HOW TO BE CAREER SMART IN THE DIGITAL ERA

The professional’s dilemma

Meet Lin Li. She’s going for a promotion, and it’s between her and another candidate. Lin Li’s resume is comprehensive and she thinks the interview went well, but she’s not feeling confident. She knows the job requires a team player with great problem-solving skills, but she just doesn’t know how to demonstrate these capabilities to the hiring committee.

Becoming career smart in the digital era

Times are changing, and Lin Li’s dilemma is becoming common. Increasingly, today’s managers base their personnel decisions less on resumes and more on the adaptive ‘soft skills’—like teamwork and problem-solving—that enable staff to thrive in the disruptive environment. However, many professionals remain uncertain about how to measure and promote these job-embedded soft skills.

Thankfully, there’s a solution to this dilemma: Becoming Career Smart: How to Sell Yourself. This new free online course (MOOC), launching on the FutureLearn platform on 6 March 2017, is designed by academics at one of Australia’s leading universities to help your people to become career smart in the digital era.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s involved.

Discovering strengths and weaknesses

As Lin Li’s situation shows, identifying transferable generic skills is key to making the most of the agile business environment. Becoming Career Smart: How to Sell Yourself employs a series of unique auditing tools that will challenge participants to:

• explore their successes and what success means to them
• develop their capacity to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses
• identify their key professional skills and capabilities.

Harnessing the power of self-promotion

Like Lin Li, many people struggle to sell themselves, but employees who advance within their organisations invariably have this crucial skill. After discovering their strengths and weaknesses, participants in Becoming Career Smart: How to Sell Yourself will develop a plan of attack for marketing themselves to the right people in the most effective possible way.

Using credentials to get ahead

What if Lin Li was able to provide evidence-based, panel-reviewed, globally recognised proof of achievement for professional skills like teamwork and problem-solving? If the hiring committee could see proof of her advanced ability in these areas, there’s no doubt that she would get the job.

The good news is that such a solution already exists! Backed by Deakin University and based on current industry standards, DeakinCo. credentials offer both individuals and organisations a new and innovative way to measure and demonstrate the soft skills they need to succeed.

Participants in Becoming Career Smart: How to Sell Yourself will learn how to document their work and life experience to obtain credentials. Information will also be provided about Deakin University’s leading-edge Master of Professional Practice course for career professionals, which participants may choose to proceed with after the free course.

How to enrol

Visit FutureLearn to register for the free course Becoming Career Smart: How to Sell Yourself.

An earlier version of this article was published on LinkedIn on 18 February 2017.