatcher. However, for the two years before I enrolled in the certificate program, I was working in a retail position. It was close to my home, and the hours were somewhat better than the long hours and mandatory overtime that were required in my previous positions, giving me more time with my small children. However, I was unhappy and felt unfulfilled by my retail job. I have a strong desire to make a difference, which retail just didn’t provide.
I found out about the Google IT Support Professional Certificate and enrolled with the hope of gaining a better understanding of the IT field and getting an entry-level position within IT. I started taking the classes for an hour or two after work and spending more time on the program during the weekends. Sometimes I’d go to work at my retail job, have a crummy day, and then buckle down to my classes at night (this was before COVID-19). When the COVID-19 pandemic started, my store was closed to the public. I still had to go to work, but there was nothing to do. This gave me the time to think about what I wanted to do with my life, and I got motivated to go after my dreams. I started bringing my computer in so I could work on my classes. Instead of spending 1-2 hours a night learning, I was working on them for 8 hours a day. I would save the tests that required a virtual machine (Qwiklabs) until I got home, and complete them then. I was knocking out courses left and right.
I had just finished my System Administration and IT Infrastructure services course when my husband found some job postings that he thought I would like, and that I could qualify for. I applied to what is now my new role, and within 10 minutes, I got a phone interview. The initial phone screen included a few IT questions where they wanted to understand how I would fit on the team, and how much I would need to learn.
During this call, my interviewer was talking with the Program Director, saying how excited she was about me and how I knew a lot more than others they had interviewed. He asked if I’d be willing to do a web interview right then. I obviously wasn’t prepared for an interview. I was dressed down, wearing no makeup, and had no time to get myself mentally prepared! However, I agreed. I was excited. The web interview went well, but at the time, I felt like I blew it. Between nervousness and not being prepared, I second-guessed a lot of my answers. However, within about 30 minutes, I received an offer letter. The whole thing, from submitting the application to receiving the offer letter, took about 1-2 hours. Everyone at the company said that this was the quickest an offer had been extended to a candidate, and they were excited to have me on the team.
“If it wasn’t for this program, I would not have felt confident enough to even apply.”
This program has provided me with many skills that I use at my current job. Learning how to apply permissions, re-imaging Operating Systems, and basic networking is a big part of what I do. This course gave me more than just basic knowledge. While there is still a lot to know and learn, it gave me enough to understand things that seemed so foreign prior to enrolling. Had it not been for this class, I would not have known some of the terminologies.
One of my biggest obstacles during this time was my own insecurity. I’m 38 years old, and I found myself doubting whether or not I was young enough to start over, or smart enough to retain all the information. Fortunately, my support system was amazing. My biggest cheerleader was my husband. He helps me strive to be better every day. I believe a support system is very important. I know it seems cliché to say, but if you don’t have the support of family or friends, it will drain you quickly.
Some of the information presented in the course was pretty technical, and I sometimes felt overwhelmed. Networking was my weakest topic. There were days that I had to step back and take a break. My husband would ask me what was wrong, and I would reply, “I don’t know, maybe I made a mistake, this seems so over my head.” He would remind me why I was doing this—to make things better for the family, and to find a career that was more fulfilling.
My advice to others would be to remember why you are doing this certificate program, and to keep going! You are not alone in the process.
Project Career Research: how to set yourself up for success in choosing a new career
Launching a new career can be an exhilarating process, but also a complicated one. One of the most important steps is the first one—choosing which career to pursue. Whether you’re a college student getting ready to join the workforce for the first time, a mid-career professional looking to make a career switch, or someone returning to the workforce after time away, the challenge is the same—how do you know which career to pursue, and how do you get started?
This article is designed to help you explore potential careers in an analytical way. You’ll learn how to choose the career that’s right for you, and determine exactly what’s required to land your first job in your new chosen field. You’ll do this with a process called Project Career Research.
Project Career Research Overview
In Project Career Research you’ll speak with five professionals working in the career you’re exploring. This will help you develop a well-rounded overview of the field, and a plan for approaching different companies in your job search.
The goal of Project Career Research is to answer three big questions.
Question #1: What is it really like to work as a [job title]?
A particular career might sound exciting when you see it featured in a press article, or when you read the job description, or when you see the salaries highlighted on a hiring site. But if you’re going to actually work in the field, you need to understand the day-to-day realities of the role. Conversations with industry professionals can tell you what articles and career sites can’t—what it’s really like to have that job.
What percentage of time do you spend in meetings, focusing on your own projects, writing emails, planning, etc? Who are the people you work with the most, and how do you interact with them? What skills and personality traits are required for success? What time of day do you usually eat lunch? What’s your stress level? Do you talk to lots of people every day, or are you on your own all the time? Do you collaborate often, or very rarely? How much freedom do you get to decide which projects you work on? How do promotions happen?
