The worst thing that you can do while between jobs is stagnate. If you give up and stop pushing, learning, and growing it will not only take longer to find a job, but the waiting will be more painful. This is why periods between full-time employments are the perfect times to pick up new skills. This could mean signing up for a class, buying a couple books, or just devoting a couple hours each day to utilizing free online educational resources (of which there are many!). These days the most useful hard skill (by far) is programming. If you know how to code you can be useful at pretty much any company, and can even find ample work as a free-lancer!
You are not, however, going to be able to learn everything there is to know about writing code in the space of a few months- so it is prudent to specialize from the outset. Think about one skill you would like to have in the realm of programming, and learn that skill. Today we are going to look at a couple different forms of programming that you might want to learn!
Web-Design. These days one of the most marketable and profitable skills out there is web design. If you can create a functional, secure and gorgeous website you will never be out of work, and your work will pay well. An experienced and competent web-designer can make upwards of $100/hour, and the market is hungry for more web-designers. Look for classes and online programs to learn about coding in CSS and bootstrap, familiarize yourself with wordpress, and you will be able to fall back on web design whenever you are short on work!
Database Management- These days data drives the economy. Huge companies like Google, Facebook, and even Nintendo are reliant on the collection and management of data to make a profit. The issue these days is not that there isn’t enough data, but that it is almost impossible to manage and utilize all of it. Because of this, database management is one of the most marketable skills in the world. If you can learn how to use Structured Query Language (SQL) means that you will be able to find work nearly anywhere!
App Development- Alongside websites, mobile applications are the most widely used programs in the world. Each month nearly 60,000 apps are created and added to either Google Play or the App Store. This means that nearly 2,000 apps are created daily. Knowing how to develop an application means that you will nearly always have a project to work on, or a company that needs your skills. The majority of apps are developed in Java, meaning that if you know how to code in Java you will be sought after by many major corporations.
The cool thing about programming is that once you learn to do it one way it will be much easier to learn it again. Knowing how to code is a skill in and of itself, if you know how to write in CSS you will be able to pick up Java with relative ease. If you are unsure where to start play around with Java, SQL and CSS and see what feels the most comfortable, and learn everything you can about that programming language. From there you can continue to learn and become an extremely marketable programmer!