Hey Joseph, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I’m having trouble joining the book club that you host; could you please help me? Moreover, I wanted to ask when you say that I may benefit from taking an online training bootcamp, is there something specific I should look out for, something in the project bit? Thanks again for your guidance! It means a lot :)
I may benefit from taking an online training bootcamp, is there something specific I should look out for, something in the project bit?
The appropriate advice would depend on what your career goals are.
If you don’t have any technical or computer programming skills and you want to start learning, I would find some intro-level courses on HTML, CSS, SQL, and Python. There are also good playlists on YouTube that are suitable for beginners, such as Sentdex or thenewboston. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is also very popular.
If you want to learn more about management and operations, there are plenty of links in this EA Forum post.
Spreadsheets are always helpful, so you can just Google for around for what are the most useful or valuable spreadsheet fermulas and then make sure you understand how to use them all.
Most online courses (such as through Coursera, EdX, or other platforms) will involve some level of projects, but these will usually be very small and somewhat artificial projects. I suggest that you search for ways to combine the skills you are learning/developing with real world situations. Maybe your sister runs a bakery and you can use your new CSS and HTML skills to make a little website. Maybe you can use the spreadsheet skills for a class project in your Anthropology 101 in college to display the word frequency of a religious text and compare two different translations. So as you do these things, think of two different ideas: 1) am I learning a useful skill, and 2) how will I be able to describe this in a job interview or in a cover letter or in a resume so that it sounds impressive.
I’m having trouble joining the book club that you host; could you please help me?
I don’t think I can help you, because I don’t know what sort of a problem or difficulty you are encountering. 😂 This is the link to the Google Doc, which has all of the information: descriptions, links and instructions on how to join, links to lists of books, etc.
Having done a lot of this advice in my 20s, I’d recommend just getting started with an online training program you find interesting, seems career relevant, and also not too pie-in-the-sky as a near-term plan. Throughout my life, I think there were one or two that felt unusually good or bad all-things-considered. Even then, training programs are short (~6 weeks) and have no stakes if you stop them.
(The exception is if the training somehow includes hands-on training from someone actively trying to progress in one of your desired career paths. Good mentorship is a scarce resource and you should prioritize it above a lot of other things.)
It’s dramatically more important what you do after the online training program. It’s extremely rare that these programs set people up to to do the “impressive project” that hiring managers want from less prestigious candidates. If they did, everyone would be doing them.
As for the program, if you feel like you’re at least passing the course (whatever than means) and it seems promising, then I’d pair that with some informational interviews. You can ask “Hey I’ve been doing X training course and feel like it might be a good career path. Would you be willing to chat about how you got to where you were?”.
That will help you identify directions to take for your “career ladder”, which I put in quotes since it’s really more of a fog-of-war. Unfortunately, it’s usually the things between “Step 1″ and “desired job” where steps are the least clear and the most consequential. So I would save your energy for when you get there.
Hey Joseph, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I’m having trouble joining the book club that you host; could you please help me? Moreover, I wanted to ask when you say that I may benefit from taking an online training bootcamp, is there something specific I should look out for, something in the project bit? Thanks again for your guidance! It means a lot :)
The appropriate advice would depend on what your career goals are.
If you don’t have any technical or computer programming skills and you want to start learning, I would find some intro-level courses on HTML, CSS, SQL, and Python. There are also good playlists on YouTube that are suitable for beginners, such as Sentdex or thenewboston. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is also very popular.
If you want to learn more about management and operations, there are plenty of links in this EA Forum post.
Spreadsheets are always helpful, so you can just Google for around for what are the most useful or valuable spreadsheet fermulas and then make sure you understand how to use them all.
Maybe you have money that you can spend, so you decide to to an eCornell course, or a paid course on project management, or maybe you want to take a college course online for credit.
Most online courses (such as through Coursera, EdX, or other platforms) will involve some level of projects, but these will usually be very small and somewhat artificial projects. I suggest that you search for ways to combine the skills you are learning/developing with real world situations. Maybe your sister runs a bakery and you can use your new CSS and HTML skills to make a little website. Maybe you can use the spreadsheet skills for a class project in your Anthropology 101 in college to display the word frequency of a religious text and compare two different translations. So as you do these things, think of two different ideas: 1) am I learning a useful skill, and 2) how will I be able to describe this in a job interview or in a cover letter or in a resume so that it sounds impressive.
Thank you Joseph! I just messaged you a doubt :)
I don’t think I can help you, because I don’t know what sort of a problem or difficulty you are encountering. 😂 This is the link to the Google Doc, which has all of the information: descriptions, links and instructions on how to join, links to lists of books, etc.
Having done a lot of this advice in my 20s, I’d recommend just getting started with an online training program you find interesting, seems career relevant, and also not too pie-in-the-sky as a near-term plan. Throughout my life, I think there were one or two that felt unusually good or bad all-things-considered. Even then, training programs are short (~6 weeks) and have no stakes if you stop them.
(The exception is if the training somehow includes hands-on training from someone actively trying to progress in one of your desired career paths. Good mentorship is a scarce resource and you should prioritize it above a lot of other things.)
It’s dramatically more important what you do after the online training program. It’s extremely rare that these programs set people up to to do the “impressive project” that hiring managers want from less prestigious candidates. If they did, everyone would be doing them.
As for the program, if you feel like you’re at least passing the course (whatever than means) and it seems promising, then I’d pair that with some informational interviews. You can ask “Hey I’ve been doing X training course and feel like it might be a good career path. Would you be willing to chat about how you got to where you were?”.
That will help you identify directions to take for your “career ladder”, which I put in quotes since it’s really more of a fog-of-war. Unfortunately, it’s usually the things between “Step 1″ and “desired job” where steps are the least clear and the most consequential. So I would save your energy for when you get there.