What type of continuous education program is right for you?

Photo by Martin Adams

The world of work has changed, and the traditional model of education no longer passes muster. Gone are the days when people used to get a diploma and enter the workforce, prepared with the skills they would need for a lifelong career in a single industry, with maybe a job transition every decade or so.

Today, the average millennial and Gen Z-er will change jobs every 3 years and make as many as 3-7 career changes over the course of their working lifetime. At any given moment, as many as half of workers are considering making a career change, and 20-40% are actively planning to do so. This is compared with baby boomers, who averaged one employer change every 9-10 years – or only one-third as often.

As workers navigate constant change – in role, level, function, employer, and industry – they will not be able to rely on a stagnant knowledge base and set of skills cultivated in their 20s. They’ll have to constantly develop new skills, especially if they work in high-tech, rapidly evolving industries.

Workers know this, and employers are finally stepping up to the plate to help; it’s in their best interest to do so in order to retain top talent and help people succeed at all levels. Nearly 80% of employees say that they’re ready to learn new skills or completely retrain, and 88% of employers now offer programs like professional development stipends to support continuous education initiatives.

In a previous article, we described the many emerging types of non-degree continuous education programs, from bootcamps to microcredentials and “nanodegrees.” There are so many, in fact, that it can be pretty overwhelming to consider all the options. The good news is that there really are no “bad” options – only the one that’s right for you.

We’ve partnered with Al Dea, a career development expert and founder of Betterwork Labs, to develop a self-assessment to support you in approaching your professional development journey with intentionality. The questions below will guide you to assess your professional goals, desired skills, and learning styles. We encourage you to conduct this assessment once a year to stay on track with your learning goals and make sure you’re getting the most out of your annual professional development stipend or other continuous education benefit.

So grab a keyboard or pen and paper, and let’s get started.

Continuous education self-assessment

GOALS

Dea says the most important question to ask yourself when considering professional development (PD) is what problem – or professional challenge – you want to solve with your PD investment?

Another way to think about this is to start by thinking about the big picture and your ultimate goals. Why do you want to do professional development in the first place, and what do you hope to get out of it in the end?

Some commons goals are:

Improving at your current role
Upleveling to get a higher or better role
Transitioning to a new role / job / function / industry
Generating greater earning power
Enhancing your personal brand and credibility

Why it matters

It’s important to apply this lens because it will help you to chart a development journey and track your progress over time. In most traditional degree programs, the curriculum is all or mostly chosen for you. But with continuous education, you’re in the driver’s seat choosing your own pathway. The goal is not just to do “stuff,” but to ensure that you’re building a strategic arsenal of skills and experiences that will help you achieve your ultimate goals.

CONTENT

Next, consider the type of content and skills you’re looking to learn.

Content questions to ask yourself:

Are you seeking to build your general knowledge base or develop concrete skills that you can put into practice immediately?
Are you seeking to learn entirely new skills or refresh existing skills?
Are you seeking to develop hard, technical skills (e.g., coding or a foreign language)?
Are you looking to build soft skills (e.g., effective communication and managing teams)?
Are you looking for extra support or accountability putting skills into practice or taking them to the next level?

Building knowledge

If building knowledge is your primary objective, resources like books, audio books, podcasts, TED talks and other informational videos might be a solid, low-intensity and low-cost way to go (more on intensity and cost considerations below).

Refreshing existing skills vs. building new skills

If you’re seeking to refresh or strengthen existing hard skills for which you already have a strong foundation – maybe you need to brush up on Excel, for example – then self-serve options like on-demand online courses are a good approach. This will enable you to go at your own pace, skip over any content you’ve already mastered, and minimize the investment of time and money.

If you’re looking to build new skills, you should consider a live, synchronous course where you can interact with other students, ask questions of an instructor, and practice putting skills into action to make sure they stick. It will probably be a little more expensive, but it will be worth the investment to get the most out of the experience.

