OFFICE CONCENTRATION
Microsoft Excel
New to Excel or need a refresher? This online course is designed to give you a solid foundation in the basics of Excel.
Supports Excel for Windows 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Microsoft 365. Also available: Excel Basic for Mac. In 25 engaging lessons you will learn how to use math, statistical, logic and text functions, organize data by sorting and filtering, effectively present your data in several chart formats and more.
Whether you use Excel for work or study, these tutorials will start you on your journey to becoming an Excel Ninja! Learn more about how a GoSkills Excel certification can boost your career.
The course is Excel 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and Microsoft 365 compliant (previously known as Office 365). Videos are recorded in Microsoft Excel 2019, 2016 and 2013 for PC, and where the user interface is significantly different, Excel 2010 videos are provided too.
If you 've used Excel before, try our Advanced course. And if you'd like to know everything – from beginner to advanced lessons, then the complete course is for you!
Microsoft Office
Learning Microsoft Office has significant benefits for your daily workflow, productivity, and career possibilities. Microsoft Office skills are indispensable across a plethora of industries and professions, and give those who possess them an advantage in the workplace.
82 percent of mid-range jobs now require at least a general understanding of Microsoft Office applications. Simply put, this means those with advanced Microsoft Office skills are highly – regarded candidates for employment. Chances are, there are Microsoft Office applications that you use every day. Imagine how much time and energy you could save formatting documents in Word, or working with data in Excel, if you knew the right shortcuts and tips to get there faster. With over 1.2 billion Office users globally, Microsoft Office is used widely by companies and education institutions around the world.
Learning Microsoft Office gives you transferable skills that you can use anywhere, throughout your career Microsoft Office training is a great way to upskill, refresh your knowledge, and make your resume more attractive. Here are a few of the most common training options in use today.
Office Productivity
Say goodbye to busywork – it’s time to get things done with our online productivity courses. It seems as though the buzzword on everyone’s lips today is 'productivity'. And for good reason. It has become increasingly difficult for people to stay focused due to the ever-increasing number of distractions online and offline.
Master widely used productivity tools like Trello, Evernote, Google Drive, and Keynote to optimize your workflow and spend time doing the work that truly matters.
GoSkills online productivity courses feature bite-sized video lessons accompanied by a quiz and exercise, so you can test and apply your know-how as you go along.
Design
From the apps on your smartphone to the sleeve around your coffee cup, the ever-connected world we live in is full of opportunities for brands to make a great first impression with a strong design.
If you want a job where you’ll be working on something different every day, thriving in a fast-paced environment and loving a creative challenge, a career in graphic design may be just foryou. And the best news is that you don’t even need a degree to succeed, as long as your work is beautiful.
Graphic design is artwork that combines text and images (illustrations or photographs) in order to sell products or promote an idea.
Regardless of what field you’re in, graphic design skills are a huge asset. If you’re good at graphic design, you can create corporate identity sets like logos and letterheads, printed materials like posters and packaging, digital assets like infographics and social media ads, and much more. Whether you choose to specialize or generalize is up to you.
Finance
Finance is the universal language of business. Every business decision in every department has a financial component to it.
It pays to learn finance. It doesn’t matter whether you are in HR, Sales, IT, Admin or Support, you still need to speak the language of finance. Whether discussing plans, strategy or how well your department is performing, you’ll be conversing in financial terms and numbers.
If you can’t speak the language of finance, it means you can’t communicate well, which means
you won’t be involved in important decisions. But if you can speak the language of finance, your value to the organization will dramatically increase.
You need to know about the money and transactions that you are responsible for within the organization.
You need to know how to make requests for funding and budgets.
You need to plan how you will spend the money in your budget.
You need to track and report on the status of the accounts for which you are responsible.
You need to understand how your spending impacts the organization’s financial reports.
First, we’ll begin with financial transactions – the fundamental building block of finance. If you
don’t understand this, nothing else will make sense.
Next, you’ll learn about business planning and budgeting. When you understand the budget
planning process, you can effectively request the money and resources you need to do your job.
Part of understanding budget planning includes understanding the terminology and analysis used
by the business to make strategic planning decisions.
Finally, you’ll learn how the business reports its financial status and measures its financial
performance.
