10 In-Demand Skills Your Employees Need in June 2019

It’s June, which means the year is almost halfway over! Udemy research has shown that companies that commit more time to employee learning benefit from higher growth. In fact, 55% of high-growth companies have employees who spend 30–50 hours learning each year (compared to 61% of low-growth companies, where employees only spend 0–30 hours learning every year). Want to give your employees a little encouragement to maximize their learning before the year slips by? Here are 10 in-demand tech and business skills to recommend to your employees this month.

Tech skills

1. Swift 5

Introduced in 2014 at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Swift is a programming language developed by Apple for devices using Apple operating systems like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. The mobile app market built around these devices is lucrative—in 2017, Apple paid iOS developers $26.5 billion, which was a 30% higher payout than the year before. Consumers are spending their time on mobile and companies need to meet their customers there by investing in app development and ensuring their teams know the latest skills related to mobile development such Swift 5.

Like Apple products themselves, Swift is geared to the user and is created to “simply work.” In fact, Swift was recently named the sixth most loved programming language in Stack Overflow’s 2019 Developer Survey of nearly 90,000 developers.

Swift 5 Programming for Beginners covers all the essential information you need to write Swift code and make an iPhone app. Instructor Nick Walter is a self-taught programmer. When first learning to program, he found too many resources were frustrating and difficult to follow. Determined to change the way people learn to code, he began teaching others to code online with a goal of empowering their learning from the start. In addition to Swift, Nick teaches Django, Kotlin, Python, HTML, Blockchain, and more on Udemy. For more from Nick on the topic of Swift 5, see Why Swift 5 is a Game-Changer for App Development.

“Excellent as always.” – Course review

2. Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform that enables companies to create real-time data feeds. It’s used by companies like Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, Yelp, and over 30% of today’s Fortune 500 companies. For example, by integrating diverse kinds of data such as likes, page clicks, searches, orders, shopping carts, and inventory, Apache Kafka can help feed data in real time into a predictive analytics engine to analyze customer behavior.

Apache Kafka-related questions on Google Search and in tech forums like Stack Overflow and Github have also skyrocketed in recent years and it was named the 4th hottest tech skill in 2018 on Udemy. See 4 Key Benefits of Apache Kafka for Real-Time Data by instructor Stephane Maarek.

Confluent KSQL has become an increasingly popular stream processing framework built upon Kafka Streams. It enables developers to write real-time stream processing applications with the ease of SQL. In Apache Kafka Series – KSQL for Stream Processing – Hands on! instructor Stephane Maarek has partnered with KSQL expert Simon Aubury for the ultimate KSQL course, which takes a project-based approach to the topic. Stephane is a Kafka Expert, guest author on the Confluent Blog, and sits on the Program Committee for the Kafka Summits of 2019 in London, San Francisco, and New York. He’s the author of the highly rated Apache Kafka Series on Udemy and has taught over 90,000. Co-instructor Simon Aubury is a KSQL expert and has authored many blog posts on the Confluent Blog.

“Fantastic introduction to KSQL using real world data with scenarios providing samples to envision in any domain and demonstrate the power of KSQL.” – Course review

3. Flutter

Flutter is a free and open source portable UI toolkit from Google. According to the Flutter website, it’s used for “building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.” Flutter is a popular toolkit for a number of reasons, including the fact that you can do a “hot reload” to quickly rebuild your project as a webpage and see the results in seconds.

The Complete Flutter Development Bootcamp with Dart was created by Udemy instructor Angela Yu in collaboration with the Google Flutter team. The 23+ hours of video content cover everything learners need to succeed as Flutter developers. In this complete Flutter development bootcamp, learners will gain the skills needed to build beautiful, fast, native-quality iOS and Android apps. There’s no prior Flutter experience required.

Instructor Angela Yu has taught over 217,000 students on Udemy and focuses on making learning to code fun and hard concepts easy to understand. Her courses feature “geeky humor” and detailed explanations and animations to make sure everything is easy to understand.

“Excellent course. Content is tailored for all users—from beginners to experienced. Angela is an excellent instructor and the videos are well produced and the course material is second to none. I highly recommend this course as well as the others from Angela Yu.” – Course review

4. Docker

Containers are a method of operating system virtualization that allow companies to easily package an application’s code and ensure it deploys quickly and reliably. Docker is one of the most commonly used tools to deploy containers. In today’s job market, Docker skills are highly sought after, and the Docker Certified Associate (DCA) exam is designed to validate that skillset with real-world questions designed by experienced Docker practitioners.

Docker Certified Associate 2019 is specifically designed for those who intend to take the “Docker Certified Associate” certification as well as for those who’d like to gain a strong foundation on Docker. Starting from the fundamentals, this course goes step by step to help learners build confidence and gain all the skills and knowledge they’ll need to pass the certification exam.

Instructor Zeal Vora works primarily as a Cloud Security Consultant and helps organizations re-build their infrastructure with security in mind. With more than 10 courses and 50,000 students, he is a leading instructor in the field of Cloud & Security.

“This is a very well organized course which touched upon every aspect of the DCA certification. I wish I would have found this course earlier. The instructor follows up each topic with a very simple and basic use case example which actually helps understand the topic much better. I would recommend this course to anyone who is a beginner and wants to have strong foundation in Docker.” – Course review

5. Web scraping with Python

Web crawling is often the first step of data research. Whether you are looking to obtain data from a website, track changes on the internet, or use a website API, web crawlers are a great way to get the data you need. Scrapy is a new, free, open source Python package that aims at easy, fast, and automated web crawling. It can be used for a wide range of applications, like data mining, information processing, or historical archival. One of the main advantages of Scrapy is that it is built on top of Twisted, an asynchronous networking framework. “Asynchronous” means that you do not have to wait for a request to finish before making another one, maximizing efficiency.

