Discovering Skills and Knowledge Resources
By Louis L. Minisci, Jr., Concurrent Technologies Corp., SU Class of '91-'96M
Maintaining or improving your skills and knowledge can be challenging in today's workplace. In order to stay competitive, it is important to continue to expand your skills and knowledge. Unfortunately, given the current state of the economy and budgetary cutbacks in many industries, employers may not have funds available for providing formal educational opportunities. The question then becomes, "How can I improve my skills/knowledge without spending a whole bunch of money and where should I look"? There are a variety of possibilities for accessing resources that are either free or minimal cost that can be used to help improve your skills/knowledge including but not limited to: online resources, employer provided training/resources, professional associations.
Online resources are probably the most frequently used because of the ease of access and availability. Simply searching on your favorite search engine with a few key words plus "training" will return a list of websites that provide information on the desired topic. Websites can provide a range of information from "teasers" to get you to join (fee-based) to full articles/training with no associated fees. Blogs can offer some content but may be oriented toward opinion rather than fact. A word of caution is to take information gathered from Blogs with a grain of salt. (Continued below..) |