Ideas on what skills to teach for disadvantaged women

chitraramesh·Feb 24, 2021

Posted in:Advice Early Career Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tech Career Growth

Elphas, I am planning to teach disadvantaged women acquire skills to gain meaningful employment. Skills that can be taught remotely and used remotely as part time (if needed). Skills that can be picked up relatively easily (compared to learning a programming language , for example) within 3 to 6 month. The list of skills I have narrowed down so far is Digital Marketing, SEO, No code web page creation and content curation.I am an Engineering Manager (retiring from workforce in a couple of days :) and don't have these skills myself, but I am planning to learn. I am looking for advice / opinion on these skills and resources for me to learn from. Also, any other ideas on what can be taught. thanksChitra

teresaman·Feb 25, 2021

Udemy has an array of courses on those topics and are currently on sale!

chitraramesh·Feb 25, 2021

thank you. I just bought myself a digital marketing course. My plan is to learn the techniques myself from various sources and teach disadvantaged women one on one.

Iynna·Feb 25, 2021

Off the top of my head: financial literacy it's a big topic but specifically investing, and career/salary negotiation :)

chitraramesh·Feb 25, 2021

Thank you for the suggestion. I wasn't thinking about these skills at all, but now realize how important they are for someone starting their career. Thanks.

Iynna·Feb 26, 2021

Oh yea those skills are extremely useful and still underrated!

prettycold·Feb 25, 2021

The first thing that came to my mind is Content writing.

chitraramesh·Feb 25, 2021

Thanks.

Wenlin·Feb 25, 2021

Digital marketing is a big one. I've seen a surge in demand for virtual assistants supporting on content creation, scheduling and social media management (FB, IG, LinkedIn and increasingly Tiktok). Another thing you could consider is community management (FB groups, slack, discord)Any of these are viable and could be picked up fairly quickly through practice.

chitraramesh·Feb 25, 2021

thank you. I didn't know about community management. Will look up and learn.

Jolleen·Feb 25, 2021

Hi Chitra,I currently teach digital media design using Canva and the people who learn start helping startup founders and small business owners by creating social media graphics for them on Canva. Canva is very easy to learn and it has a free version which is good enough for someone to learn and start offering simple graphic design services. Best thing : you don’t need to be a graphic designer to know how to create graphics on Canva. They have thousands of templates to choose from and there are also very many tutorials on YouTube and on Canva for those who want to be really great at it. I hope this helps.

chitraramesh·Feb 25, 2021

thank you. I have heard a lot about Canva's founder (she was 19 yrs old when she started this company, right?) and used it myself, but didn't know it was a marketable skill. Will look into it. Thanks.

EllenDonnelly·Feb 25, 2021

I agree career and salary negotiation is important, women who negotiate their salaries early on not only build confidence each time but can achieve a much higher wage over their life time with the compound growth. Otherwise as a tech recruiter and coach the most in demand skills I often see are customer research of needs for products, content creation and digital marketing and web development!

RebeccaStevenson·Feb 25, 2021

Talk to some of your potential students and find out from them what they need. Supplementary to that, your local adult education organization or library may have suggestions on where they see needs.

lirida·Feb 26, 2021

social media management, copywriting, blogging, Youtube/Tiktok influencing

BrianaBrownell·Feb 26, 2021

Anything data-related. Working with data, spreadsheets, basic analysis, business intelligence, creating graphs and charts.

lucyrkent·Mar 02, 2021

There are a number of skills that disadvantage women need. Interviewing skills, what to look for in a job description (i.e. red flags), questions to ask, presenting/public speaking skills, negotiation skills, salesmanship, etc. Technical skills are things that we can pick up by reading, but we miss out on the role models for other soft skills that are often already present in advantaged communities. We need doors opened and our voices to be heard.

Yemi·Mar 16, 2021

If you can teach them to write consistently, then they can grow their communication abilities by creating content. You can provide daily or weekly prompts and create a space where they feel comfortable sharing their journey.

joclark·Mar 31, 2021

Yes

ProjectWhisperer·Apr 07, 2021

Project management encompasses some very excellent skills and seem to be in demand. This includes:1) How to effectively initiate a project 2) Managing stakeholder engagement 3) Effectively measuring project progress/ success4) Agile methodology and frameworks such as Kanban and Scrum LinkedIn Learning courses have a lot to offer on the above.