10 Skills Your Employees Need in September 2018

Employees have always faced pressure to stay up-to-date with the latest skills, but a new report from McKinsey suggests that over the next 15 years, the demand for keeping up with technical and soft skills will accelerate. To help employees keep up with change and prepare for what’s next, Udemy for Business adds hundreds of new courses each month on the latest technical and soft skills. Here are some of the latest trending topics added to the Udemy for Business collection.

Tech skills

1. Cloud certifications

Cloud computing has taken the business world by storm in recent years, and it’s showing no indication of slowing down. In fact, Gartner predicts the worldwide cloud services market will grow by 21.4% in 2018.

There are a number of cloud certifications that will help your teams stay on top of the latest cloud technology and developments, including Microsoft Azure and Salesforce.

Microsoft Azure is an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing software that can be used at organizations of any size, from the smallest startups to Fortune 500 companies. Salesforce is one of the most widely used CRM applications in the world with over 150,000 customers and has increasingly become in demand as a skill across companies. Cloud computing has gained popularity because it allows businesses to quickly provision computing resources without going through the costly and labor-intensive tasks of building data centers and running servers.

Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions 70-533 covers everything your engineers need to know in order to pass the 70-553 exam. Instructor Anand Rao is a senior technical instructor and cloud consultant. He has worked with large enterprises for about 15 years and has a wide range of technologies in his portfolio.

“Very nice course. It takes students on the journey through Azure from A-Z. All the most important Azure service offerings are explained very well. In my opinion after the course students will have the possibility to expand their knowledge about Azure in a conscious way. Good job, thanks!” – Course Review

Salesforce Certified Administrator (aka 201) 2018 covers everything included in the Salesforce Administrators Exam, including a mock test to help participants test their knowledge before taking the real exam. Instructor Francis Pindar is one of only 9 people globally to be awarded a 6x Salesforce MVP for his expertise.

“This is a great course with an engaging instructor that helped me pass my admin exam first time! Would highly recommend anyone planning on taking the exam using this course as one of your study aides. Francis delivers the course content in an engaging way, helping to explain core concepts and ideas.” – Course Review

2. iOS 12 & Swift

Apple has one of the largest and most engaging mobile platforms—it’s sold 1.2 billion iPhones in the past 10 years and there are currently 2 million apps in the App Store. iOS 12 is Apple’s latest operating system, currently in beta and set to release in a few short months in fall 2018.

iOS 12 & Swift – The Complete iOS App Development Bootcamp is open to absolute beginners and features more than 50 hours of content designed to give participants everything they need in order to fluently program in Swift 4.2 and create their own apps. Instructor Angela Yu has shared her “geeky humor” with over 105,000 students on Udemy and made over 70 apps and games. Angela has recently updated this course to include over 7 hours of content on Apple’s brand-new ARKit 2 for making Augmented Reality (AR) apps and CoreML2 & CreateML for making intelligent apps with Machine Learning.

“Angela is my favorite iOS teacher and instructor on Udemy! I’m in love with her style and explanations. Everything covered is just awesome! Besides she puts a crazy amount of effort and is constantly adding something new in the course absolutely for free! Great job Angela and thank you!” – Course Review

3. Prometheus

Developed in 2012, Prometheus is the leading open-source monitoring system that helps companies keep their servers and applications safe, and is essential in helping keep companies secure and running well.

Ideal for those who work in a DevOps, Cloud, or Site Reliability Engineering role, Monitoring & Alerting with Prometheus covers how to install and configure Prometheus on a Linux server. Instructor Edward Viaene has worked as a system administrator and full-stack developer for over 10 years and taught over 50,000 students on Udemy.

“Loved this course, the explanations were to the point and concise.” – Course Review

4. gRPC

One of the biggest trends in software development today is building microservices. For example, an e-commerce site might have one microservice for buying, one for running promotions or sales, and one for organizing delivery. Yet all these microservices need to be able to talk to each other and exchange information, which is why it’s important to build a scalable, modern, and fast API.

This is where gRPC comes in. This open-source framework for building APIs is leveraged by many top tech companies such as Google, Square, and Netflix. It enables programmers to write microservices in any language they want while keeping the ability to easily create communications between these services.

Developers can brush up on their gRPC skills in gRPC [Golang] Master Class: Build Modern API & Microservices with Stephane Maarek, a solutions architect, consultant, and Udemy for Business instructor who has already taught over 28,000 students.

“Awesome course with detailed explanation! Deeply satisfied. SSL / TLS explained with hands-on. Good work!” – Course Review

5. Apache Kafka

In our era of big data, your IT infrastructure may be taxed by the influx of data from a wide variety of sources. On top of that, customers demand to see their data in “real time” without any lag time, so your servers need to process and display data quickly.

Apache Kafka is a new technology, developed in 2011, that allows you to do just that. 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. See 4 Key Benefits of Apache Kafka for Real-Time Data to learn more.

We saw a 40x growth in demand for Apache Kafka courses on Udemy last year, making it the 4th hot tech skill for 2018. Apache Kafka-related questions on Google Search and tech forums like StackOverflow and Github have also skyrocketed in recent years—signaling a trending hot topic.

