Don't Miss Your Chance to Take the 10 Most Popular Courses of the Year

As the Great Reshuffle slows, a new era may be dawning: a breakthrough that brings upskilling culture and career development centre-stage with professionals getting more serious about skill building.

The pandemic accelerated change across industries, and as a result, skills to do a job today have changed even compared to a few years ago. Professionals see the profound changes and opportunities and are responding by learning new skills to future-proof their careers and are ready to learn new skills to meet the moment.

Have we reached, as Forbes has dubbed it, the 'reskilling revolution'?

If the energy we’re seeing from the LinkedIn Learning community is any sign, the answer is a resounding "yes". Globally, 7.3 million learners watched the most popular LinkedIn Learning courses of the year (nearly double the audience from last year!).

In Australia and New Zealand learners are building up their skills across a range of areas. Here's what they focused on:

●  The #1 most popular course was Excel Essential Training (Office 365/Microsoft 365) as people and organisations brushed up on their data management skills to be ready to wrestle with spreadsheets with ease
● Learners leaned into improving communication skills with courses like Communicating with Confidence and Speaking Confidently and Effectively. Likely reflecting that many professionals are settling back into the regular in-person office life, while others are brushing up on presentation skills ahead of taking advantage in this tight talent market
●   Hard skill courses in programming, particularly Python continue to feature on the list, indicating technology skills are still in high demand
●  New to the list is tackling unconscious bias, which likely reflects Australian talent’s desire to know more about Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and to better engage with their multicultural communities

From adopting new soft skills to exploring ways to be a more impactful team member, the most popular courses reflect the steadfast growth mindset of the Australian LinkedIn community to future proof themselves.

What you’ll learn:

1. Excel Essential Training (Office 365/Microsoft 365) with Dennis Taylor

We have a lot of data at our fingertips these days. Being spreadsheet savvy can save you time and breathe new life into your data. Excel expert Dennis Taylor leads you through learning basic Excel skills such as organising data and performing calculations with simple functions, then introduces intermediate skills like building charts, PivotTables, and more.

2. Project Management Foundations with Bonnie Biafore

We all have projects to manage – from our personal to-do lists to large-scale corporate projects. Regardless of the scope of work, Bonnie Biafore will teach you the fundamentals of project management such as establishing clear project goals and objectives, meeting deadlines, and closing out projects. Sprinkled throughout the course are tips on how to communicate effectively with your project team.

3. Power BI Essential Training with Gini von Courter

Data is only as valuable as the insights it offers. Put your data to work with this course on how to use Power BI, the business analytics tools that allow you to create and share impactful visualisations with others in your organisation. In this course, Gini von Courter explains how to import data, create visualisations, and arrange those visualisations into reports. You will also learn how to use Power BI Mobile and how to use the data modelling capabilities in Power BI Desktop.

4. Speaking Confidently and Effectively with Pete Mockaitis

Adapted from the podcast How to Be Awesome at Your Job, Pete Mockaitis is joined by professional speaker Diane DiResta to discuss tips and tricks for crafting impactful and informative presentations around what’s important to the audience. The conversation touches on strategies such as shifting your focus away from yourself to gain confidence, using body language and tone to deliver consistent messaging, and crafting a plan to recover from a worst-case scenario incident.

5. Strategic Thinking with Dorie Clark

People may joke about 4D chess, but having the ability to think strategically in both space and time puts you at an advantage that will help you move forward – and up – in your career. In this course, Dorie Clark will teach you how to embrace a strategic mindset, how learning from the past can shape your vision of the future, how to be detailed in your strategic thinking, and how to share this skill with your team.

6. Communicating with Confidence with Jeff Ansell

Even the most gifted communicators can struggle with confidence, and confident individuals can find clear communication difficult. In this course, Jeff Ansell guides you through developing and honing this vital business skill. Topics covered include: how to organize your thoughts, how to use body and language to better express ideas, and how to overcome anxiety.

7. How to Be Both Assertive and Likable with American Negotiation Institute Licensor , Kwame Christian

For many of us heading back into the office more often, brushing up on our interpersonal communications might be needed. This course is adapted from the American Negotiation Institute podcast Negotiate Anything and in it Kwame Chrsitian demonstrates how to encourage rapport while remaining assertive and effective. From staying firm at the negotiation table to quickly building strong, productive relationships this course is vital for those feeling a bit rusty to skilled negotiators looking to take it to the new level.

8. Learning Python with Joe Marini

If you want to pick up one programming language, Python is it! This versatile, easy-to-learn, object-oriented language is used across many industries and in applications such as software engineering, AI, machine learning, and mobile app development. Developer Joe Marini unpacks basic Python syntax and shares an example of how to construct and run a simple Python program. You will also learn to work with dates and times, read and write files, and retrieve and parse HTML, JSON, and XML data from the web.

9. Excel: VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP for Beginners with Jess Stratton

Time savings using Excel’s new look up functions isn’t just for power users and spreadsheet svengalis! Everyone can master Excel’s most powerful functions in a few steps once Jess Stratton has walked you through them. Learn how to write error-proof formulas and supercharge your spreadsheet skills in this mini course.

