From an employer’s perspective, it’s all about relevancy. How relevant are the skills you have to solving the problems my business faces? From an employee’s perspective, it’s about building marketable skill sets to leverage from one opportunity to the next. In this marketplace of skills, why do people still focus on finding jobs?

Take a look at resumes. Resumes speak to who you were — jobs you held in the past, education completed, etc. They do not reflect what employers really care about — how you will help them advance their organizations. Employers hire skills and future potential, not credentials and past accolades. (Click here to tweet this.)

This idea of “skills” has changed how I perceive my career planning as well as that of the people who work for me. Rather than looking at positions as jobs with specific pay and responsibilities associated, we try to look at them as periods in which you’re developing specific skills that will help grow our business. This philosophy enables honest conversations around each employee’s role and allows us to work together to develop skills that we need and that they want.

In pursuing a skill-focused career planning philosophy, I look at three aspects that help answer the question: What skills do I choose to acquire and how do I position myself to receive opportunities that leverage/grow these skills?

1. Finding yourself

About nine months into starting my company, Growth Spark, I had to decide whether to continue freelancing or to build an agency. I figured the best way to determine what hires I needed was to examine the role that I saw myself playing in the business.

So I developed what I call “base analysis,” which I conduct annually to determine what skills I need to develop. Base analysis looks at the individual tasks I perform and asks three questions:

1. Am I good at this task?
2. Do I enjoy performing this task?
3. Does this task directly contribute to growth for the company?

I get as granular as possible in evaluating the answers to these questions. Anything that scores a yes to all three, I continue to perform. This same process can be applied for skills-focused career planning to look at current (and past) jobs and list the tasks/roles you’ve performed. Focus your career planning around leveraging your strengths and going after “Level 3” skills.

2. Growing yourself

Once you’ve identified the skills to develop, set yourself on a track of continual learning. I like drawing from the Japanese work philosophy “kaizen” about continuous incremental improvement. In a market where technology evolves at a pace that can retire skill sets in just a few years, continuous self-improvement is a necessity.

Luckily, many entrepreneurs have capitalized on this trend by creating alternative education companies. Organizations such as General Assembly provide online and offline courses to help working professionals continue building skills in marketing, design, business strategy, etc., at a fraction of the cost of traditional education.

3. Positioning yourself

The last piece in skills-focused career planning is about positioning yourself to get opportunities to continue to refine these skills (while getting paid). I often suggest to people evaluating job opportunities that they view themselves as a consultant. The potential employer is a client who needs help solving a particular set of issues that match your skill sets.

The most successful consultants focus on marketing themselves as a unique brand and sell their portfolio rather than their resume. Consultants continually demonstrate their expertise through blogging and social media, as well as by speaking and building a personal website to showcase their portfolio.

4. Learn before you earn

During college I had an internship with a consultancy that worked with startups. My boss (now mentor) said something that stuck with me: “Learn before you earn.” The idea of building one’s career around learning and acquiring skills develops the resiliency necessary in today’s unpredictable job market.

Ross manages Growth Spark, a Cambridge, MA, based agency that helps e-commerce companies design interfaces that convert visitors into customers. A graduate of Babson College, he is a serial entrepreneur in the technology space with experience in digital marketing, business development and strategic management.

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The post Why You Should Stop Looking for a Job, and Improve Your Skills Instead appeared first on Brazen Life.

We’ve compiled a list of eight free educational tools that cover many topics, including programming, entrepreneurship, entertainment and the sciences. (Click here to tweet this list.)

1. TED Talks

You may be familiar with TED Talks and their knowledge-friendly, inspiration-charming slogan, “Ideas worth spreading.” The conference, held every year in various parts of the world, gathers great minds of science, philosophy, journalism and creative professions to educate you on technology, entertainment and design.

At least, that was the original idea when the nonprofit was founded in 1984. Now all of the talks are available online. It’s one of the best places to learn about the hottest new ideas and world truths, which is why it’s at the top of our list as one of the most valuable tools to begin learning new skills.

TED inspires and shares knowledge you can’t find anywhere else, and it’s generally one big, grand lesson in less than half an hour.

