New skills: 5 online courses to take your career to the next level

Professional development just got easier thanks to LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning can help you take the next career step (LinkedIn Learning)

Looking to take the next step in your career? Online and e-learning courses can help driven professionals upskill, grow their confidence and prepare for the challenges ahead. Accessible wherever and whenever you need them, and with thousands to choose from, LinkedIn Learning’s courses are taught by industry leaders – and, better yet, they’re completely free when you sign up for a one-month trial.

What is LinkedIn Learning?

LinkedIn Learning provides unlimited access to expert-led courses for ambitious professionals looking to level up and advance their career. Topics cover in-demand skills and include everything from time management and marketing to photography and coding. Each course is led by an industry expert with real-world experience; you can kick off with a 30-day free trial to get a feel for the platform before deciding whether to become a monthly (£24.98 a month) or annual (£14.99 a month) subscriber.

How does it work?

Sign up for a one-month free trial and gain access to thousands of video courses, exercise files and quizzes. You can take courses in your own time, at your own pace, opting whether to learn via bite-sized videos or in-depth content, with audio-only and offline viewing options also available. Each LinkedIn Learning course comes with a certificate when completed, which you can share on your LinkedIn profile. If you’re unsure about anything or have more questions about the course, the majority come with a Q&A section, enabling users to interact directly with the course author.

How is it different from other e-learning platforms?

Time for a little history lesson… Lynda.com, founded 20 years ago, was one of the oldest e-learning platforms around, with a wealth of experience in teaching people new skills online. It merged with LinkedIn and, in 2017, hey presto! It became LinkedIn Learning, with unlimited courses covering business, creative and technology-based skills. Since then, more than 700 million users in over 200 countries worldwide have joined the LinkedIn Learning community, to up their expertise and take their careers to new heights.

You can take courses whenever and wherever you like (LinkedIn Learning)

Sign up here for a month free trial, LinkedIn Learning

Users have unlimited access to all courses, which are taught by real-world experts in their field and are available to digest in different formats. Signed up members receive a bespoke experience, with personalised course recommendations tailored to their specific interests and career goals.

You can also test your new skills in interactive ways as part of each course – practice what you’ve learnt with exercises and quizzes. Once you’ve completed a course, you can stand out compared to other candidates when going for a job, thanks to certification that’s clearly displayed on your LinkedIn profile.

Last, but by no means least, LinkedIn Learning members get full access to LinkedIn Premium services: think salary and job insights, unlimited profile viewing and InMail credits, among others.

Top 5 new skills to learn online

Unconscious Bias

Led by Stacey Gordon, CEO and founder of Rework Work, this Unconscious Bias course for beginners helps you recognise and acknowledge your own biases so that you can identify them and prevent yourself from making decisions based on a biased viewpoint. Stacey explains some of the most common forms that biases take, including affinity bias, halo bias, perception bias and confirmation bias.

Critical Thinking for Better Judgment and Decision-Making

This advanced Critical Thinking course gets a big thumbs up from LinkedIn Learning users, with a rating of 4.5 stars out of a possible 5. Covering critical thinking skills, the course is led by author, speaker and founder of the Applied Curiosity Lab, Becki Saltzman. It prepares leaders to avoid deceiving fallacies, spot misleading cognitive biases, craft better arguments, hone judgment and improve decision-making across their organisation.

Courses come with videos, exercises and quizzes to suit different learning styles (LinkedIn Learning)

Sign up here for a month free trial, LinkedIn Learning

Developing Your Emotional Intelligence

A one-hour beginner Emotional Intelligence course led by chartered organisational psychologist and executive coach Gemma Leigh Roberts, this is aimed at helping users build effective relationships at work. The course guides you towards becoming more self-aware, enabling you to identify triggers that may hijack your performance and to align your intentions and impact to create strong and collaborative relationships.

Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is the ability to think on a big and small scale, long and short term, and into the past and present. While strategic thinking is a valuable skill for everyone in an organisation, it becomes increasingly important as you climb the career ladder. In this beginner Strategic Thinking course, career and personal branding expert Dorie Clark shows you how to carve out time to think about strategy, gather data, learn from the past, create a vision for the future and implement strategic thinking within your team.

Time Management: Working from Home

A particularly timely skill to master in a year during which many of us have moved to home working. In this Working From Home course, bestselling author and productivity expert Dave Crenshaw offers best practices for anyone who works full-time or occasionally from home, including tips for setting up a dedicated workspace for maximum productivity, crafting your daily schedule, collaborating effectively with colleagues, and planning meaningful breaks to avoid burnout.

Click here to try LinkedIn Learning free for one month.