10 In-Demand Skills Your Employees Need Today

To help your employees keep up with change, Udemy for Business is constantly adding new courses to our library based on in-demand skills. While we’ve added coverage of hundreds of must-have skills this quarter, we’re highlighting some of the most relevant new courses that can help your employees stay up to date on both emerging technologies and the latest soft skills that matter.

1. Ethereum and Solidity

Ethereum, a blockchain technology, is set to disrupt business as we know it. Pioneered by Bitcoin, blockchains are ledgers that keep a permanent record of all transactions in a secure and unchangeable way. Built using military-grade cryptography, blockchains are resistant to tampering and fraud, making them a highly effective system for business processes that involve multiple parties and require an accurate, trusted record of all transactions. Think real estate, financial services, or supply chain management. (For more on blockchain, see Don’t Get Disrupted: Blockchain Skills Your Business Needs for Success.)

Companies increasingly recognize that blockchain could revolutionize their industry, but software engineering teams can’t hire blockchain developers fast enough. To help companies solve for this, Ethereum and Solidity: The Complete Developer’s Guide is the definitive online resource for learning about Ethereum, blockchains, and how to build apps with this new technology. The course, featuring an industry-leading 24 hours of on-demand video, is ideal for programmers looking to leverage blockchain technology for advanced apps and engineers who want to understand and develop with Ethereum. Popular tech instructor Stephen Grider has taught 200,000 students on Udemy.

“What crystal-clear explanation with comprehensive information. It [helps] students understand blockchain & Ethereum from head to toe.”

—Student Review

2. New Approach to Sales Pitches

Traditional sales techniques are increasingly ineffective and can result in spamming prospects with unwanted emails. John Barrows, a leading sales training coach for the world’s fastest-growing companies, offers a more strategic and personalized approach to sales pitches. Based on 20 years of driving results for clients like Salesforce, Dropbox, and Atlassian, Barrows’ two new courses on Udemy for Business—Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close—will help train your sales team on his proven method that will grab your prospects’ attention and close deals. See The 5 Sales Skills that Will Grab Your Prospects’ Attention.

“This course was a game changer for me personally. I picked up countless ‘gems’ which I’ve started incorporating with great results.”

—Student Review

3. Chatbots

From marketing to customer service, chatbots are able to offer personalized customer interactions at scale. Companies are increasingly integrating chatbots into their social media channels and websites to enable one-to-one customer conversations without the cost of a live human. Most chatbots are driven by either AI or choice-based scripts. Former Google employees, instructors Janani Ravi and Vitthal Srinivasan teach their course in a funny, engaging, but practical way. In their course Hands-on Chatbots with Google Dialogflow, your developers will learn how to build and deploy natural-sounding chatbots, design and build sound interaction models for your chatbots, and develop third-party apps for Slack and other messaging platforms.

“I was able to get an understanding of how Dialogflow works and integrates. This is something I was unable to do by reading Google’s documentation.”

—Student Review

4. Combating Procrastination

Procrastination is on the rise. In 1978, only 5% of people were chronic procrastinators while in 2015, this number rose to 20%. Moreover, procrastination is costing businesses around $10,396 per year per chronic procrastinator on their payroll.

To help combat this growing issue, we’ve curated one of our popular and highly rated Udemy marketplace courses, How to Stop Procrastinating, for our Udemy for Business customers. Inspiring and supportive instructor Chris Hall outlines how employees can “crowd out” procrastination with powerful routines, attitudes, and techniques that will break old habits. Through a 7-day program, the course teaches employees how to combat their own biases for putting things off, create motivational shortcuts to beat procrastination, use productivity and planning tips to tackle their work day, and rely on positive affirmations.

—Student Review

5. Docker Swarm

Docker is a hot trending technology that enables more apps to run on your servers while making it easier to ship and package programs. More companies are adopting Docker at a remarkable rate and moving their server applications from virtual machines (VM) to “containers” or Docker technology.

To help your company leverage this new technology, Udemy for Business offers a brand-new course on Docker Swarm Mastery: DevOps Style Cluster Orchestration. Docker Swarm is a clustering and scheduling tool for Docker containers. With Swarm, IT administrators and developers can establish and manage a cluster of Docker nodes as a single virtual system. This course offers the most complete and up-to-date instruction for learning SwarmKit and using Docker Swarm end-to-end, from development and testing to deployment and production. Docker Captain and DevOps consultant, Bret Fisher, who’s also a bestselling Udemy instructor with 47,000 students, teaches this highly rated course.

