The face of work is changing as we speak. Driverless cars are poised to replace gig drivers. Drones are taking over delivery jobs. And a huge amount of manual labor tasks are said to be replaced by intelligent automation. Freelancers, especially the knowledge workers, may think that these titanic changes will not have much impact on their employability prospects. However, data indicates otherwise. Per Upwork Quarterly Skills Index , released last year, 70% of the fastest-growing freelance skills were completely new to the index. The World Economic Forum report also identified that in many global markets and industries, the most in-demand jobs and specialties did not exist ten or even five years ago. They also expect the pace of change to accelerate even further. If you want to remain employable in the long-term and get a steady stream of jobs , you should not get too comfortable with what you have now. Below are several actionable strategies that will help you ensure that your freelance skillset is up-to-date and will remain so in the future. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE Keep tabs on the emerging skills and tech tools Upwork, LinkedIn, Glassdoor and several other organizations publish the most in-demand skills and jobs indexes on an annual basis. Be sure to check those out. Acknowledging the change and remaining in-the-know is the first step towards ensuring that your career is moving in the right direction. Lifelong learning is a must The future of work will not be about degrees. It will increasingly become about the skills you have. And few (if any schools) can provide you with a comprehensive skill set that will withstand the impact of new tech disruptions on your career field. Your learning process should no longer be limited to some selected period of your life. It must become an ongoing process. In fact, freelancers are nearly twice as likely to re-skill over the course of their career, when compared to traditional employers. And that is a major advantage for sure. Cultivating the habit of lifelong learning is not that challenging at all. There’s an abundance of free and paid e-learning options available for pretty much any freelance niche: Coursera , Suffolk University and many others . But still, you’ll need to make some targeted effort to embrace the learning process and make that habit stick. Below are some helpful tips for that: Be committed: Block off specific times on your calendar and dedicate those to self-development. Create a learning plan and stick to it. And if you are having a hard time, find an accountability partner of a mentor that will give you that much-needed kick to keep going. Organize your learning: Plan a suitable method for storing your learning materials, notes and aids. Create summaries of what you have learned and put the newly acquired skills into practice. Repeat: Go through the studied information more than once as the process of repeating helps transfer knowledge from short-term to long-term memory. You may no longer need […]