Mastering soft skills

Soft skills can get a bad rap as being squishy or trivial, but they are often what separates the “smart” from the “successful” and enable people to take their career to the next level. Don’t overlook soft skills like mastering complex communications, giving effective feedback, and managing high-performing teams. The big challenge with soft skills is that it’s exceptionally easy to “talk the talk,” and it’s often exceptionally difficult to “walk the walk” – especially because many of us have blind spots about our own weaknesses.

Career coaching – especially one-on-one coaching with a trained professional – is one of the best ways to put a laser focus on exactly the soft skills you need to develop, as well as gain real, no-BS accountability to put them into practice.

MODALITY

Now, think about how you like to learn. Look back on your past educational experiences and try to pinpoint when you were most engaged and successful, and what made it work for you.

What type of a learner are you?

Hands-on / experiential (e.g., field-based learning, project-based learning, labs, practicums, hackathons)
Observational / social / collaborative (e.g., shadowing, apprenticeships, group projects and co-learning experiences)
Formal vs. informal (e.g., professor-led courses and seminars vs. meetups and workshops)
Visual (e.g., explainer videos, charts, diagrams and graphics)
Auditory (e.g., storytelling, anecdotes, podcasts)
Synchronous vs. asynchronous (e.g., courses with a learning cohort, start and end date, vs. on-demand, individualized and self-directed learning)
Online vs. in-person
Large lecture vs. small seminar
Slow-paced vs. fast-paced

A few things to keep in mind about your learning styles (emphasis on the plural):

Forget all that stuff you’ve heard about learner types like “I’m a visual learner” or “I’m an auditory learner.” No one fits neatly into clean categories! We all fall on a spectrum and can learn in many different modalities. The key is to understand your preferences and the right mix of styles – not your one true style.
That said, there are some trends about how most of us learn best. While the exact ratios vary by individual and context, the 70-20-10 leadership development framework is a good guideline to follow when building higher order skills, especially in management. Most of us gain about 70% of our highest-impact learning through new and challenging experiences (experiential), 20% through learning communities, observation, and collaborative study (social), and only 10% through formal education like coursework. So try to choose programs that include experiential and social components whenever you can.
Most PD opportunities will span a few modalities: It’s rare that you’ll find a course or learning opportunity that fits squarely into one of these buckets. In most cases, content will be delivered through a range of modalities. The trick is to figure out the mix and whether the balance is well-aligned with how you like to learn. A great way to do this is to ask the instructor to preview the syllabus or speak to someone who has taken the class previously.

COMMUNITY

Next, think about what kind of interaction you’d like to have with others, including instructors and students.

Community interaction questions:

Do you want to have direct interactions with an expert instructor / professor / mentor?
Would you prefer to learn individually, or with a cohort of peers?

Live instructor vs. no instructor

If the content you’re seeking to learn is complex, and you think you’re likely to have questions or need extra support or feedback from an expert, you should consider choosing an instructor-led course with a live, accessible leader vs. an on-demand experience (e.g., pre-recorded videos).

Individual vs. cohort experiences

Consider your own learning style(s), and whether you’re seeking to learn skills for which discussing, giving and receiving feedback, and learning from others could meaningfully add to your experience.

For example, delivering a business pitch is a skill for which there is no “right” or “wrong” answer that you can reference to check your work. Instead, you’ll benefit the most from engaging in deliberate practice with a group of peers who can provide constructive feedback. Similarly, a certain degree of language learning can be done independently, but to gain fluency you’ll need to speak regularly with other students and native speakers / instructors.

Also, think about whether there could be additional benefits or perks of learning with a community, for example, strengthening connections in your industry or expanding your network, especially if you’re seeking to make a career change.

CREDENTIALS

Now, let’s shift to thinking about outputs and outcomes: in this case, credentials.

Questions to ask yourself about credentials:

Is it important to you to receive a credential, certificate, or other formal acknowledgement of your training when you complete a program?
Will receiving a certain credential help you to better achieve the goals you outlined in step one?
If it’s important to get a credential, does it matter if the credential is from an extremely well-respected institution or organization?

Why credentials matter

You might think credentials are all about vanity – just for the purpose of putting a few letters after your name on your business card. And if that’s your main reason for pursuing a credential, no judgment here. But, more importantly, credentials signal a level of quality and mastery of concepts considered to be standards in a given industry.