10. Unconscious Bias with Stacey Gordon

The way we communicate and the choices we make in the workplace are guided by an unconscious bias that, when left unchecked, can contribute to negative workplace culture. Diversity expert Stacey Gordon will help you identify some of the most common forms of unconscious bias and offer strategies for identifying and effectively addressing these biases within yourself and your organisation.

11. Agile Foundations with Doug Rose

An agile mindset prepares your team to respond well to whatever comes their way. Doug Rose leads you through the fundamentals of building an agile team. You’ll learn about the values and principles covered in the agile manifesto, as well as how to enhance communication with user stories and cross-functional teams. Doug also provides exercises that can help boost your team's agility and productivity.

12. SQL Essential Training with Bill Weinman

Database wrangling is a valuable skill for anyone working in tech, and for that you need to know the most common database language: SQL. Tech advocate and programming expert Bill Weinman teaches the major features of SQL using SQLiteStudio, an intuitive and accessible database management software. You’ll learn fundamentals such as creating tables, defining relationships, and manipulating strings, numbers, and dates. Also included in the final chapter is a real-world example of building a simple application using SQL.

13. Interpersonal Communication with Dorie Clark

Many of us are seeing new faces around the in-person or virtual workplace. Maybe you're a new face on the team! Dorie Clark’s course will help you navigate the communication side of these new interpersonal relationships. She offers advice and techniques for dealing with complex and nuanced situations like interruptions, receiving critical feedback, and communicating across cultures.

14. Excel: Advanced Formulas and Functions with Dennis Taylor

Follow along with Excel expert Dennis Taylor as he demystifies the hundreds of formulas and functions available in Excel. Dennis starts with a few critical formula shortcuts that will speed up your work, then covers a variety of functions, such as VLOOKUP, MATCH, and INDEX, statistical functions, text functions, and date and time, math, text, and information functions. Dennis provides practical examples to help viewers easily transition to using Excel's most powerful formulas and functions in real-world scenarios. Note that this course is recorded in Excel for Office 365 but anyone using a recent version—including 2019, 2016, and 2013—will be able to follow along.

15. 15 Secrets Successful People Know about Time Management (getAbstract Summary) with getAbstract

getAbstract have taken Kevin Kruse’s New York Times best-selling book and turned it into an audio summary of the key habits of the world’s most successful people. The common theme Kruse found surveying Olympians, CEOs, and entrepreneurs was that time is their most prized possession. From work, rest, exercise, and play, listen to practical advice, based on how the top achievers manager their time to get the most out of every day.

16. Developing Your Emotional Intelligence with Gemma Leigh Roberts

Emotional intelligence is a skill that can–and should!–be learned. Executive coach and organizational psychologist Gemma Leigh Roberts will teach you what emotional intelligence is, why it’s important in the workplace, and how to work on honing your own emotional intelligence. Some areas she guides you through include how to become more self-aware about personal triggers and how to align your intentions and your impact so that you can build strong and collaborative relationships.

17. Expert Tips for Answering Common Interview Questions with Jenny Foss, Linda Raynier, LinkedIn Learning Instructors

No matter the job, nearly every interviewer will ask about your strengths and weaknesses, your leadership style, and how you acquit yourself in a professional setting. Yet for many of us these are the curliest questions during any hiring process. These bite-sized videos offer expert tips on how to confidently respond, as well as how to negotiate your salary and ace your next job interview. Whether it’s your first job interview in a few years or you’re in the middle of a job hunt, these sessions are well worth it for anyone looking to brush up on their interviewing techniques.

18. Critical Thinking with Mike Figliuolo

Developing the ability to think reflectively and address root-cause issues will make you a better decision-maker and a more reliable resource within your organisation. Leadership trainer and expert Mike Figliuolo outlines a series of techniques to help you develop your critical thinking skills by learning how to define the problem you’re trying to solve. Mike will then teach you a number of critical thinking methodologies that you can employ to better work through problems. He also provides guidance on how to develop this skill across your whole team.

19. Business Analysis Foundations with Greta Blash

A failed project often starts with a lack of clarity over what it is people, whether client, boss, or the market needs and wants. Business analysis is the secret weapon to understanding what the end goal is, and vitally what’s needed to get there. Greta Blash steps through the foundations of business analysis, from conducting a needs assessment and identifying stakeholders to testing, validation, and release. It helps demystify the role of the business analyst (BA), and outlines the knowledge and skills required to build a successful BA career, but would be useful for anyone looking to optimise their business performance.

20. Python Essential Training with Bill Weinman

Python’s simplicity has made it the go to scripting language for many organisations. In this course, Bill Weinman demonstrates how to use Python 3 to create well-designed scripts and maintain existing projects. You’ll see real-world examples while learning the basics of the language syntax and usage, as well as advanced features such as objects, generators, and exceptions. Learn how types and values are related to objects; how to use control statements, loops, and functions; and how to work with generators and decorators.

Plus check out the top 20 most popular courses on LinkedIn Learning globally, for free until 31 August 2022.