Career Trailblazer

Free Education to Advance Your Career

When starting out in your career, nothing will advance you faster than education. Not education in the traditional sense, like attending college courses or a university degree, but education you can obtain while on the job and its free.

Where do you find this free education? It’s available today for you to use. All you need is the time and energy to explore these free opportunities. Here’s how:

Internal company staff development courses. Businesses know the best investment they can make is in the very people that work for them. By allowing their employee to continue their career growth by offering free staff development and educational courses businesses are investing in the future growth and health of their company. Check whether your company has internal education courses. Ask your manager for the time to attend them.

Most of the course topics are either business related or job related subjects. The time to attend these courses can range from 1 hour to 2 full days or longer, depending on the subject matter. Usually training is provided right on site at your company’s location. Many company’s are offering leadership development workshops. To keep an edge over the market competition for your next promotion, take advantage of this free benefit.

Conferences, workshops and seminars. Keep your eyes out for special workshops, seminars or conferences advertisements. Most companies keep a portion of their operational budget for education and conference attendance. Find a conference or seminar that would benefit your career development and expand your network, ask your manager to attend it. Be prepared to explain how your attendance will benefit the company. Check whether a group discount rate is available and see if other people from your company would benefit from attending the event as well.

Company grants and education tuition reimbursement programs. Look into your company benefit packages to see if they offer educational grants or tuition reimbursement programs. Although you may have to pay up front, you’ll be reimbursed for your education investment. These programs may have contingencies, for instance you must meet grade conditions or the education must be related to your job. Verify whether any contingencies exist and whether you can meet these conditions. Otherwise, if your company will pay for your MBA, go for it!

Industry magazines and eZines. A wealth of trade, industry and professional information is available from industry magazines and eZInes (online magazines), all free. You don’t have to be a CIO to subscribe to CIO magazine, which also has a wonderful online business magazine at CIO.com and another offshoot at CIO Update. Terrific leadership articles, industry trends and issue discussion, case studies and career articles all can be found on their site.

Another terrific online magazine is Baseline, which offers a free subscription for their newsletter, magazine and eZine. Baseline covers full case study stories about technology, project management, strategy, supply chain management, security, vendor reviews and much more. They also dedicate a section of their site and hardcover magazine to free tools and calculators to help you with your job.

Forbes.com is an excellent source of information for the world’s business leaders. Since you’re planning to join this group or are already a member, check out the top news, blogs and commentaries, business networks and more on this information rich web site.

Keep your eyes out for trade magazines floating around the office. Check out their credit publication page for their online web site address. Fill out their subscriber cards to get your own issues.

Local bookstore and library. My downtown office was located right near a Barnes and Noble book store. I’d spent more hours on my lunch break reading business books then I ate lunch. I was lucky enough to also have access to our downtown public library branch. Taking advantage of these two free resources are not new sources but often overlooked.

Public libraries have kept up with the times, fitting themselves with computers fully equipped to access the internet. Check out their leadership, business and even entrepreneur sections for information to advance your career. You can reserve a book, especially a new featured book, and the libraries will either email or call you when it’s available for you to pick up. Nice!

There’s no excuse for not continuing your education to advance your career by claiming you can’t pay for it. Be resourceful, investigate, and find out what free resources are available for you to take advantage of. Then it’s up to you to invest your time and energy. The plus side of using these free career development and educational resources is a huge return on investment, especially if it gets you that great big new promotion and pay raise!

Related Post: more blogs you may be interested in…

15 Ways to Get Noticed At Work, 5 Jumpstart Steps for Career Trailblazing,

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