2. Khan Academy

Bill Gates had a vision of educational bliss when he was introduced to Salman Khan’s project in 2006. The Khan Academy began when the MIT and Harvard Business school graduate was tutoring his grade school cousin, Nadia, in basic mathematics. Khan couldn’t always teach her in person, so he began filming YouTube videos.

The format was a simple lecture on an electronic blackboard paired with friendly and straightforward instructions and easy-to-understand drawings.

These lectures went viral, and Khan Academy was started using real-world anecdotes to teach many of the requisite K-12 courses in science and mathematics — even postgraduate-level skills. It’s the second hottest online educational tool on the Internet because it’s perfectly free for viewing. All content is delivered on YouTube without user registration.

With thousands of lectures to choose from, anyone can pick up skills such as high mathematics, finance, accounting and computer programming. Khan Academy has also partnered with other renowned universities and museums to teach even more higher education topics. Exercise your cerebellum for yourself here: KhanAcademy

3. Coursera

Coursera is another educational effort to offer free education online to the world. It features some of the most prestigious universities and brilliant minds on the planet. Coursera is most notable for its courses on computer programming skills and having featured lessons with Google executives.

Coursera is taught by professors from world-renowned universities sch as Princeton, Stanford and Columbia. Who knew Ivy League education could be a Wi-Fi connection away?

Unbelievable? Check out their list of partners yourself. Courses last six to eight weeks and many include actual certificates of completion from the universities involved. They’re taught in dozens of languages by schools from around the world.

4. SkillShare

SkillShare is another hip way to learn skills online, especially with topics like DIY Audio Mixing from an actual DJ master, Young Guru, who has worked with much of the top talent in the music industry including Beyonce and Jay-Z.

SkillShare is unique in that the videos are mainly focused on modern and practical skills, such as entrepreneurship courses like Launch Your Startup Idea for Less than 1K. This course helps students define a minimum viable product to start their own company affordably.

Membership with SkillShare is only $9.95 per month for unlimited access to the video lessons. With a free membership, courses are on a per-class cost basis.

5. SkilledUp

With SkilledUp, 103,000 courses are available at your fingertips. SkilledUp is another resource to find and learn new disciplines online. Sixty-seven thousand of them are even free, including topics on Google software tutorials and lessons on Javascript.

The unique search engine format leads users all over the Web to a vast network of online course registries. If you have the appetite, SkilledUp has a list of resources to keep your brain occupied for hours learning about topics you didn’t even know existed. You might want to check out the Golden Rules of Entrepreneurship.

6. Lynda.com

Online video tutorials don’t stop there. Lynda is another place to learn new skills on your own time. With 2,372 courses online, you can pause and continue based on your own schedule to learn photography, computer programming and software like Final Cut Pro using Lynda.com’s memberships.

It’s not free, unfortunately. Unlimited access to these videos start at $25 per month. Higher memberships come with downloadable course materials and the ability to watch offline via your iPhone and iPad. Keep it mobile with Lynda.

7. Open Culture

Open Culture is the most barebones way to find free education from the top schools of the world online. Have an interest in art, programming or physics? You can find about any course you’re seeking on Open Culture under a plain text heading with a direct link.

That’s all it is: a simplistic, practical catalog of online education for no cost. Consider it the Craigslist of online education. Open Culture is one of the most basic and useful places to find lessons on practical skills.

8. MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts has a catalog of courses for free online. The most prestigious technical college in the world is actually offering courses to laymen for no cost on relevant topics.

Sustainable energy, medicine and engineering are all examples of classes you can take online from MIT. The most impressive aspect of OpenCourseWave is that it includes virtually all of MIT’s in-person courses and is available to the entire world. Check it out for yourself: MIT OCW.

Erik Hyrkas is the Editor and Founder of TechVoid.com. He’s part-time freelancer and full-time gadget freak based in Washington, D.C. He spends his free time using social media to annoy his friends and keep himself updated on the latest technology news and trends.

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The post Want to Learn New Skills? Try These 8 Online Education Tools appeared first on Brazen Life.

But sometimes you just get a little stuck. Sure, you know how to Google as well as the next person. But the answers aren’t always there. It may be time to try a new approach to learn best practices in your industry and sharpen your skills. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Follow this four-step process to find the answers you want and need: find experts, reach out and ask them to share their best practices, publicize these results online, then incorporate the tips and strategies into your business or career.

