What online training should I get my employer to pay for?

May 28, 2020 2:17 AM

I'm a digital project manager for a small firm. I oversee the entire website creation process and act as a liaison between the client and the dev team, as well as handling client accounts for completed projects. Due to the pandemic, I've been furloughed. And while I can't take on other work during this time, I can get training paid for by my employer. Thinking about the future, what should I study? And who should I study with?

Here are a few relevant points to consider:

• Ecommerce is likely to be a big focus for us going forward, as the retail landscape changes post-C19. It's definitely not my area of expertise. Should I learn a specific platform, or theory, or...?
• Tech isn't my strong suit. Ironically nor is project management! Would a refresher course in our platforms (Wordpress and Drupal) or some kind of organisational training be of more value?
• While there are a lot of free opportunities for skills training - and I'd be happy for you to list them here! - my employer can pay for training, probably in the low three figures. I'd like to take advantage of that.
• I'm going to assume that my furlough will last until the end of August, but I'm not sure.

I'm aware that there might be relevant details I've missed, happy to explain further!

posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs to Education (10 answers total)

Do you work in Agile ways? Are you Scrum certified? I found that a useful value add to my CV.
posted by teststrip at 2:52 AM on May 28, 2020

If you are not interested in having an official certification, but want access to a wide range of course topics, I like LinkedIn Learning. They have courses on a range of topics from technical (complete with exercise files) to soft skills and some fun things (photography, drum lessons!). Lots of project management, including official PMP credits. I like the learning paths which are sets of courses (for example - Become an Agile Project Manager). At the end of a course or learning path you get a certificate you can print or post to LinkedIn. An annual subscription is around $300 and you can also subscribe month to month. There may be similar platforms as well.
posted by beyond_pink at 6:12 AM on May 28, 2020

I think tech skills are more amenable to online learning. There are a lot of platforms out there: PluralSight, edX, Coursera, Udemy, and more. Some of them will give you certificates you can put in your LinkedIn profile or elsewhere.
posted by elmay at 7:23 AM on May 28, 2020

A one-year subscription to PluralSight is like $299, and they offer training on TONS of technical topics -- and I saw a new track for business skills. I got my boss to pay for that again this year so that my two system administrators and I can browse freely :7).
posted by wenestvedt at 7:44 AM on May 28, 2020

oh boy...
- data science
- machine learning
- artficial intelligence
- data visualization across key platforms (tableau, qlik, microstrategy, spotfire)

or platform:
- anything salesforce (check trailhead)
- azure or aws

so much to learn.
posted by specialk420 at 11:17 AM on May 28, 2020

https://datajournalism.com/ ?
posted by specialk420 at 11:39 AM on May 28, 2020

LinkedIn Learning is great, I was recently building an Alexa skill and found a really helpful course there.

A previous manager bought our team a bunch of Udemy courses and let us put them in our personal accounts. I left the job almost a year ago and the courses have been really helpful to me in teaching me things I didn't know about the tech stack I use every day.
posted by bendy at 10:36 PM on May 28, 2020

Louder Than Ten offers excellent digital project management training, including a more extensive apprenticeship program.
posted by meghosaurus at 4:53 AM on May 29, 2020

If you're staying with the web, web accessibility training.
posted by telophase at 9:35 AM on May 29, 2020

Second telophase. Digital (not just web) accessibility is not only the right thing to know more of, but also highly in demand, specially in e-commerce, any government or education contexts. It is also cuts across roles (managerial, tech). LinkedIn has a few courses that are decent. For full certification Deque and Paciello have full curricula.
posted by garbanzilla at 11:56 AM on June 1, 2020