These “real life” concerns can make the difference between loving a job, and just going through the motions. Talking with someone who is already in the field is a great way to understand the actual reality of life as a data scientist, a marketer, a social worker, or whatever role it is you choose to pursue.
Question #2: What skills do you actually need to succeed in this job?
Job descriptions can be very helpful, but they can also be very overwhelming. It’s unfortunately all too common for people to abandon pursuing a particular role, because they look at the long list of requirements in the description, and conclude they’re not qualified. The truth is, these sections are often just laundry lists of every single thing a hiring manager might wish to see in a candidate. They don’t necessarily reflect what’s actually required to succeed. Talking with people working in the field is an excellent way to learn what really does and doesn’t matter.
Questions #3: What do you need to land that job?
There is a difference between being able to do the job, and being able to get the job. As an applicant, it’s your responsibility to prove that you’re qualified. So, it’s important to know what hiring managers are looking for from a candidate. Being credentialed for a particular skill can be very beneficial for some jobs, but not matter at all for others. Some jobs require that you have a portfolio of pre-existing work to show, while other jobs will ask you to complete a new task during your interview, and prioritize this above your portfolio. Some roles require very specific technical skills, while for others the ability to learn quickly and soft skills are much more important. Before you fully commit your time and energy to your job search, make sure you know exactly what it will take to get the job, so you’re ready when the opportunities come.
At this point, you may be wondering why you have to speak to real people—can’t this all be researched online? While there are many great online resources available, there is no substitute for the real insights and opinions that emerge in direct conversation with industry professionals. Take this step, and you’ll enter your job search well-prepared, and with confidence. Avoid it, and you risk everything from resume missteps and inadequate interview preparation to spending money on the wrong classes or training programs. As an added bonus, when you make contact with industry professionals, you’re expanding your network in your future field, which will be especially helpful once you begin the actual job search process.
How to find people to speak with
Your existing connections. An important first step is to consider your own existing network. This could be your LinkedIn network, other professional circles, or people in your shared community spaces—parent groups, civic groups, volunteer organizations, sports teams, and more. Is there someone you know who’s already in the field? Before you became interested in, say, mobile development as a possible career, you might not have consciously registered the fact that you actually already know a mobile developer! Auditing your own network is a great way to quickly discover people with whom you might be able to schedule an informational interview.
Professional groups. Search LinkedIn, Facebook, and Meetup for groups connecting professionals in your target field and reach out to individuals within those groups. Generally, you’ll find that people who are proactive enough to join professional groups are also the kinds of people who enjoy talking about their careers, and are eager to share their knowledge and their experience.
Here’s a task for you. Search professionals on LinkedIn by your target job title, and your geographic location. Review 100 profiles, and from there, choose 20 who feel most relevant to your career objectives. Reach out to all using the template below. If they respond, follow up right away with a thank-you note, and reiterate your interest in a conversation.
LinkedIn outreach template:
Hi
Tip #1: Make scheduling easy for the other person by suggesting a specific time to speak, and offer to work around their calendar.
Tip #2: If they don’t reply, don’t take it personally. Just move on with your list.
Tip #3: On LinkedIn you can only access profiles of people who are in your network (i.e., your 1st-degree, 2nd-degree, and 3rd-degree connections), as well as fellow members of your LinkedIn groups. You can expand your network by adding more 1st-degree connections and joining groups.
Preparing for your conversations
To make the most out of each conversation while being respectful of everyone’s time, do your research in advance, so you can ask valuable questions that only they can answer for you (as opposed to those you can get answers to through an online search). Not only does this help ensure a productive conversation, it demonstrates your respect and appreciation for the other person’s experience, and their generosity in taking the time to meet with you
Example:
I know you transitioned from teaching high school to a role as an instructional designer, and I’m trying to do the same. But also noticed that most people in similar roles tend to have formal training in instructional design. How were you able to get recruiters to notice you?
There are many ways to do research but you should always include:
- LinkedIn – review profiles of the person you are speaking with (and potentially their colleagues) to understand their backgrounds and experiences.
- Website of the company the person works for, to get a sense of everything from product catalogues to company culture.
- Industry associations and organizations – staying current with industry trends demonstrates your active engagement with your chosen field and its community, and helps to ensure your career questions are specific and relevant.
Tailoring your questions to be specific to each individual is essential, but it’s also important to prepare a set of core questions you can ask in every interview, in order to gather baseline information. For example:
- Can you describe a day in the life of a [role]?
- What are the on-the-job skills required to be successful in this role?
- Are there similar roles I should look into as well?
- How does someone with my background land a first job in the field?
