Improve Your Skills With The Internet
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Finding a job is not easy for Rwandan college students and graduates. You spend years in school hoping that by the time you graduate, you will land the job of your dreams, but this belief continues to prove wrong as years go by. If anything, it’s extremely hard to find a job in your desired field. More and more students continue to graduate every year in Rwanda, but underemployment is still a big problem.

The majority of college graduates end up working in completely different fields than their college majors or starting unprofitable small businesses to make ends meet. It’s no secret that youth unemployment is a big problem in Rwanda, even though university education is highly accessible. In fact, the youth unemployment rate in Rwanda is 42% (Leach, 2014).

If you are a college student or a recent college graduate in Rwanda and you have been stressing about how you will find a good job, don’t worry. You do not have to wait for the education system to finally be “improved” or for universities to start imparting students with relevant skills that employers are looking for.

The only thing that will help you find your dream job and finally escape the shackles of underemployment and unemployment in Rwanda is taking matters into your own hands. Today I will show you how exactly you can use the internet to improve your employment opportunities and how the internet can help you build skills that your Rwandan university couldn’t provide you with so that you can finally land your dream job.

How Online Courses Can Help You When It comes To Employment Opportunities

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No matter what field or major you are interested in, you can always find quality and affordable courses online. The good news is that most of these courses are entirely focused on one field, so they are packed with invaluable information. Here’s how you can use the Internet to improve your employment opportunities.

1. Use Online Courses To Build Skills Better

Online courses are much better when you are trying to improve your skills in a particular field. Unlike Rwandan universities, they help you go deeper into one field rather than spending years learning about various things you’re actually not interested in. For example, if you want to learn digital marketing from a Rwandan university, you will not find such a program. Instead, your university will give you a generalized marketing major with the tiniest part that focuses on digital marketing, and you most likely won’t learn anything about digital marketing until your final year.

However, if you decide to take a digital marketing course online, that’s what you get. A course that is fully detailed and entirely focused on digital marketing only. Of course, among these two options, what would help you build strong digital marketing skills is the online course. Depending on your desired work field, you will always find better online courses to help you learn and build the right skills.

2. Get Affordable Certifications

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With online courses, you cannot only learn and improve your skills; you can also earn a certificate for every course you take. You can earn online certificates in your desired field to prove all skills you gain for every online course you take. Although you may be required to pay for certain certificates, this should not discourage you because most of them are extremely affordable.

Online certificates can be easily earned because most online courses can be completed in just three months. Imagine how many certifications you could earn if you put all your effort into building skills with the help of the internet? Aiming to stand out among all other applicants will enable you to have better chances of being employed, and you can easily do so by earning online certifications in your desired work field.

3. Learn From The Best Universities In The World

With the help of the internet, you can get access to hundreds of courses that are offered by the best universities in the world every year, for free. Does it get better than that? You do not have to pack your bags and move to another country to be able to learn from leading institutions. With just the internet and a few clicks, you could start an online course offered by Harvard University today, and no, I’m not joking. The good thing about online courses is that you can choose which institutions you want to learn from if you want to.

Some online platforms that offer online courses have strong partnerships with the best universities in the world. Be guaranteed that you will get quality courses from these universities, and this will help you gain impeccable skills in the field you are interested in. Mentioning in your job application that you earned a certificate from leading institutions will surely improve your employment opportunities.

4. Gain Soft Skills With The Help Of The Internet

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Did you know that most employers do not only consider technical skills or your experience when hiring? soft skills play a very important role in the hiring process as well. Certain soft skills like leadership, problem-solving, emotional intelligence and teamwork make ideal candidates that employers are looking for (“Soft Skills”, 2020).

There are many online courses you can take to improve yourself and gain soft skills, like Develop Your Emotional Intelligence, that will help you stand out in a pool of applicants. Even though hard skills are important, always keep in mind that you will need to develop additional soft skills to improve your employment opportunities greatly. It’s time to take advantage of all online courses out there that can impart you with every soft skill you are looking to develop and improve yourself.

By now all I have been talking about is how online courses can help you improve your chances of finding a job, but what if you want to be self-employed? Can these online courses still help you in that case?

The answer is yes! There are several online courses out there for people who want to be self-employed.

How To Be Self Employed With The Internet

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1. Freelancing

If you haven’t already, you need to stop having that mindset that the only good job you can get is working in a traditional workplace. There could be chances that you may still be unemployed even if you had the right skill sets. The internet is a great way for people who want to be self-employed to become freelancers. If you are extremely skilled but you still can’t find a job, be self-employed. There are several freelancing sites that can help you make a living by working from home. However, you need to make sure that you have the right skills in a particular field to become a successful freelancer. If you are still lacking some skills, you can use the internet to improve your knowledge and be certified for your desired field so that you can get more gigs.

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2. Self-employment focused courses

There are a lot of successful self-employed people in every field you can imagine, and most of them are helping people out on the internet. Let’s say that your goal is to start a business, but you don’t know where to start. There are things like starting a successful store on Shopify or starting a successful business on Amazon that can help you get started. These are things that you can not learn from a Rwandan university. You can easily learn how to start and manage a small business or an online business from e-courses that are being offered by experts.

Although not offered by institutions, these are useful courses because you can easily learn from people who are experts in the field you want to start in. These are people who have tested all strategies and who knows what works and what doesn’t work so taking their courses saves you a lot of mistakes when you want to become self-employed.

Great Online Platforms That Will Improve Your Employability

To Help you get started in improving your employment opportunities, I put together a list of some of the greatest online platforms that provide affordable online courses and freelancing opportunities. Don’t wait for tomorrow, access these online platforms today, build your skills, and improve your employment opportunities.

This post showed you exactly how Rwandan college students and graduates, like you, can use the internet to improve their employment opportunities.

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References

Get Free Certifications Online. BitDegree.org. (2020). Retrieved 9 December 2020, from https://www.bitdegree.org/free-certifications-online.

Koksal, I. (2020). The Rise Of Online Learning. Forbes. Retrieved 9 December 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilkerkoksal/2020/05/02/the-rise-of-online-learning/?sh=3aa7c24872f3.

Leach, A. (2014). Rwanda’s next education challenge: teacher training and employability. the Guardian. Retrieved 9 December 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/jan/29/rwanda-education-teacher-training-youth-unemployment.

Robinson, R. (2019). The 24 Best Websites for Learning New Skills. The Balance Small Business. Retrieved 9 December 2020, from https://www.thebalancesmb.com/websites-learn-new-skills-1200627.

Soft Skills. Wikijob.co.uk. (2020). Retrieved 9 December 2020, from https://www.wikijob.co.uk/content/interview-advice/competencies/soft-skills#:~:text=%20What%20Are%20the%2010%20Key%20Soft%20Skills%3F,even%20if%20you%E2%80%99re%20not%20directly%20managing…%20More%20.