PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT INSIGHT
Not just for geeks
Rob Percival, author, explains how coding can complement your professional expertise
I n June 2016, Fast Company published an article about why coding is still the most important job skill of the future. The research firm, Burning Glass, found that jobs requiring coding skills pay, on average, $22,000 more, and that half of all jobs with salaries over $58,000 require some coding skills. Moreover, half of all programming opportunities were in industries outside of technology, including finance, manufacturing and healthcare. Why is it that this one skill, often seen as the exclusive preserve of a select few, is so valuable to employers? As a professional, you probably spend most of your time working on a computer. You likely have to do a range of similar tasks each day, including working with email, creating and managing documents, and searching the web. Almost all of these tasks can be made more efficient with a strong knowledge of how the software and operating system you are using works. A little knowledge of coding allows you to automate away much of the repetitive chores most jobs require, freeing you up to do what you do best. Regardless of your current fluency with technology, it is likely that fairly regularly you need to communicate with technical people about things that you don’t entirely understand. Whether it is trying to get some content added to the company website, getting some software installed on your computer or getting the stats you need to analyse the success of your latest campaign, greater technical knowledge can make every aspect of those conversations
much more straightforward. Our current primary computing device, the smartphone, has only been around in its current form for ten years. Who knows what devices we will be using five, ten or twenty years from now? Understanding the fundamentals of how computers work will allow you to make the most of new devices and software before your colleagues, giving you an edge and enabling you to do your job better. ...proliferation of online courses and coding bootcamps has made the acquisition of coding skills highly feasible... Eighty per cent of employers google job applicants before inviting them for interview. Take a moment to search your own name and see what comes up. Is it what you would want a potential employer to see? Creating a blog, portfolio site, or a simple site for a project you’ve undertaken or e-book you have written enables you to control what your future boss sees, and helps you stand out as an applicant. Learning to code gives you the ability to, for example, build an app that makes tracking campaigns or targeting your audience more effective. You could create a webpage that helps your colleagues
collect leads or give feedback to clients. Or you could simply take responsibility for your area of the company website, making sure it is up to date and perhaps introducing tools and features that become popular with your customers or clients. Imagine your boss’s reaction if you came in on Monday morning with the solution to your department’s problems in the form of a slick website or mobile app! Just a few decades ago, starting a business usually required a huge investment, and reaching customers on the other side of the world simply wasn’t an option. With a little knowledge of programming, you can reach three billion people with your app or website instantly. Have an idea for a product or service that will change the world? Learning to code gives you the ability to create it and get it out there single-handedly. Acquiring specialist skills that could boost salaries and advance careers used to require at least a degree, if not years of study as part of a PhD or MBA. But today the proliferation of online courses and coding bootcamps has made the acquisition of coding skills highly feasible for anyone with a computer and internet connection. What is stopping you from boosting your career by acquiring some coding skills today? n Rob Percival is author of Confident coding: master the fundamentals of code and supercharge your career
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | July/August 2017 | Issue 32 10
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