In summer 2019, Bob McDonough took a full stack web development coding bootcamp at the University of Pennsylvania. An English-turned-telecommunications major in college, McDonough had been working at a bar while sending out job applications for positions he barely wanted. Most paid below $50,000 a year, an undesirable salary for a 27-year-old in Philadelphia.
McDonough says his “degree really wasn’t doing it” for him. “So, I figured I’d add a certificate to stack my résumé,” he says.
What McDonough was doing was upskilling—the practice of learning new skills or sharpening old ones to attain maximum desirability in the job market. While taking this web dev course, McDonough wasn’t sure it would be worth the time and cost. But by the end, he had a “polished portfolio,” he says, a filled-out GitHub and new skills added on LinkedIn.
Within three months of completing the course, McDonough had a salaried job at a design studio. “Someone saw my profile and gave me a call pretty quickly,” he says.
But he’s not sure job seekers could replicate his experience today. The skillsets deemed desirable seem to be shifting faster than ever, and job seekers are reporting dismal experiences on the market. In the 2010s, “upskilling” may have just meant enrolling in a coding academy and hoping for the best. But fast, seismic changes like the rise of AI have quickly made a path to professional staying power much murkier.
“Ten years ago, completing a certificate might have been enough to land a role in high-demand fields,” says Nora Gardner, senior partner at McKinsey. The days of taking a General Assembly course and landing a plum coding job may be gone.
In this Premium story, you’ll learn:
- Hear from workers who upskilled—and whether or not it led to new jobs
- Learn out-of-the-box ways to make yourself desirable beyond “learn Python”
- What employers are actually looking for, beyond certifications on LinkedIn
The uncertainty surrounding AI is immense, and the job market continues to be rough: In an August survey by the New York Federal Reserve, participants reported a new low of 44.9% likelihood of finding a new job should they lose theirs.
On top of that, research from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests around 10% of American workers may need to switch jobs by 2030. But 45% of employed survey respondents said that “their need for more or different work experience, relevant skills, credentials, or education was the top barrier to finding a new job.”
And yet, the way to upskill effectively doesn’t resemble the path McDonough took just a few years back. But that doesn’t mean upskilling courses are obsolete. Combined with continued on-the-job development, the dedication can communicate to employers the soft skills it takes to succeed in a rapidly evolving workforce: adaptability, willingness to learn, and resilience.
Mixed messages
Multiple sources told Fast Company that employers are emphasizing experience over specific skillsets. But learning the latest tech in the workforce goes a long way.
Diana Rocha, 37, a London-based product manager at predictive hiring company Applied, took a DeepLearning AI course on Coursera a few months ago. Then she went to Workera—a site where people can test their upskilled skills—and tested in the 75th percentile.
She put that all on her LinkedIn in August, a quiet month professionally in London, but immediately saw at least two to three companies or recruiters reaching out to her per week, compared to the previous one to two per month, she says. Rocha originally got her Applied job by upskilling, too, via a master’s program and Coursera courses on behavioral economics.
However, Rocha isn’t sure the recruiters recently reaching out on LinkedIn were only attracted to her new AI prowess. LinkedIn also shows her years of product management roles. Rocha says employers who contacted her were looking for that alongside the newer AI skills, so it’s unclear if upskilling truly led to the spike in recruiter interest.
However, McKinsey’s Gardner says it’s the mix of both existing and upskilled experience that will most likely get candidates seen.
If you’ve worked in your field for decades, “certifications can signal commitment to learning,” she says. “But the differentiator is how they’re put into practice. Applying AI tools to improve workflow efficiency demonstrates adaptability in a way a credential alone cannot.”
Easier than you think?
Today, McDonough has a new job, coordinating web content at a law firm. But his experience from the design role he landed via upskilling taught him to stay on top of the latest technology. He says he scouts YouTube and Reddit to “see what people are talking about,” he says. “If I click on something that has 300 comments, then I know I’m probably in the right spot.”
Learning while on the job is key to useful upskilling. While Molly Johnson-Jones, CEO and cofounder of job search platform Flexa, says organizations hawking upskilling courses often “sell a dream,” she adds that workers looking to switch careers can start doing so within their current company.
Johnson-Jones says to identify “what bits of your role could seep into moving towards that new role.” Say you want to transition from marketing into tech: Find ways to collaborate more with your company’s tech team, she suggests. Get to know the department leads.
Doing that relies on soft skills: empathy, interpersonal awareness, and emotional intelligence that make workers effective collaborators and pleasant to be around. We’re told these are the skills that AI will never snatch away from humans. Are those things even upskillable, though?
Lisa Lie, founder of “microlearning app” Learna, thinks so. Her company provides 10-minute-or-less lessons on skills like “boosting confidence,” “thinking differently,” and “working with anyone.” Run by experts like psychologists and performance coaches, each short lesson begins by setting out a problem, followed by the expert walking users through the best language to use to diffuse a contentious situation with a coworker, for example. Lie doesn’t call them “soft skills,” because “they’re not optional or easy,” she says. “If AI is taking care of repeatable tasks, the value of people skills just went up.”
‘You have to stay on top of it’
Upskilling can feel like throwing yet another stressor atop the existing mountain of stress that comes with being a working professional. But Gen Z appears ready to meet this future. Per Flexa’s Work Index study, which looked at more than 40,000 job posts and almost 30,000 job seekers, members of Gen Z are 68% more likely than older generations to prioritize personal development in their job search.
Though millennials, both McDonough and Rocha have adopted this approach. Based on their own experiences landing new jobs as a direct result of upskilling—it does seem to work. And if the youngest workers are prioritizing upskilling, it may well be the future.
“The tech moves so quickly,” McDonough says. Instead of just taking a course like he did in 2019, he suggests job seekers looking to upskill today “stay up to date, read, [and] listen to podcasts on what people are doing.”
“The AI hype is going to calm down at some point,” says Rocha. And yet? “I wouldn’t like to be left out because I didn’t upskill on that front.”
McDonough agrees. AI might be today’s hottest thing, but company executives are always reading about the latest trends, tech, and shifts, deciding what skills to hire for.
“You have to stay on top of it,” he says, “or else you’ll fall behind.”