Apache Kafka Series – Kafka Monitoring & Operations is the first and only Kafka Monitoring and Operations course on the web. This advanced course, taught by Stephane Maarek, requires a good base knowledge of Kafka and Kafka setup as well as a basic understanding of AWS Cloud. It’s ideally suited to Kafka administrators who want to learn how to perform Kafka operations or upgrade a Kafka cluster.

“10 Stars if I can! Congrats for all the hard work on your courses. From beginner, including hours of lectures about a OPs and finishing with monitoring and upgrade Kafka… you made a great path to all of us. Thank you!” – Course Review

6. Deep learning

Deep learning is a sub-field of machine learning. It uses algorithms that are inspired by the structure and function of the brain, also known as neural networks. Deep learning is one of the building blocks of artificial intelligence (AI).

Deep Learning: Advanced NLP and RNNs covers how to build applications for text classification (which can be used for sentiment analysis and spam detection), neural machine translation, and question answering, as well as a brief introduction to chatbots. Instructor Lazy Programmer, Inc. is a data scientist and big data engineer who has taught over 160,000 students on Udemy.

“Excellent course! You get to see a good range of applications in each section, and each topic is explained very clearly by the lecturer. This course will help you understand deep learning on the next level. This is the best course to wrap your head around NLP.” – Course Review

7. Rust programming

Rust is a popular systems programming language that empowers novice developers with the tools to start shipping code fast while maintaining performance and security. Initially built by Mozilla as a research project in 2009, the creators of Rust sought to develop a new programming language to build browsers without the pitfalls and vulnerabilities of C++. Since its launch, Rust has enabled browser developers to write faster, more parallel, and more secure code.

And, developers love it. According to a Stack Overflow survey conducted with over 500,000 developers, Rust was rated the #1 most loved programming language, with 73% of developers saying they want to keep working with it. Companies like Atlassian, Dropbox, Chef, Postmates, and npm are currently using Rust in production.

Geared towards C++ programmers seeking to be more effective and developers with little or zero programming experience, Rust Programming Language for Beginners provides learners with a solid understanding of the Rust language. With over 17 hours of on-demand video, this course teaches the ins and outs of Rust, including how to code in an organized and fast way through Rust modules. Instructors Tim Buchalka and Diwakar Singh are expert software developers and have collectively taught over 350,000 learners on Udemy.

“Concepts are clearly explained. Very well done.” – Course Review

Soft skills

8. Business development & B2B sales

If your sales team focuses their efforts on selling your product or service via phone calls or in-person meetings, chances are high that they’re struggling to generate leads and schedule meetings. HubSpot reports that the number 1 word used to describe salespeople is “pushy.” Ouch.

By improving listening skills and learning to understand prospects’ pain points, salespeople can avoid that pushy image and transform the way they’re seen by prospects. Business Development & B2B Sales for Startups- Sales Valley gives your sales and marketing teams an extra edge by helping them develop authentic business relationships and sales messaging. This course offers a step-by-step methodology including everything from booking meetings and writing more effective emails to becoming a better listener and organizing deal structure.

Instructor Patrick Dang was a top-performing salesman at Oracle and has taught over 25,000 students on Udemy.

“I just loved this course. It gave me sooo many ideas and showed me what I was doing wrong and where I could improve. Patrick shows examples for literally everything he mentioned, which helps you really understand what he’s trying to say. Everything is covered and now I feel like I would be ready to be a sales rockstar in any situation after a course like this.” – Course Review

9. Differentiation as a business strategy

How does your business stand apart from your competitors? Many companies struggle to meaningfully answer this question, which is why they end up focusing on things like pricing.

In Business Strategy: Learn the Art of Differentiation, instructor Tony Prouse shares three business analysis tools that will help your business analysts, marketers, and leaders identify your company’s current competencies—and understand which ones will enable you to capture even more business.

Tony is a business strategy and growth coach who has over 20 years of experience successfully growing established and startup companies located both in the UK and Europe.

“Interesting course that is well put-together. Very useful for strategic management thinking.” – Course Review

10. Communication

Despite all the technological advances in the workplace, human-to-human communication is still one of the most essential soft skills across industries and professions. Presentation and public speaking skills ranked as the 6th hot soft skill trending on Udemy in 2018.

The Complete Communication Skills Master Class for Life is designed to be a one-stop shop for all your company’s communication skills training needs. The 27 hours of content in this course cover a vast array of communication needs and scenarios, including how to communicate during a job interview, investor pitch, salary negotiation, and presenting to large groups.

Instructor TJ Walker has been conducting communication skills training workshops and seminars since 1984 and has taught over 106,000 students on Udemy.

“This course benefits from TJ Walker’s extensive experience as an expert communicator, breaking down the principles and exercises in easily digestible units that both teach and invite engagement at every turn. It is too easy in many courses to just watch and listen, but here TJ actually has us take action throughout the course that moves us towards constant and never-ending improvement. Bravo for an excellent course TJ!” – Course Review