Tag: freelancing

Most Sought-after Skills at this very second

Article: Is Skill Development the Right Choice? — People Matters

There was a time when the only choice the Indian teenagers had when it came down to an engineer or a doctor. Anything else was looked down on. The parents picked one of two options right when a child was born and made sure that he or she got into the field of their choice at any cost. It was a difficult time, no doubts but the good news is that time is over now. Most teenagers pick their own fields and profession and what they want to learn is their choice. 

There is a huge variety of fields that can be picked by an individual and having a government job isn’t the basic necessity anymore. People join corporates, do freelancing and start their own businesses everyday. Everything starts on a small scale and everything has the potential to shoot up and become a global success. The stories of self made people become an inspiration to many who are yet to enter the field of their choice.

New technologies are introduced that make our lives better and these technologies also bring with them an array of new skills that need to be learnt to support the new technology. Learning these skills can fetch you a good job and you can also make your place as a popular freelancer. These skills could also become your USP and make you stand out from the crowd.

Read about Personal USP here.

Given below is a list of skills that have high demand in the market as of now.

  • Project Management

It is time to hone your leadership skills. Courses in project management can last from a year to six months and once you become certified, you can lead a team of people through a project. The main challenge of a project manager is to achieve the goals in specific time.

Read about Virtual Teams here.

  • Coding

New and more efficient computers are getting developed everyday and the demand of people who can speak the language of computers is ever so high. The job of a coder is to tell a computer what task it needs to perform. Coders also play an important role in the development of beautiful websites and interesting apps that we come across in daily life.

  • Copywriting

All the advertising and the marketing efforts that makes you buy a product or service has been done by a copywriter. He is the creative mastermind and can make or break a brand. As long as there will be selling, there will also be a requirement of a copywriter.

  • Public Speaking

You have to have the skill of public speaking, regardless of your profession, in order to rise to heights. This skill is tested when you are a speaker in a conference, you have to present your work in front of your bosses or when you want to convince a group of investors into funding your startup. 

  • SEO and Google Analytics

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is important because what is the point of having a beautiful website if it doesn’t get viewed by potential customers. SEO makes your site more visible when a person looks up keywords that are relevant to your sites, on search engines like Google. With the knowledge of Google Analytics, one can use the data about the audience of the site and make important decisions accordingly.

Read about IoT and Big Data here.

  • Digital Marketing

Social media has become the new playground for businesses to aggressively advertise their offerings at. Most people use Facebook and Instagram, instant messaging apps like Whatsapp, email and browse through internet pages for both work and fun. Using these mediums for selling has become very important.

  • Excel Knowledge

Excel is something that almost all of us have already come across in school when we learnt its basic functions. With exceptional Excel skills one can get hired as financial analyst, sales manager, accountant and information clerk. Even things like data entry in spreadsheets require people with knowledge of Excel.

  • Web Development

Almost all organisations, from government to private, have a web page that has been developed by a professional web developer but that’s not his only job. A web developer makes all kinds of sites like social networking and e-commerce sites for both the internet or the intranet.

Decision Making 101: Opportunity Cost

How we make choices | TED Talks

Wherever we are and whatever we are doing currently, is the result of the decisions we have made in the past. You have chosen to read this article and not scroll past it or do something else like watching TV or taking a nap. You have consciously made a choice from an array of options that were in front of you. Opportunity cost is the loss of benefits that could be derived from the next best alternative once a choice has been made. By reading this article, you have forgone the pleasure that could have been derived from watching TV or energy that you’d have got from taking a nap.

Opportunity cost is a term in economics but it can be applied to almost every aspect of life and not just the things that can be measured in monetary terms. When an investor chooses to invest his money in a particular stock, the opportunity cost is the return on investment that he could have enjoyed if invested in a different stock. If that investor had an excess amount of funds, he could have invested in both the stocks but that sets things like money, time and even opportunities apart – they are limited. This elucidates the importance of making well thought out decisions.

People who are doing 9 to 5, 5-days a week jobs face difficulty in realising their opportunity costs because they have a fixed schedule and only do what they are told to. They barely make any decisions on their own and just do what their boss tells them to on a regular basis so when they finally see an opportunity to relax on weekend, they don’t look for alternatives and just go with the flow. In case of freelancers or businessmen, however, these people are much more conscious of what they lose when they decide to spend their limited resources in a particular activity. A tailor can easily sacrifice the amount of business he is sacrificing when he decides to go on a week long vacation.

