Continuing Education for Adults – Staying Relevant in Your Industry
The job market becomes more and more competitive every single day, and figuring out how to stay relevant can be overwhelming. Even if you aren’t actively looking for a new career, making the effort to upskill and remain marketable is incredibly important given today’s ever-evolving professional landscape.
How do you stay informed about your industry's emerging trends? What can you do to upskill without disrupting your already-busy life?
The solution? Continuing education for adults.
Learn more about upskilling with a professional certificate in data analytics, digital marketing or human resources management with our guide!
What is Continuing Education for Adults?
In cases where adults want to increase their marketability in their current field or grow their talent base, a “continuing education” program can help them reach their goals.
The purpose of continuing education for adults is many-pronged:
Increase knowledge to grow career advancement opportunities
Growing knowledge in a specific field of work or study is advantageous to those seeking promotions at work. Becoming an expert in your field will bring increased marketability to your overall career.
Knowing the most about a given topic and being able to implement that knowledge and lead others may result in increased professional responsibilities, an opportunity that may lead to a promotion and increased salary.
Upskill to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving workforce
Beyond just understanding the basics of your position, it is also necessary to educate yourself on the newly developing technological and social trends in your industry. This will look different across job positions and fields, but knowing what’s on the horizon for your industry is important.
Upskilling can include taking courses on topics you’ve never explored. Or, it could mean updating your current skill set with cutting-edge knowledge of emerging tools and theories.
Learn new skills to facilitate a career change
Gaining new skills might be a gateway to a new career, or it could mean securing a career advancement opportunity in your current industry. But, part of gaining new skills means learning new things — and preparing for a career shift usually requires mastering new skills and having the language to effectively transfer skills from your current industry.
Keeping your professional toolkit up to date and ahead of the curve is a great way to ensure you’re ready for whatever the future of your industry looks like.
But, how do you stay on top of all the moving and changing parts of your field while working full-time? That’s where a Professional Development Certificate program comes into play.
What is a Professional Development Certificate? (Your Ticket to Career Growth, Fast)
So, what is a Professional Development Certificate? It is an abbreviated program of study wherein a certificate is awarded to someone who completes necessary coursework in a particular area of study.
A certificate program proves that you’ve invested in relevant job training even without returning to school for an extended degree. While investing in a bachelor’s or master’s degree can be beneficial in its own way, not everyone has the time or money to dedicate to a traditional degree. With a certificate, however, you can receive similar credentials in less time.
Professional certificate programs are much shorter and more affordable ways to upskill your talents than a traditional advanced degree. You can find certificates rooted in various concentrations, and the connections you make through the program can benefit your career, just as a conventional advanced degree would.
Mount Saint Mary’s University Los Angeles: Professional Certificates for Your Success
At Mount Saint Mary’s University Los Angeles, we offer three different Professional Development Certificates that will give you more options in your career: Data Analytics, Digital Marketing and Human Resources Management.
Professional Certificate in Data Analytics
Since over 97 percent of companies worldwide are interested in data and improving data systems, jobs within the data analytics skill set are experiencing massive growth and newly emerging careers in every industry.
MSMU rises to meet the need for competent and experienced data analytics professionals with our Certificate in Data Analytics.
Through this program, students can:
- Evaluate and apply fundamental statistical concepts in the context of a broad range of data problems
- Perform in-depth exploratory analysis to form hypotheses and use visualization techniques to communicate insights
- Design experiments to answer causal questions and evaluate the results of the experiments
Professional Certificate in Digital Marketing
MSMU’s Digital Marketing Certificate program allows students to learn the skills they need to elevate their marketing careers and prepare for the future of marketing.
Our certificate equips students to
- Identify marketing opportunities and create cross-channel marketing strategies to meet these opportunities
- Design, justify and assess the impact of campaigns across the full range of popular digital channels
- Build effective content marketing strategies and support them with fundamental content creation skills
Professional Certificate in Human Resources Management
With an evolving and shifting job market, there is a greater need than ever for caring, competent and strategic human resource managers. The Mount addresses this need through our Human Resources Management Certificate, which allows students to
- Develop and evaluate training and development programs using best practices in professional instructional design, including the ability to meaningfully gauge the impact of training programs
- Analyze and apply processes and procedures surrounding compensation management
- Identify and apply relevant employment and labor laws to a given human resources initiative
Boost Your Impact with a Professional Certificate from MSMU
If you’re looking for a way to increase your knowledge of your field, update your resume to stay relevant and learn new skills to help with a career change, look no further than Mount Saint Mary’s University’s Professional Certificate programs.
Our expert faculty help to equip you with everything you need to stay relevant in the job market while investing in the things you’re best at, so you can apply your vision to the big-picture of your industry.
For more information on whether one of these programs is the right choice for you, check out our eBook: A Guide to Professional Development Certification Programs in Data Analytics, Digital Marketing and Human Resources Management. In it, you’ll learn all about MSMU’s programs, as well as our best tips for applying to our programs.
You’ll also have access to industry statistics related to all three of our programs, so you can see for yourself how marketable you’ll be with a certificate from us.
If you’re ready to upgrade your professional skills today, apply now.
Ready to learn more about the Mount’s Professional Development Certificate Programs? Download our guide today!