BUSINESS CONCENTRATION
Soft Skills
All businesses are made up of individuals. Being able to form bonds with others in the company
is an important skill in building a strong team. Besides, research has shown that teams that work
well together get more done.
Soft skills in this category include:
Teamwork – working productively with peers and coworkers
Personality – encouraging others with a positive attitude
Social skills – handling yourself well in all types of business situations
Conflict resolution – de-escalating disagreements between others
No matter what a job entails, it’s essential to have excellent communication skills. If you can
present ideas in a logical manner and are well-received, you have a serious advantage over
others.
Soft skills in this category include:
Speaking – delivering impactful speeches in small or large groups
Listening – understanding and empathizing with others’ points-of-view
Selling – presenting compelling reasons for taking all kinds of action (not just buying!)
Persuading – convincing someone to adopt a new viewpoint
If you excel at thinking outside the box, you probably have excellent critical thinking skills.
These qualities are important in today’s information economy, where machines and software are
quickly replacing humans for rote tasks. Being able to solve problems will prove useful in any
sector.
Soft skills in this category include:
Creativity – imagining new approaches to a problem
Critical thinking – developing and using a systematized method to handle tasks
Analysis – interpreting deeper meaning from surface-level data
Innovation – developing new and original products, services and systems
No matter how qualified you are to do a job, it only matters if you have the skills to take the job
to completion. In fact, 85 percent of managers reported work ethic as the most important factor
in employee success. If you work hard, accomplish goals on a deadline and do a job efficiently,
you’ll always be employed.
Soft skills in this category include:
Punctuality and reliability – showing up on time, every time
Organization – developing and maintaining a logical system for storing items
Planning – arranging steps to meet long-term goals
Productivity – managing energy and attention to accomplish more
Employers desperately need quality leaders. In fact, a recent survey showed that leadership is the
single most urgent talent gap managers face. And don’t think leadership skills only apply if
you’re in a management position. Managers need leaders in all roles.
Soft skills in this category include:
Trustworthiness – being truthful and following through with promises
Motivation – inspiring others to reach their potential
Commitment – dedicating yourself to stick with a project
Goal-setting – developing ambitious, but achievable, long-term goals
Lean 6 Sigma
Lean Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology designed to eliminate problems, remove
waste and inefficiency, and improve working conditions to provide a better response to
customers’ needs.
It combines the tools, methods and principles of Lean and Six Sigma into one popular and
powerful methodology for improving your organization’s operations.
Lean Six Sigma’s team-oriented approach has proven results in maximizing efficiency and
dramatically improving profitability for businesses around the world.
There are three key elements to Lean Six Sigma.
Tools and techniques: A comprehensive set of tools and analytical techniques that are used to
identify and solve problems.
Process and methodology: A series of phases that organize the use of the problem-solving tools
to ensure that the true root causes are found and that a solution is fully implemented.
Mindset and culture: A way of thinking that relies on data and processes to achieve operational
performance goals and continuously improve.
These three elements reinforce each other. Analytical techniques are not used effectively unless
there is a process for applying them and a mindset of continuous improvement creating the need
for them. An improvement process does not produce the desired results unless it includes the
tools and techniques that define the activity of the process steps and there is a culture that insists
on systemic data-based approach to solving problems.
Finally, a culture that seeks to continuously improve will be frustrated if there are no tools and
techniques for analysis and no process or methodology that can be applied to organize and focus
the improvement efforts. Fortunately, the Lean Six Sigma approach to business improvement
includes all three layers.
Design (same as in Office Concentration)
Finance (same as in Office Concentration)
MANAGEMENT CONCENTRATION
Project Management
Eighty-three percent 1 of organizations report that they can’t find qualified project managers to fill
open positions.
While this is bad news for employers, it’s great news for job seekers and those looking to
increase their salaries.
In fact, project managers make an average salary of $73,745 2 and certified project
managers make even more.
Nearly 22 million new project management positions will have been created between 2017 and
2027, with the industry forecasted to grow by 33 percent. 3 If you have the right skills, you will be
primed to take advantage of outstanding opportunities for career growth.
Now is the perfect time to figure out whether or not project management is right for you.