To be clear, this process isn’t about using people — it’s about creating a mutually beneficial situation. You’ll not only find the information you need, but also help those who help you to reaffirm their expertise and build their personal brand.

1. Find the experts

If people in your immediate network can’t help you, seek experts out online or through your connections.

Recently, I wanted tips on email marketing, specifically by and for entrepreneurial women who run their own brands. I couldn’t find the information I sought online. So I connected with savvy women through my business and my site One Woman Shop to find the answers I needed.

In my experience, these great resources can help you find experts:

• FollowerWonk: This powerful tool by SEOMoz searches Twitter bios by keyword and location. It’s more robust than Twitter’s own built-in search.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn’s sophisticated search feature is especially useful because it incorporates the skills section from people’s profiles. Try using quotation marks around your search term for more fine-tuned results.
• Search engines: Use advanced Google search (for example, Boolean operators like “and” and “or” narrow your search) to find more fitting results.
• SourceSleuth: Designed for journalists and bloggers, SourceSleuth is a free service that helps you find sources and experts. Just fill out a form describing who you’re looking for, and they’ll do the research and get back to you with someone who can help you.

Having trouble finding the email addresses of the experts you want to reach out to? Ask directly on Twitter (this is surprisingly effective), use this handy trick for finding emails or ask someone to introduce you on LinkedIn.

2. Get answers

Now it’s time to reach out. Here’s a tried-and-true email template you can use:

Hi so and so,

I wanted to reach out because I’m a huge fan of your work. I particularly liked [recent blog post or tweet, etc.].

I’m writing an article that incorporates advice from [category of experts you’re reaching out to] about their best practices on [topic you want to learn about]. Would you be willing to share some of your tips and suggestions?

I’ll be compiling the results into a [format you’ll distribute the information in] on [your blog or website name] and would be sure to include a link to your website. [Name of well-respected industry thought leader] and [name of person you know they respect] are already on board as well.

Thank you so much in advance — I’m really looking forward to learning from you!

-Your name

3. Publicize your learnings

Remember how we talked about this being a mutually beneficial arrangement? Time to put that into practice!

Compile the wisdom you gleaned from industry experts. Write a blog post (if you don’t already have a blog, this is yet another reason to create one), work with a designer to create an infographic or review the tips on your podcast.

If you don’t have a strong online presence with a big following, consider pitching to a larger site or blog. By guest posting on other sites, you’ll get a byline and will provide exposure for the experts who helped you — which means they’ll be more likely to help you out again in the future.

However you choose to distribute your findings, make good on your promise to publicize them or you risk burning bridges.

4. Apply what you learned to your own career

Knowledge is useless if it’s not applied. Incorporate your newfound knowledge and best practices into your work.

Make a list of immediate action items and complete them. Make it your goal to hold off on compiling another list of best practices until you’ve applied these.

Here’s to learning!

Cristina Roman is a Twitter fanatic, Starbucks loyalist and volunteer enthusiast who offers digital marketing consulting, career and business coaching and productivity seminars through CMR Strategies. She also runs One Woman Shop, a resource site and community for female solopreneurs and freelancers.

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The post Find, Learn and Grow from Industry Experts in 4 Simple Steps appeared first on Brazen Life.

Let’s get a drum-roll for your next topic…

Brazen’s Fall Run-Around

The topic: How are you learning a new skill?

New skills can help you land a job you enjoy, give you the chance to snag a promotion at work and provide opportunities to meet new people. Plus, it’s fun!

After publishing a post from author Josh Kaufman on secrets to learning new skills more quickly than you ever thought possible, we wondered how Brazenites are going about skill acquisition.

If you’re learning a new language, how are you doing it? Through a class at a university, or by traveling through another continent?

If you’re teaching yourself to code, what tools are helping you get there? Maybe a Skillshare class or an old-school book?

What skills are you adding to your arsenal, and how are you doing it?

How to participate: Write a post about this topic on your blog, and leave the link to that post below in the comments. (Only one post per participant.)

Deadline: November 15, 2013. That gives you plenty of time to share your story. Then watch for your link in our next Run-Around post in late November.

Ready to get writing? We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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The post Brazen’s Fall Run-Around: Tell Us How You’re Learning a New Skill appeared first on Brazen Life.