Online thrust for management skills

There’s a lot of hype amongst students and professionals about pursuing a career in management. Graduates and even experienced professionals from different fields are going for MBAs to specialise in either of the three major management aspects — Finance, Human Resources, and Marketing. But, do you really need an MBA to become a management professional? The answer is ‘not necessarily’. 

If we look closely, we come across two major reasons for getting an MBA degree. First, you are already studying or working in a similar field and wish to up skill yourself and second, you want a shift in your career (engineers taking the management route). But, MBA proves to be expensive and time consuming. What if there existed a second option which wasn’t as taxing and at the same time, you could gain the required skills and knowledge? Well, that option is, online trainings.

In today’s digital age, when to solve the simplest of our problems and silliest of our doubts, we go for an online search, why not try the way of online learning aka e-learning to learn new skills? If you look for it, you’ll find that many online trainings can help you attain management skills. To help you find relevant trainings, we have listed below the top in-demand skills that employers are actively seeking and can be learned online.

1 Business communication skills: Having good communication skills will always put you at an advantage in the corporate world. Good business communication means having proficiency in English (spoken and written) as well as interpersonal skills. It will not only help you in getting a job (you will be able to form a good resume & cover letter,and put your point forth in interviews & group discussions), but will also assist you with better workplace communication which might include writing business emails, preparing presentations, verbal communication with partners and clients, etc. thus speeding up your career progression.

2 MS Excel: Knowledge of MS Excel is another skill you would require to be a successful management professional. Nowadays, almost everyone has an idea about MS Excel but the basic knowledge would not suffice. You’ll need an advanced knowledge of MS Excel to handle raw data, generate inferences, and ultimately take informed business decisions.

3 Data analytics: To give yourself a competitive edge over your peers, you want to have the knowledge of business and market analytics, especially when you are good with numbers. This involves measuring and analysing of the business and marketing performance, gaining insights, and then optimizing the processes for better efficacy. Excel, statistics, and modeling (regressions, data manipulation, and business modeling), are some of the important topics that could be learned in data analytics.

4 Digital marketing: Every product that you have ever known about was because of some form of marketing, another must have skill for a career in management. Digital marketing is a vast field comprising different segments like email marketing, web analytics, social media marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, blog creation, video and mobile marketing.

5 Basic trading and investing skills: If you are inclined towards the financial aspect of management, taking a beginner’s training in trading and investing could be the first step in realising your potential. This training will provide you with the knowledge of stocks, stock exchanges, stock markets, financial ratios, technical analysis, etc.

Learning these management skills online, will not only be time saving but also cost effective for you. Having an edge over your peers, you can start your management career way before them, by directly going for an internship or a job instead of going the long way of pursuing a management degree.These trainings will provide you with an opportunity to work on live problems and it is no secret that practical knowledge is always preferred over the theoretical knowledge.

— Inputs courtesy Internshala Trainings (trainings.internshala.com)