Digital Skills

Work within sectors that rely heavily on digital skills experts can be bountiful for those who boast the right set of qualifications. The continuing digitisation of the workplace brings with it a great number of jobs and opportunities for skilled individuals to take on exciting careers in areas such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and robotics. The rewards and benefits of pursuing work that requires an in-depth knowledge of digital skills can be impressive; with salaries for entry-level IT and digital skills professionals ranging from £25k to £37k, according to PayScale. If you’re looking for sustained growth and learning, a good salary and the chance to pursue jobs in exciting up-and-coming areas, then digital skills courses could be for you.

Given how many sectors digital skills can open you up to, it can be tricky to gauge its overall difficulty level. Naturally, with some specialisations such as cyber security, courses will often feature a lot of theoretical and maths-heavy material. Whether this is something you find difficult largely depends on where your strengths and your interests lie.

In some cases, however, you’ll find that some digital skills courses (BTEC, for instance) are divided into various levels, ranging from Level 1 to Level 6. This invites you to assess your existing knowledge and experience before opting for a course that best matches your learning needs. However, it’s also worth bearing in mind that not all courses will be split into levels, with many short, vendor-specific certifications awarding general qualifications in specific aspects of digital skills, such as network security. Examples of issuers of this type of qualifications include CompTIA, Microsoft and Cisco courses.

In either case, the most important thing is to make sure you pick a course that truly interests you. All courses are bound to present you with some challenges, but as long as you’re interested in the area and are willing to commit to learning about it, you’ll be better able to deal with those challenges.