I regularly hear people around me – friends, peers, clients – say that they need to take on ‘another course’ to achieve their professional goals. It gets my blood boiling because this is a conventional view and quite often absolutely not the answer. There is so much more to consider before looking at doing yet another course. Yes when there is an itch, it may seem like a quick and often easy way to take a significant step, but it isn’t the solution itself. Let me deconstruct this for you and look at how to consider your next step, with or without courses.
The main reason women consider another course is because they feel it will bring them confidence in their skills. In other words, we lack confidence in our abilities to take on anything new before we do ‘the’ course. Because naturally, there is always a course matching what we are looking at. The education industry is booming thanks to on-line learning and unemployment pressure. Courses can be a pretext to acquire confidence. So first of all, do you actually need it? Is it a requirement for the position you are looking at? Or is it a requirement you put on yourself?
Another common thread for taking courses is the desire to appear credible to others. We feel we need that diploma, or certificate on our profile or CV to look competent in our chosen fields. Sorry to break it to you, but this is your ego talking. Unless you offer expert services like an accountant or a doctor, people don’t care if you have that piece of paper from such or such university or not. They want you to perform, be easy to get on with and to deliver results.
This leads me to the obvious step of self-knowledge when it comes to skills and qualifications. List all your degrees, certificates, courses taken on the job, external courses outside of the job. Then list your experience – field, roles, industries – along with your core skills. Compare the qualifications required for the role you are looking at and your own: do you really need to study more? Could you be underselling yourself? What is the real fear here?
Now in the case that you have decided to opt for a career change, the trap is to jump to looking at courses and skip the overly important part. I see many people doing this, then eliminating their options because the courses are scary or inadequate. Then they get back to square one feeling deflated and stuck in their current job, like there is no way out. If that is you, I beg you to first do the work to plan where you are going and why. A career change must be carefully thought out, and follow a rational path – rather than be the result of an impulse decision because you liked the look and the topic of a course.
Before you look at courses, you need to understand in details what your ideal job looks like – in terms of hours, environment, pay, tasks…etc. so that you are 100% clear on what is the right next job for you. It is a tough step, I grant you that. But if you skip over it, you will only find the future decisions hard and often waste time and/or money. This is also the best way to assess if the shiny course you are convoiting actually confirms a calling or is just the current mood of the day.
Sometimes the next job you want to get is only a small pivot from where you are right now. You can save yourself thousand of dollars by learning on the job, as opposed to taking on a formal course upfront. At other times, training might not even be required – maybe only a registration. What I am saying is that our need for ‘another course’ is often a disguised feeling of wanting something else. And when it is still blurry in our minds, browsing courses helps us putting a label on it. But you cannot retrofit your ideal role from a course. It always goes the other way.
So if this is you, please resist the temptation to do another course then hope it will change your career. Diplomas are often only the passport to feel confident doing the work. If you have the interest you are already halfway there. Check with your mentors or people already in the job if a specific course would be valuable. This is the final validation step you need prior to committing.
In the end courses are only an enabler for our career. We are the driving force, and we can achieve anything we set our minds to. Once you remove the fear of not being ‘qualified enough’ that often goes with changing jobs, you will know for certain if you need more training. Courses for hobbies are fantastic on the other hand, because there is no pressure of delivering. Learning for growth is a big yes, but learning to figure out what to do or because we are scared is a no.
