Learning These Skills Will Help You Find a Job in China

These days you need some hard skills if you want to find a job in China. As a foreigner, speaking English or having a college degree just isn’t enough anymore. When it comes to finding a job in China, getting a promotion, or negotiating a pay raise, learning new skills will go a long way. It’s easy to say you’re a good communicator or a computer whiz, but do you have a certificate to prove it? The internet is an expansive space filled with numerous training programs, some free, others not. All will put you ahead of the pack when trying to find a job in China. Not all skills require the same length of time to master. Outlined below is a list of skills/certification programs divided into three separate categories: three months, six months, or one year+ based on how long they’ll take to learn. So, what are you waiting for? Start building up your skills for the China job market and prepare to reap the benefits. Workplace Skills You Can Learn in Three Months FEMA - The Federal Emergency Management Agency Certificate ensures you’ve learned the skills and knowledge needed for dealing with different emergency situations, such as floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters. CPR/First-Aid - Pretty self-explanatory. This certification states you know the proper technique and procedures of basic CPR and first-aid for different situations. OSHA - The Occupational Safety and Health Administration Certificate trains you in specific safety and health aspects of your job. It’s usually for people who work with hazardous waste, construction, or other labor-type jobs. Google Analytics - A free analytics tool to measure website, app, digital, and offline data to gain customer insight. Hubspot - This site offers a number of training courses and certifications related to business, including inbound marketing, attribution reporting, blog optimization and content marketing. It also offers a number of demo-projects you can work on to practice your skills in a variety of business spectrums. Within three months, you should be able to master all the above skills. Many of the training and certification programs offered online can be done much faster, however, depending on how much free time you have. Workplace Skills You Can Learn in Six Months HTML - Code used for most basic websites. Photoshop - A computer program for changing and enhancing photos. Illustrator - A graphic design computer program used to make banners, brochures, posters, and digital mockups of print InDesign - Similar to illustrator, but generally used for designing books, magazines, journals, or newspapers. Lightroom - A more advanced photoshop, giving photographers greater powers of manipulation and control when altering their photos. Much like learning a musical instrument, these skills will take a bit longer to master. Especially with the Adobe programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), there are so many tiny details or tools designed for a specific purpose that it can be challenging to remember everything. However, as the old adage goes, “Practice makes perfect”. Working on a personal project every day using these skills is the best way to master them. In my experience, creativity is a huge plus when applying for jobs in China, and having proof of creative skills will set you apart from the competition. Workplace Skills You Can Learn in One Year+ Foreign Languages/C+/Python/Java/Swift/C++ All these are coding languages that are used in a variety of different industries. Apps, websites, computers and computer programs all use a different coding language. I suggest finding out what’s used in your industry and then learning the code required. As the world moves forward and becomes ever more reliant on computers, learning a programming language, in any industry, will be seen as a benefit. In China, there’s a huge amount of tech startups, especially in Beijing and Shenzhen, so learning to code is an easy way to stand out from the pool of applicants. Sites like Code Academy and Code.org both offer great courses in coding, with interactive lessons designed to make you fluent in a number of computer languages. If computers aren’t your thing, simply learning a second spoken language, especially Chinese, can have a huge impact on whether or not you get the job in China.