In the current economic climate, with job opportunities at a premium, up-to-date workplace skills are essential to gaining employment. From a CV perspective, CV’s with recent training experiences show potential employers that you are motivated to maximise your skills even if you unfortunate enough to be currently unemployed.

The vast majority of jobs nowadays require some level of computer skills so it is important that you are computer literate.  This includes keyboard skills as very often people get hung up about   become ‘expert’ in some computer package but forget about the fact that their typing skills will slow down their ability to use the computer package effectively.  

From our perspective whilst there has been a massive slowdown in new employment offers, some skills are still more valuable than others. Computer literacy skills are a must as a foundation level skill. We have found that demand for Accounting skills be in the form of computerised accounts skills such as Sage Accounts or the Accounting Technician (IATI) or the ACCA CAT or Certified Public Accountants (CPA) qualifications has not been affected as much. Why is this? Simply companies out there need to keep a much closer eye on their internal counts and cash flow. Gone are the days when many small businesses relied on the bank statements to tell them how well they are doing. The need to have up-to-date key management information including key performance indicatiors from an accounting perspective has never been more important as companies need to know quickly how well or badly they are doing and react accordingly. Companies that don’t do this may simply not survive.

Another area which is somewhat protected is the role of Medical Secretary.  Again, you may well ask why that is. We still get sick and need the services of Medical Professionals. Whilst we might be cutting back on going out and not spending as much, medical expense fall into the essential spend category. Whilst the HSE has a recruitment ban in some areas, the need for professional Medical Secretaries is still there on a contract or part-time basis. This explains the continuing high demand for graduates of the Pitman Training Medical Secretarial Diploma course.

Hopefully, the thoughts above may be of interest to you. Feel free to give any feedback..