Online-courses for career advancement after lay-off
I was laid off from an administrative assistant job a few weeks ago. Having time now, I want to become more marketable. Can you recommend on-line courses (preferably, but not necessarily free) in Excel, Word, Windows 10, Python, or any other topic that will make me more employable when jobs open up again? Thank you, I appreciate it!
Apr 1, 2020
Parent Replies
Sorry about your job situation. I find udemy courses (including on excel) to be generally quite good and you can get free access through the Berkeley public libraries.
Berkeley Adult Education
Mr Excel on YouTube has an Excel Is Fun tutorial set that has hundreds of videos. They are super informative and free! Sorry about your job:(
Berkeley Adult School is offering free online job skill classes.
Coursera has some free offerings.
i myself have taken Google’s free Google Analytics course online at Google Analytics Academy.
the Berkeley Public Library may have free memberships to Lynda or another online educator.
good luck,
Lisa Tsering
Khan Academy has basic classes in Python and Excel. Coursera has courses in many topics. And microsoft has full courses on their products on their website. You may also want to look into a General Assembly-style instructor-led course vs. asynchronous learning as it may be a better experience and allow you to ask some questions. If you've been an admin, while getting more proficient in the google or microsoft suite of products is nice, ultimately this is operations work as a career path, so the strategic, long-term path would be to pursue project management or bookkeeping certification, opening you up into more senior ops roles like project manager, bookkeeper, operations associate, accounts payable/receivable, etc.
I would check out some of the current software as a service platforms, they have lots of "badges" and certification. Salesforce.com comes to mind here's there learning link; https://www.salesforce.com/services/learn/overview/
Also check out the library, there are lots of new links for online resources and you can chat with a librarian for ideas for the Contra Costa Library system, and probably others. They could give you ideas too.
Sorry to hear you were laid off. Good luck!
You can learn Salesforce completely for free through their online learning system. https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/home. Its actually really fun to go through their modules and earn points. A lot of companies in the Bay Area use Salesforce and Admins make a pretty good salary. I went to the big Salesforce conference last year and they featured all kinds of people who were entirely self taught off their online education site.
Hi! I'm Pamela, a Berkeley mom and also the creator of the Khan Academy computing courses. We don't currently teach Python/Excel, but we do have an Intro to SQL course that is popular with people in a range of industries. There's also Intro to HTML/CSS and Intro to JS. SQL sounds like the best fit for you though, as it can be used in many roles where you might do data analysis.
Sorry to hear that you were laid off. Try freecodecamp. Also you can consider some coding/data science bootcamps if wanting/able to make a bigger commitment. They are often around $12-16K, but some have a payment plan where you only start paying after you land a job. There are many kinds of bootcamps, so do your research and ask questions about career support services, etc.