Enhance Your Career and Employability Skills
Institution: University of London (Coursera)
Date: June 5, 2015 - July 3, 2015
Bio: Directed by the careers placement center from the University of London, this course offers a buffet styled self paced course on improving your job seeking and self assessment skills.
The goal of the course is not just about making someone a better interviewee, but allowing them to better understand and articulate their own values and what kind of career they want through skills and values self assessment. The course covers the perspective of both the job seeker and job poster, and how to parse the language used in job postings and resumes. They also cover resume, interview, and networking skills as well.
The course surprised me in the high quality and conciseness of its messaging. Content was primarily given through video lectures from a number of the placement consultants on their staff, and even interviews with HR head hunters and managers. The content was further supported by additional readings from articles, blogs, and research papers; and most valuably by a series of worksheet exercises that promote self assessment, articulation, and analytical skills.
Accomplishments: I elected not to do the online peer review of the various weeks exercises, in favor of doing those exercises with friends or acquaintances. This is very much a 'get out of what you put into it' course, and I found many of these exercises to be quite insightful or otherwise great references.