A great time to take up short-term courses

Global unemployment is expected to witness steep increase due to Covid-19. Therefore, young people have to brace themselves for a highly competitive job market in the country. Enrolling for professional courses can give a job aspirant an edge over others. With technological advancements rapidly transforming the business environment, there is a need to equip oneself with the latest skills to achieve professional goals.

Short-term courses not only help in developing a specialised skill set within a short period of time, but also provide an edge over competitors in academics or career. These courses are relatively cheaper than full-time courses.

Some short-term courses to consider are:

Artificial intelligence: Technology is advancing at a high pace and artificial intelligence (AI) represents a major step forward in how computer systems adapt, evolve, and learn and every industry is using it. Enrolling and gaining expertise in AI in this fast-advancing technological world can be beneficial for an aspiring student. A student will get to learn machine learning algorithms, building intelligent agents, solving AI problems with the help of programming languages such as python, etc in this course.

Cybersecurity and ethical hacking: The internet has witnessed several new threats that include phishing, malware, ransomware, and most imminently data breaches. A number of attacks have been made on Blue Chip companies and government entities.

This is the best time to take a short-term course such as a postgraduate programme in ethical hacking and cybersecurity which would open a window of new opportunities with leading corporations around the world.

Fintech navigator programme: Technology is rapidly transforming the financial services industry. Incumbents, start-ups, markets, and regulators are looking to use big data, cloud computing, machine learning, and cryptographic methods to cope up with changing business trends.

The fintech navigator programme is divided into four main themes, which are the future of money, of markets, of market places and lastly, infrastructure and the novel changes.

Students enrolling for this programme can develop a deep understanding of fintech and its impact and practice the major approaches to driving or adapting to change.

Data science and big data analytics: The demand for data is on the rise, and now companies are looking for employees to analyse large sets of data to obtain valuable insights. A short-term course on big data and data science will help students learn manage data of the organisation, data mining using machine learning algorithms, decision making by interpreting analytical models, and more.

(The author is with Pearson India)