Today it is extremely important for companies to find the best talent and not compromise on meritocracy. The age of selecting average talent and paying thousands of dollars is not cool. Companies are looking at far bigger and larger than life competencies to hire an expert for their business niche in which they are operating. So how can you as an employee stay invaluable to your company?

Answer:

  1. Stay agile to stay employable. Every company – in some way – offers a suite of learning tools to help their employees stay current. However, the best to stay current and adaptive is to attend not just the company sponsored education, but also free online learning courses, industry specific conferences and webinars and integrating the knowledge with your job’s key requirements – that way both the organization benefits and you, as a result, become more competent and confident.
  2. Harness the power of hard and soft skills. Skills like coding, business writing, financial management, project management, budgeting, Web Design, Sales forecasting demand intensive investment of an employee – which in turn increases the market value of the employee when coupled with emotional quotient and soft skills (like interpersonal and communication skills). Want some starting points to synergize the two most demanding repertoire of skills? Check out the muse, Skillshare, Quora, Khan Academy, Big Think, Ted, Open Courseware, Venture Labs. For broader leaning about your field, I encourage you to follow business media like; Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times – but the best would be Harvard Business Review. Under the educational web sites purview, sign up for 3O Second MBA, Score. I would also recommend Varsity Tutors, the largest live learning platform in the US for students and teachers to connect and collaborate in Virtual Summer Camps. You can find their free educational resources, here. They have recently launched ‘Free Virtual School Day’ to provide free live, online classes to students facing school closures.
  3. Start your own learning company! A lot of employees today feel they are in some way bound by the company’s norms and policies and only limited to what the company demands no matter how entrepreneurial they are. So here is the solution: just like how careerealism puts it: that every job is temporary, it is imperative to build up on your skill-set and start voicing your thoughts and industry opinions via a blog. Learning can never be stalled – in any way. You’ve got to be a thorough brand promoter of your own competencies. And, for all you know, when your blog picks up pace and people start to become more and more cognizant of your thoughts, you might just land up with some consulting gigs and speaking opportunities – now doesn’t that sound like a great entrepreneurial move?

When you start executing the above three moves, you might not see instantaneous results; but you will love the momentum and the long-term results – in the form of more and better promotions, increase in pay, and being the go-to expert for your company.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net