We’re all project managers at some points in our lives. Whether it’s a quick undertaking, like
organizing the garage over the weekend, or a complex, drawn-out one, like developing a website
by the end of the year, these are temporary endeavors that have a definitive time frame with
specific goals and objectives in mind.
Projects, then, are just unique undertakings that have a definitive start and end date.
Finance (same as Office Concentration)
Lean 6 Sigma (same as Business Concentration)
COMPUTER PROGRAMMING CONCENTRATION
Development
Learning to code could be your ticket to a lucrative and fulfilling career.
Tech job opportunities are expected to increase by almost double the projected growth of other
industries by 2024, 1 making coding one of the most important job skills of the future.
High salaries, the flexibility to work from anywhere, and a healthy job outlook are just three
benefits you can look forward to in this dynamic industry.
And learning to code is no longer just for engineers. Half of job postings in the top income
quartile that require coding skills were found outside the technology industry, 2 proving that non-
developers can benefit from having some programming knowledge under their belts.
When you think about software development, what image comes to mind? If you’re like most
people, it’s probably not a glamorous one – long hours spent slouched over a set of esoteric
symbols performing complicated, ritualistic processes. But the truth is software development
isn’t nearly as difficult or restrictive as it once was. In fact, it’s easier to build software today
than it has ever been.
Just look at mobile phones. 10 years ago, creating a mobile app required you to spend days
learning specific tools, and even then your app would only work on certain phones. Today,
anyone can create a fully featured app using any one of a hundred different tools in a single
afternoon. The barrier to entry is lower, and even people who haven’t studied software have
found careers in the software industry.
So, why is coding important to learn? If you’re still not convinced, here are three reasons why
you should learn to code even if you’re not a developer.
Today, coding is a basic requirement in many professional jobs. Roughly half of all U.S. jobs
paying more than $57,000 per year require some degree of coding knowledge. These aren’t just
tech jobs, either. Writers, marketers, and even graphic designers can get a step ahead with basic
coding skills.
Learning how to code also helps develop analytical and critical thinking skills. Coding requires
you to think logically, since computers follow a set of rules that software has to adhere to.
Working within these rules teaches you how to approach complex situations, work through
limitations, and solve problems efficiently.
Learning how to code makes you less dependent on other people. If you want to change your
website’s appearance, you could always hire someone to do it for you, or you could write your
own CSS and JavaScript to create a totally unique look. If you want to create a report from a
database, you could always submit a ticket and wait days for a developer to respond, or you
could write your own SQL query and pull the data right away. Even everyday tasks such as
copying files or scanning emails can be automated using code.
Design (same as in Business Concentration)
Data Analysis
Take one look at the technological disruption shaping modern society and it’s easy to see why
data analysts are (and will continue to be) in such high demand. The Internet of Things brings
more and more devices online each and every day, and advances in quantum computing show
improvements in data storage and processing by orders of magnitude. As a result, demand is
skyrocketing for analysts who can make sense of this data and offer actionable insights to
organizations around the globe.
Data analysis is the process of extracting meaningful insights from data. The data may be raw
and unstructured (like the text of restaurant reviews on Yelp), requiring significant cleanup and
processing before analysis; or, the data may be structured and tidy (like a spreadsheet of monthly
loan disbursements), ready to be analyzed.
The goal of data analysis is to discover patterns in the dataset that can explain a historical trend,
predict a future outcome, test a hypothesis, or suggest an optimal course of action. Often, these
insights will be presented to key stakeholders in the form of infographics, interactive dashboards,
presentations, or other visual formats.
Data analysts in the financial sector will often work with investment portfolios to predict when to
buy, sell, or trade a particular stock or digital currency. They may also work closely with
financial institutions to detect fraud, crack down on scammers, and streamline the loan approval
process for bank customers.
The role of the data analyst in business intelligence is twofold. They assist businesses with
making marketing decisions by offering insights into a specific target market, predicting
customer churn, and reporting on the performance of marketing campaigns. They also illuminate
areas of opportunity for business expansion and predict bottlenecks and obstacles to help
businesses better navigate choppy industry waters.
Whether in store or online, data analysts help streamline the shopping process for retail
customers. From predicting which products a customer is likely to purchase, to determining
which target segment an advertisement is best suited for, the data analyst ensures that the
customer is presented with just the right product at just the right time.