“This is simply the best Docker course you can ever find in my opinion. I have not seen a more organized, fun, and engaging online course.”

—Student Review

6. Power Focus Skills

With the rise of digital communication tools and open office plans, nearly 1 in 4 employees report feeling more distracted at work than in previous years. Organizations recognize workplace distraction is taking a toll on employee productivity, morale, and engagement. To help companies combat this issue, we’ve curated another top-rated Udemy marketplace course, 10x Power Focus: Discover the Hidden Element of Top Learners for our Udemy for Business collection. Instructor Silviu Marisk, who has taught 50,000 students on Udemy, teaches employees techniques to improve concentration and focus, eliminate distractions, and minimize multitasking. In addition, employees will learn ways to practice and sustain these positive habits so they can actually change their behavior at work.

“100% increased my focus! Thank you, the exercises work.”

—Student Review

7. Elasticsearch 6 and Elastic Stack

Elasticsearch is a useful tool not only for powering search on big websites, but also for analyzing big data sets in a matter of milliseconds. It’s an increasingly popular technology, and a valuable skill for your data science team to master. Elasticsearch 6 and Elastic Stack – In Depth and Hands On from Sundog Education by Frank Kane covers it all, from installation to operations, with 60 lectures comprising 8 hours of video. Your employees will learn how to bucket and analyze data using Elasticsearch (an analytics engine that centrally stores data). This course is recommended for anyone who wants to add Elasticsearch to their tool chest for searching and analyzing big data sets.

“The instructor has in-depth knowledge of Elasticsearch, and it shows. He walks the user through things in a simple manner, making it easy to pick up.”

—Student Review

8. Personal Finance

As more companies help their employees, particularly millennials, learn about personal finance, we’ve curated this highly rated and extremely popular course on our Udemy marketplace for our Udemy for Business collection. If your employees are ready to get their finances in shape, but aren’t sure where to start, Acorns’ Guide to Personal Finance is a great course to get them on the right track. In under an hour, participants will find out how to save, invest, and earn more money; stop living paycheck to paycheck; and make real progress toward the future they want. Led by Jennifer Barrett, Chief Education Officer at Acorns, this basic course breaks down the what, when, how, and why of personal finance to help participants start building wealth—no matter how much money or financial knowledge they have to start. They’ll learn the basics of personal finance and get simple, on-the-go techniques and tools to help their money work as hard as they do.

“Awesome course, great instructor (very impressive background). As I am shifting to the later years of my twenties I have been developing an enthusiasm with learning about managing and growing my finances. I have been personally using the Acorns’ app since March of 2017 and so far it has been pretty fun to use. (The money that’s been earned has come in handy a few times too).”

—Student Review

9. Nuxt.js and Vue.js

The Vue.js framework is one of the top trending frameworks for web developers this year. JavaScript frameworks like Vue.js can be used to build highly engaging user interfaces and single page applications. Nuxt.js is a framework that makes it easier to build applications in Vue.js—it’s essentially a starter pack of all the things a developer would want or need when building an app. Maximilian Schwarzmüller, instructor of the Nuxt.js – Vue.js on Steroids course, is passionate about sharing his knowledge of Nuxt.js and Vue.js and has already taught over 250,000 students on Udemy. If your engineers and developers are looking to add emerging technology to their repertoire, this is a course they won’t want to miss.

“Max’s talent in explaining and engaging with complicated topics in a way that feels elementary is a rare skill, he does it with such ease that you feel like you’re learning about something you already knew. This is my second course, and it certainly won’t be my last. The course itself is exceptional too, I left it feeling like I can cut my Vue.js development time in half.”

—Student Review

10. Happiness Psychology

Happier people often enjoy more success at work and in their personal lives. Based on new research in psychology and neuroscience, psychologists have uncovered strategies that people can use to be happier. Social psychologist, Andrew Luttrell, Ph.D., teaches how to apply some of these proven strategies to increase personal happiness in his course Happiness Psychology: 5 Proven Tips. If improving employee well-being tops your list, this personal development course is one to recommend with benefits for both the individual and the company.

“It was a real eye opener!! A bite size brain snack that could satisfy your hunger for happiness. I highly recommend it. I like the fact that all the concepts were backed by science. A refreshing look at the art of happiness and well-being. I have implemented the steps and I could attest that the positive impact was almost immediate.”

—Student Review