Scrapy: Powerful Web Scraping & Crawling with Python introduces how to install Scrapy and build basic spiders before moving on to building advanced spiders. This course is intended for learners who are already familiar with Python and would like to create an efficient web crawler and scraper.

The course is led by GoTrained, an e-learning academy aiming at creating useful content in different languages, and Lazar Telebak, a full time-scraping consultant specializing in web scraping, crawling, and indexing web pages.

“This is a great course to learn an easy and invaluable skill. I’m literally about to tell my boss in the next week or so that we don’t need to hire that data entry specialist that we were considering. We have also eliminated the risk of user error.

The instructor has much insight and really put me on the fast track to scraping the web at my company.” – Course review

Business Skills

1. Women’s empowerment

The personal coaching industry has topped $1 billion in the US and continues to grow, according to the Market Research blog. But coaches need coaching, too! Women Empowerment Coach Certification Parts 1, 2, and 3 provides a framework for those aiming to empower female clients to take control of their personal success in every area of their lives. The course introduces a “done-for-you solution” for coaching women to change their health, finances, career, business, or relationships.

International empowerment expert, author, and high-level trainer Louise Anne Maurice provides 59 business and personal development courses and has taught over 30,000 students.

“I really enjoyed this course. There were many Aha! moments and I learned a lot about myself. I can’t wait to apply what I learned with my clients! Thank you, Louise Anne, for completing a life-changing course!” – Course review

2. Developing high potentials

Taking the time to develop high potential employees has a number of benefits—it creates a talent pipeline to fill leadership positions and enable company growth while boosting employee engagement, which ultimately leads to higher profits. Research from Gallup shows a strong connection between engagement and business results. Companies with the highest employee engagement have a 22% higher profitability than those in the lowest quartile. Additionally, developing high potentials is critical for organizational success. Neglecting this population puts you at risk for losing your best employees. Employee commitment to your company is directly related to how committed you are to them.

Talent Development for Leaders: Develop your High Potentials helps learners develop skills and tools to identify where to invest their development efforts and create pragmatic learning plans to create growth that sticks. Instructor Mary Walter’s approach is grounded in the research on learning and development and the reality of running successful businesses. Working through this course will serve as a catalyst for learners’ growth, development, and reputation as the leader others want to work for. See Be the Best Boss: Develop Your High Potential Employees to read more from Mary.

“It was a great experience learning how to help others achieve their potential through my mentorship and direct action toward encouraging them to grow. Very impactful.” – Course review

3. Sales skills

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in nine Americans works in sales. But the number is much larger than that when you consider that sales isn’t just about financial transactions—any type of persuasion involves “selling” your idea to others. Unfortunately, sales often gets a bad rap. According to HubSpot, the #1 word associated with salespeople is “pushy.” But the best salespeople know how to frame their work in terms of understanding other people’s problems and presenting them with solutions.

Two new Udemy courses, Sales Skills Training: Consultative Selling Master Class from Larry Miller and Sales Skills: How to Sell Value Instead of Price from Amaro Araujo, aim to help learners reduce the anxiety of selling by focusing on shared problem-solving. Learners will practice building relationships, honing their communication skills, and having deeper discussions with clients to truly understand their needs.

Best-selling instructor, author, and leadership coach Larry Miller has taught over 40,000 students on Udemy and has been consulting, writing, and speaking about business organization and culture since 1973. Amaro Araujo has dealt with customers from different countries and sizes—from the small factory to the world’s biggest corporations—facing different complexities, industry segments, and purchasing organizations.

“I’ve been through a lot of sales training for coaches, consultants, and advisors—and some of it was extremely expensive. In light of that I can say the material in this course is excellent right out of the gate. Additionally, I really appreciate the experience and perspective Larry brings as a seasoned, high level consultant. He isn’t just a sales guy talking sales; he’s also been the one delivering solutions, too. He inspires confidence that this course will, in fact, help me take my sales game to a much higher level.” – Course review

4. Activating high performance

Ever have the sense that something might be holding you or your employees back from reaching your optimal performance? It’s a common sentiment—according to Udemy’s 2018 Employee Experience Report, half of the survey respondents (and 53% of managers) said they could improve their time management skills. Plus, time management was named one of the top 10 soft skills for 2019 in the workplace.

New courses from Udemy The Complete Guide to Activating High Performance from Jairek Robbins and Productivity 10x – The Secret Skill of Peak Performance from Silviu Marisk are aimed at helping learners maximize time management and other performance-boosting tactics. Jairek’s course covers everything from diet and exercise to minimizing stress while Silviu’s course helps learners improve their focus and automate their routines so productivity becomes a habit.

“This has been the best personal development course I have ever taken, I am fired up and inspired.” – Course review

5. Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence or “EQ” is the ability to understand your own emotions as well as those of the people around you. This skill doesn’t just help with personal life—90% of top performers  in the workplace have high emotional intelligence while only 20% of bottom performers are high in EQ.

Emotional Intelligence: Master Anxiety, Fear, & Emotions gives learners the tools they need to develop emotional intelligence so they can recognize negative emotions, identify the triggers that cause them, and overcome the emotion. This course offers insights into what emotions are and how they work, plus tools and techniques for reframing negative emotions like anxiety.

Instructors Joeel & Natalie Rivera both have over a decade in the field of education, psychology, social service, and life coaching. Joeel has a Master’s Degree in Counseling and Education and is finishing his dissertation for his PhD in Psychology with an emphasis on happiness. He is also a former psychology instructor. Together they have taught over 70,000 students on Udemy.

“Excellent course with good examples. This is good for anyone who wants to understand what Emotional Intelligence is, how it helps and then ways to keep your emotions in control.” – Course review