For example, someone might be working at a bank after obtaining a Bachelor degree in . However, they may be required to employ managerial methods in their work to increase work efficiency and general morale. In this case, they could take a short course in Management to help them do their job more effectively.

What is the duration of professional development courses?

One of the largest benefits of PDCs is their length. If you are able to commit to a full university degree, then short courses are the way to go. Professional Development Courses can range from hours to weeks, depending on the course. It can be incredibly beneficial for bolstering your CV and showcasing new skills you may have gained by taking it.

PDCs offer you an incredibly flexible and less time-consuming (depending on the course you choose to follow) option! Also, you can still enrol in one while still completing an ongoing university degree.

PDCs exist for every area of interest imaginable, and they vary in length too! You may have the option to learn about a subject in more depth over a longer period of time. Or in less detail in a shorter period of time, depending on your pre-existing knowledge on the subject.

How Much do they Cost?

The second-largest benefit of PDCs is their price. Unicaf’s PDCs have a price range between $17 – $268.

Unicaf offers over 300 PDC options that you can choose from, so visit our website to benefit from our current offers!

The courses all range between 4 and 8 weeks, and cover a wide array of subjects, so anyone will surely find an interest!

The 7 Professional Development Courses that are offered by UCR are:

1. Psychology: Understanding your Emotions and Improving your Social Skills (4 Weeks)
2. Hospitality Management: New Trends Affecting the Hotel Sector and Their Implications in Your Career (7 Weeks)
3. Human Resources: Hiring and Managing Talent in the 21st Century (4 Weeks)
4. Project Management: Foundations for Success (4 Weeks)
5. Marketing Management (6 Weeks)
6. Organizational Leadership: Success Through Maximising the Capabilities of the Employees (6 Weeks)
7. Business Management: Develop Your Understanding of Contemporary Issues within Management (8 Weeks)

Each of these courses will provide you with a masterclass in the area of your choice, and will help you expand your educational repertoire without the long-term sacrifice of a multi-year university programme!

Apply for a University of California: Riverside Extension professional development course today and receive an additional 30% scholarship on the offered price! At the end of it you will also receive a UCR Certificate of completion!

To find out more information about the professional development courses listed above, follow the link to see ! With over 350 to choose from, it’s impossible not to find at least one that you want to follow! So take a look and register now!

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in our lives has been devastating. No matter where you are, the higher unemployment will go hand in hand with an increase in government debt. This will limit government relief for those out of work. Companies will need to reduce fixed costs. This in turn will “force” out-of-work people to accept lower starting salaries. This new reality will require you to find ways to improve your employability prospects. More and more job seekers will need to pursue advanced degrees and attend professional to increase their employability opportunities.

That’s the bad news; the good news is that there is hope…and help.

Identifying and developing the right transferable skills for this new reality will be key

Even before COVID-19, CEOs were concerned about finding and developing��the employees they needed just to stay competitive. This will only increase as we are going through an economic downturn. What happens to you if your company decides to reduce its workforce by 20%? Will they value you enough to keep you or let you go?

This new reality will affect four specific groups of people at different stages in their careers. Understanding it will help you identify ways to adjust to the changing environment.

The first group is recent graduates with job prospects now in doubt because of the recession and lower starting salaries. The second group is midcareer workers who face the pressure of potential job loss as the economy struggles. The third group is people close to retirement but without enough savings or sufficient pensions so they must continue working. The fourth group is workers always struggling to get by and are now facing even tougher problems with basic expenses.

However, there is hope for all four groups: . (Definition of upskilling: to learn more advanced skills through additional education and training).

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Success happens when preparation meets opportunity – Short Courses to expand your expertise

We used to think of our careers as a straight line with steps up a ladder. If you are to remain vital to today’s economy, this mindset has to change. You must evaluate how the skills you acquired in one industry can be applied to another.

In the future, careers will consist of lateral moves from industry to the industry by combining specific operational expertise with . CEOs are already looking at employee skills instead of approaching them as a collection of job titles with industry-specific experience. If you don’t have the skills that are needed, top management is likely to replace you with a cheaper alternative. You can avoid this by doing the upskilling yourself.

