Expert advice: Keep your competencies up-to-date

Highly educated people with a technical or scientific background are usually specialised within a subject area or a technology that is constantly evolving. Therefore, it's risky not to develop your competences. Because if you lose your job, you risk being left behind on the job market.

Even though it sounds paradoxical, your job is the biggest threat to your career. Many people are so busy that they don't look ahead, and don't set aside time for training and courses. Maybe they hope that their competences can last throughout their time on the labour market.

But all STEM professionals should cultivate the specialist areas they love. This will motivate them to constantly improve their qualifications and to gain new competencies.  

Competences quickly become outdated

It's all about constantly having the right competences – i.e. the competences in demand – and being aware and clarified about your own competences.

Because you should find security in your skills and competences. Not in your job or company. If you want to – or have to – apply for another job, your competences must be in demand and future-proofed.

Competences quickly become outdated, and a good rule of thumb is to divide the length of your education by two to find out how long it will remain relevant. So, if your education took five years, you’ll need new competences after two-and-half years. 

How to talk to your manager about upskilling

Many people find it difficult to sit in front of their boss and ask for permission to undergo training because it's often a big expense for the company. 

However, if your employer gets defensive when you ask about training, say: ‘If you think skills development is expensive, try ignorance.’ In addition, you need to find arguments for why you can get training in the company's needs in relation to the strategies for the future.

You need to ask what the future holds for the company and the department - and if it's completely off-limits and you realise that you're not progressing, then you need to move. Otherwise, you're living dangerously career-wise.

If you're serious about it, pay up

Most companies today are committed to serious employee skills development - skills development that is strategically anchored in the company's current and future tasks. 

But for companies to be willing to fund skills development, they must be able to see the need for the training or skills programme in question.

So if you want something completely different from what the company wants from you, you will have to choose to pay for it yourself. In this way, you also show that you take skills development seriously.

The dangers of peer-to-peer training

When highly educated people are asked to describe their ideal workplace, an inspiring and challenging work environment tops the list. The general trend is that we want colleagues who are more skilled than us in certain areas so they can teach us. Competence development is therefore a sought-after offer and can easily take place internally at work.

However, it's not optimal to only develop skills through peer-to-peer training and knowledge sharing. Companies need to be aware of this as well, because if employees are not occasionally sent ‘out of the office’ for training, they risk missing out on the latest knowledge in their field. This can result in the company's ‘skills capital’ simply regenerating, and a CV without formal courses and training can also look inadequate. For example, a project manager with ten years of experience should strongly consider becoming a certified project manager to make it easier to move on to other companies in the future.