During and after each conversation
Set the context for the meeting. Begin with an overview of why you reached out and what you are hoping to learn from the conversation. This enables the other person to focus on what’s relevant and will make them feel comfortable, as they’ll understand the goals. Remember: as the one who initiated the conversation, it’s your responsibility to establish both the tone and agenda.
Introduce yourself. To ensure a productive conversation, it’s important that they understand who you are—this helps to establish context for your questions. Spend a couple of minutes in the beginning explaining why you reached out and what your goals are. Remember that while you are there to learn, this person might be able to connect you to a professional opportunity at some point. Be prepared to speak about your skills, accomplishments, and personal qualities that can bring value to an organization. You might not know how your experience transfers onto this new role but you should demonstrate passion and confidence that you can learn and grow quickly. Keep it short and focused.
Let them speak. Since you are there to learn, the primary focus of the conversation should be on the other person. Some people might be more talkative, while others may need more input from you in order to engage. Ideally, they should be speaking for 50% to 80% of the conversation. Don’t be afraid of short pauses, and be respectful and patient if they need time to gather their thoughts.
Send a thank-you email. You have created a valuable connection, so stay in touch! A thank-you email is a great way to strengthen the connection by reiterating your appreciation for their time and following up on any action items that came out of the discussion. Also, be sure to think through ways you might return the favor, and, as appropriate, share resources, connections, or thoughts they might find valuable.
Wrapping up your project
Now that you have completed five conversations with professionals working in your target career, it’s time to go back to your main three questions and provide answers based on what you’ve learned.
Upon completing that step, you should have a clear sense of whether your target career is actually the one that you want to pursue. You should know if there are opportunities in your area, and you should have a good sense of what skills are required for the role.
If all that is in place, then you’re ready to proceed!
Your next steps will involve addressing gaps related to job requirements (skills, credentials, degrees, experience) and building an optimal resume. We’ll cover those topics in future posts. Until then, good luck choosing a great career path, and we’ll look forward to seeing you on Coursera when you need to learn new skills!
About the author: Vera Fishman
Vera Fishman a Career Services Program Manager at Coursera and a career coach. Over the past 5+ years she coached hundreds of professionals from major Silicon Valley companies and ran workshops on every step of the job search process at Lee Hecht Harrison (resume writing, career discovery, interviewing – you name it!) and created an innovative job search curriculum at Udacity. Prior to becoming a coach Vera had a whole different career in marketing, and a shorter one in non-profit community management – so she is no stranger to career-changing herself. A native of Saint Petersburg, Russia, Vera has spent her adult life in Silicon Valley, where she feels most at home and comfortable – aside from not liking to have to drive everywhere.
S.M. Waqas Imam: “Publishing a course is a great motivation boost, as people admire you for your knowledge and skills.”
I am a Pakistani national and an industrial engineer. I graduated from NED University of Engineering and Technology in 2010 and have a decade’s worth of experience in the manufacturing and service industries. My experience includes working for various companies in Quality Assurance, Quality Management Systems, Integrated Management Systems, Health and Safety Management Systems and Environmental and Energy Management Systems. After this versatile experience, I was in a position to start my own consultancy firm, Exoexcellence Consultants. I thought it was time to share my competence and experience with the world. I have experience in publishing with Advisera and in training via the internal training departments of different companies I’ve worked for.
Robert Klonoski: teaching you about the world of work
I like to write my courses from a practical perspective. When a person works in a business, he or she may learn how things are organized, managed, and governed from situational experiences. What my courses are intended to do is to put these experiences in perspective, and to show students the “bigger picture”, hopefully preparing them for things that may develop in their futures as they grow in their careers. Right now, I have only published one course on Alison, which is in Corporate Governance. This is based on a course I used to teach in an MBA program and is challenging. It is intended for people who have some background in business or law. Hopefully, learners find the material practical and useful, and if it helps them in understanding their work environments, I feel that I’ll have been successful.
Meet Jonathan Davies of NuYew
Before working with Alison I was the Founder and CEO of The Training Room, one of the largest private Vocational Training Companies in the UK. During my time we helped over 10,000 people into work across a wide range of sectors from Personal Training to IT. After successfully exiting the company, I became a publisher on Alison as well as a consultant and a Non-Executive Director in the education sector. Prior to founding The Training Room, I worked at easyJet and was heavily involved in the establishment of the Pilot and Cabin Crew Training Model which is still in operation today.
Julia Richter: in Ireland, teaching German, to students worldwide!
Everyone learns differently. I suppose being motivated to learn is the most important thing. Some learn visually, others by doing, and some by just listening or in mixed ways. I personally like listening, combined with some visual aspects. Of course for languages, practice in real life situations is super important! I design my courses using my personal learning preferences and hope to help learners with similar predispositions.
