It was a good reminder that I need to personally control my own professional development. The job market has moved away from a 'job for life' model into a more temporary or freelance model. Companies are investing less in employee development as they see people leaving after a relatively short period (say 2-5 years).
It's similar to the familiar concept of "you have to manage your own career", only focused on professional development. An interesting point was that the information learnt in college has an average life span of 5 years. FIVE YEARS?! To stay marketable, continuous learning is a must.
SLC offers the "SCOPE" framework to build your own professional development plan:
- Self-Organised: YOU have to put the effort in
- Continuous: 10 minutes each day adds up!
- Ongoing: make it a habit
- Personalised: plan an approach that will fit into your life and meet your needs
- Evidence-based: record what you've learnt to improve your online presence (think future employers)
But how do build our knowledge when companies are tightening their training budgets? Professional development is not limited to conferences and courses. There are so many continuous learning opportunities available from the social media scene.
I was surprised by the top ten tools for professional development because I tend to think of these sites for more personal use: Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. So instead of following Lady Gaga on Twitter (ranked #1 with 30 million + followers), we should be looking for people/companies who are in our field, industry, or other areas of interest.
As a final thought, I loved the Twitter poll used in the webinar! I’ve already signed up and a ran a test with some friends on their favourite spot for coffee. It was really easy to use and I'm excited to try it out in a work scenario.
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