Digital Technology

In today's technology-driven world, basic computer skills, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, have simply become base layers to so much more. Technology continues to evolve, and so must job applicants, and employees. Keeping up with current trends and improving your tech skills will undoubtedly set you up for career success. (inspirational music) (gentle music) The NACE organization defines digital technology readiness as follows. "Leverage existing digital technologies ethically and efficiently to solve problems, complete tasks, and accomplish goals. The individual demonstrates effective adaptability to new and emerging technologies." This ability to understand, adapt, and utilize with little assistance is what being tech-ready is all about. Let's take a look at some of the bigger technological skills currently valued by employers. Social media, search engine marketing and optimization, or SEO, data analysis, such as web traffic, analytics, and data about your customers, content and digital marketing, such as advanced social selling, digital design and image editing, like Adobe Photoshop, coding and programming, cybersecurity, cloud-based storage management, like Dropbox or Google Drive, video development and editing, such as creating a YouTube channel, and using Adobe editing software, mobile, such as optimizing customer experience via mobile, and finally, web design and functionality for user experience. Now that we've reviewed some of these in-demand areas, let's take a look at some of the different ways to improve your skills. Read books, blogs, and websites that will keep you up to date on tech trends. Here are some great websites to consider: digitaltrends.com, lifewire.com and thewirecutter.com. Take a course either online or in person. Watch YouTube videos. Make a habit of using technology more in your job and personal life. Maybe create a digital project around a hobby of yours. Increase your online presence, and finally, study the analytics behind the scenes. When you study the numbers, it's easier to understand what affects them, and how. There's a ton of existing technology out there in almost anything you're gonna do, and you wanna take the technology that's good, that you can use, and then you wanna use your expertise to really add the most value, which is combining the existing stuff, building on top of it. You know, you're gonna use digital technology in just about any thread of business that you're involved in today, and so to stay up with that, you have to research. Certainly, you wanna take some of those classes, if possible, while you're in school, but certainly there's a variety of different ways, external classes you can take outside of college. There's just so many different webinars that you can take on the internet that can get you up to date and keep you abreast of what's going on digitally out here in the marketplace. And I've started following dice.com. It's a job search engine, but they post a lot of articles and a lot of news about technology, and new things emerging, and I've just found that that's kind of the best place to find articles that break it down, and that do keep up with these new trends.