How do you stay relevant as a professional in this competitive labour market?

There is a lot of competition, movement, and development in the current labour market. This can make it more difficult for professionals to remain relevant. To support them in this, companies sometimes offer internal and external training programmes. But how do you stay relevant if your employer does not offer these development opportunities? I’ll give you three tips.  

1. Keep gathering knowledge

What are the latest trends and developments in your sector? Think about current regulations and compliance, changing consumer sentiments, technologies, and geopolitical movements. Ways to stay informed are:

- Reading news in your daily feed  
- Listening to relevant podcasts or audiobooks  
- Subscribe to an industry blog, RSS feed or distribution list  
- Studying white papers, thought papers or scientific articles

Broad knowledge of your field and staying up to date on the latest developments increases the likelihood of you staying relevant.  

2. Develop new skills

Developing skills is crucial in this current job market, especially at the start of your career. Find out which (new) skills are relevant in your industry. These can be both hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are measurable, such as a certificate of a course. Soft skills are more related to your personality, like communication skills or solution orientation. Which skills these are, can differ per function. DIQQ advises employees in the IT sector, for example, to learn how to work with current technologies, such as cloud services.

Nowadays you can develop many skills online. Several organisations, including LinkedIn Learning, have a wide range of courses you can take and tutorials you can watch.

3. Step out of your comfort zone  

‍Stepping out of your comfort zone sometimes takes courage and creativity, but it can be very valuable. Look at problems from other angles. For example, how do other companies or industries solve their problems? Could this, perhaps in a different form, also be a method for the challenges in your sector? With creative thinking and approaching situations out of the box, you might offer a different solution.

‍The total package

In a competitive labour market like this, it is important to stay relevant. Develop new skills, stay up to date of the latest trends and step out of your comfort zone. Do you work in IT and want more tips and tricks? Check out our socials or contact us!