Opportunity cost is everywhere and in everything we do. When a person with a job decides to party on saturday night and sleep in because it’s sunday, he gives up on the time that he could have spent with his family. When you decide to get an MBA from a named university and pay a hefty tuition fee for the same, you sacrifice not just the money but the time, 2 years in this case, that could have been spent in doing a job or learning a different skill. You still chose to go for an MBA and the reason could be because you can get a much better job that pays better than the one without an MBA. Basically, It is all about weighing your alternatives correctly and carefully.

Decision making process isn’t complicated but two of the most crucial steps are identification of alternatives, followed by thorough examination of each alternative. All the benefits that are derived from all the alternatives need to be compared and the one that seems the most satisfactory should be chosen. One can also weigh his options on the basis of what he would regret sacrificing the most.

Knock knock. Who’s there? Democracy. Democracy who?

Democracy in layman terms is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Media is being considered as the fourth pillar of democratic society after executive, legislature, and judiciary. One of the crowning glories of the democratic system is the freedom of expression and the space that is provided to views from different sections of the society. The last few years witnessed an enhanced interface between the media and the common man, thanks to social media

The role of Social Networking Sites in Indian politics has risen tremendously in recent years. Different Indian political parties have their websites and some of them also use other social mediums to interact with people. With every party having its website and leaders being active on different media it makes the citizens feel that they are within their reach. It feels like the leaders are a touch away. Mr. Shashi Tharoor of Congress Party was one of the first politicians to start tweeting and has a separate fan base for his tweets now. Through social media, politicians now constantly display their message through endless campaigns, see direct responses to their actions via Facebook or Twitter, and connect with the public. One of the most recent example is Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders, where an auto-generated response was sent to all those who tweeted to the PM, giving the illusion that they were contributing to something large.

It is important to note that political engagement through social media is not limited to adults, but young potential voters increasingly use social media for online political participation. Especially younger people are using social networking platforms such as Twitter to develop an individualised form of activism that they connect to most. Unlike Mainstream media where narratives are indirectly controlled, influenced and favoured by the business houses and political parties that are funding the channel, Social media is comparatively a less regulated space.

Ravish Kumar on his Prime Time show on NDTV urged everyone to stop watching television back in March 2019. Why would someone who earns his living through mainstream television media tell you to do that? This shows how grave the situation was and still is. Public issues have disappeared from the channels, when Indian states were reeling under floods, the channels were still flooded by anti- Pakistan narratives, tukde-tukde gang narratives and the never-ending glorification of the honourable PM. Is TRP more important than highlighting important issues? Is selling news more important than upholding the fourth pillar? If we see the current media scenario then the answer to the latter question seems too easy.

Wouldn’t you agree if I said that the watchdog, or in other words the press and the media have a significant influence on society? Then is it fair to have corporate houses and political parties with vested interests invest in the media?

India News is owned by Karthikeya Sharma, son of a Congress leader. News 24 is controlled by Rajeev Shukla, a Congress leader and his wife Anuradha Prasad who is the sister of BJP leader, Ravi Shankar Prasad. Times Group is owned by Bennet & Coleman. The Italian, Robertio Mindo who has a share in the group is a close relative of Sonia Gandhi. CNN- News 18 is owned by Mukesh Ambani. Republic TV is owned by ARG Outlier Media Pvt Ltd and one of its biggest investors is Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a BJP leader- These are just a few examples out of the many news channels.

Editors are pulled up for putting their opinion, journalists are asked to toe the line, and media houses align themselves with different political ideologies and the interests of the owners and sponsors. Is it really possible to have a free and a fair media with this direct hold?

‘Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.’

Walter Cronkite

India is the world’s largest democracy, and the media mustn’t be controlled by any political party, big corporate houses or any other sector. The Press and the media is the voice of the voiceless and should promote the rights of not just the majority but also the minority; it is the duty of the press of any country to ensure that the government is functioning properly and no section of the society is left behind.

Sources-

  1. Role of media in Indian democracy https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/203650/11/11_chapter5.pdf
  2. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/critic-inside-ravish-kumar-speaks-tnm-state-indian-journalism-109378
  3. Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth Political Action- University of Chicago
  4. Who owns your media?- https://www.newslaundry.com/2014/02/05/who-owns-your-media-4https://cablequest.org/index.php/news/channels-owned-by-polticians