Some professions require credentials just to enter the field – e.g., most clinical, academic, and engineering careers. However, in many areas of business, credentials are more likely to be optional, but can be useful currency to demonstrate skills and advance your career. Some examples of credentials that can be helpful in business are project management (CAPM, PMP), career coaching (ICF, iPEC) and myriad software certifications (e.g., AWS Cloud Practitioner, Intuit Bookkeeping).

When considering whether it matters where you get the credential, do some web searches and ask around in your industry to see if certain institutions are highly regarded. For example, Pragmatic is considered to be the gold standard in product marketing, and the Aspen Institute is recognized as one of the best training programs for government and non-profit leaders.

INTENSITY

We’re almost done with the assessment, great work so far! We’ll wrap up with some of the most important logistical considerations: time and money.

When we talk about intensity, we’re really talking about time, as well as some elements of learning style, energy, endurance (both mental and physical), and resources.

Questions about intensity:

How much time, overall, can you devote to professional development?
Can you commit a bunch of time all at once? (Can you take a few days, weeks, or months off of work, or are you in between jobs?)
Do you have the mental and physical energy and support resources (e.g., childcare, financial savings) to complete a high-intensity program?
Would you prefer to space out your learning over a longer period of time and at a more relaxed pace?

High-intensity programs

The most high-intensity programs are bootcamps and other fully immersive experiences. These are ideal for when you’re trying to develop a new skill set to put into action immediately, and when that skill set requires a lot of applied practice to master. Often, these types of programs support major professional transitions, such as changing career tracks, advancing to an executive level, or relocating to an overseas office. Coding bootcamps and language immersion programs are great examples of high-intensity experiences that can help you to master complex skills quickly in order to rapidly accelerate your career.

Low-intensity programs

The most low-intensity programs are on-demand and self-directed programs – for the obvious reason that you can complete them on your own schedule and go at your own pace. Many synchronous online courses are also designed to be of moderate intensity in order to accommodate the schedules of full-time working professionals: 1-2 classes a week and a few additional hours of outside work.

Keep in mind that there is really no right or wrong choice when it comes to intensity: It’s just a matter of goals, resources, and personal preference.

COST

Finally, it’s important to consider the cost of a continuous education program and the value. In simple terms: Do you have the money, or can you get it? And is the program worth your investment?

Questions to consider about cost:

Who is paying for your continuous education?
Can you get reimbursed for all or part of your education? (Does your company offer tuition reimbursement or an annual professional development stipend?)
Will you need to take out loans to finance your education?
Can you use tax-free money? (Note: The U.S. government now allows tax-free education credits of up to $5,250 annually.)
What is the expected return on your investment (ROI)?
Are you clear on exactly what types of skills or learning outcomes you’ll gain, and how you can put them to practice in a current or future role?
Will this program help you get a promotion, new job, and/or higher salary with a monetary value that will justify the cost of the investment?

Some words to the wise

We can’t offer financial advice without knowing your unique situation. But, we can advise focusing on long-term ROI vs. just the sticker price, fully exploring all sources of financial assistance – including professional development stipends from your company – and going back to your original goals as you think about ROI.

If the math doesn’t work out, or if you have other financial constraints, is there another path to achieving your professional goals that might not require such a large financial investment? Are there free opportunities (e.g., volunteering for non-profit organizations, launching a side-project, or conducting informational interviews with experts in your field) that can help you build knowledge and gain hands-on experience to develop new skills? How can you craft a holistic personal development plan that makes the best use of all your available resources – financial, human capital, and otherwise.

Fast resource: Question check list

We know this has been a lot of information at once, and hopefully at least some of it has been helpful. Below, we’ve combined all the questions that appear in the narrative above into a single, skimmable list. We’ve also developed a chart that compares different professional development opportunities across various criteria. Please contact us for the latest version.

Is there something else we should be talking about related to professional development, continuous education, skills acquisition, or lifelong learning? We’d love to hear your ideas. Send us a note at [email protected].