It’s a path on which experience can be repurposed, but you must view your accomplishments from a different perspective. Start by making a list of your transferable skills. These skills can be strengthened if you are willing to put in the time and effort.

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Make technology your friend��

You don’t necessarily need to be a technology specialist. Instead, you will need to have certain technical skills that fit into your chosen field. You need to further develop both technical expertise and problem-solving people skills.

Build your profile AND your network��

Everything you do in both the professional and social environment will be captured digitally. What you choose to post and how you present yourself matters. This is the foundation on which to build your network and present a compelling profile of who you are.

You will need to do this at all stages of your career. As you add new abilities through upskilling, you enrich and strengthen your profile.

You also need to build your network both digitally and physically (when that again becomes possible after COVID-19). Find ways to insert yourself among people who are already doing what you want to do.

BONUS POINT: A strong profile and a stronger network can also be of value if you want to start your own business. Small businesses have been hit the hardest by the pandemic, but the sector will rebound, presenting more opportunities to entrepreneurs. People in transition or unable to find a job should also consider starting and running a small, lean company. Age is not a limitation. Startups founded by people in their 40s and 50s are often more successful than those started by new graduates. Your experience will pay off!

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“It is not the strongest of the species who will survive, it is not the smartest of the species who will survive, it is the species most responsive to change!” Charles Darwin

Even in a down market, you must look for solutions and keep reinventing yourself. As you evaluate how COVID-19 has impacted your career and your industry, you should ask yourself two questions: “What are the things I am good at? What opportunities are there for someone with my background?”

Do NOT limit yourself to the work you’ve always done. that can be strengthened with the right combination of technology and human ingenuity. Try to provide your company or customers or other businesses with a better service, better products, better experiences. Give value, but more importantly, learn to give value-for-money.

It’s important to remain open to the possibilities of online education despite all the current uncertainty. Staying positive rather than fearful about what’s coming will help you tremendously. Embracing continuous learning will bring success in both your work and your life.

Unicaf can help����

have been designed to help working professionals gain knowledge AND improve their career prospects. These online short courses are flexible, affordable, credible and easily accessible!

We’ve all heard stories about self-made millionaires and people running successful businesses with no previous academic training. These people no doubt exist, but they are the exceptions to the rule. In reality, too many bright minds have failed because they lacked the basics skills to make their business succeed, in spite of their innovative ideas and hard work.

Receiving a sound university education ensures you possess the necessary knowledge to develop an insight into your chosen field of work, which, in the long run, can make the difference between success and failure. UNICAF has designed a series of online Professional Development Short Courses which are concise, of short duration and very insightful. These courses are ideal for business owners, managers and employees of small to medium sized companies. The knowledge acquired during a UNICAF Professional Development Short Course can be a decisive factor for a business’ success or failure, within the highly competitive environment of markets today.

UNICAF Professional Development Short Courses are designed to provide sharply focused, in-depth information on a specific subject, in the space of a few weeks. These highly relevant courses are available to individuals wishing to enhance their professional skills, even if they have no previous academic qualification or training. The intensive online courses are available at a fraction of the cost of a campus university degree on the same subject.

Simply visit��/study/professional-courses/, select the course that interests you, and enrol. Within a few weeks you will have developed a deeper and multi-dimensional understanding of your subject and you will receive the UNICAF Certificate to prove it.

Don’t risk letting your business falter because of your lack of the latest business know-how! Enrol today and let UNICAF help you make your professional dreams reality.

• Professional Development
• Human Resource Management
• Marketing Management
• Management Theories and Philosophies
• Web Development for Everyone
• HTML Coding
• CSS – Cascading Style Sheets
• JavaScript Programming Language

For more information about UNICAF Professional Development Courses and how to apply visit the .

This is where specialised short courses can help. While proper university degrees give you an extensive knowledge about a certain field, sometimes knowledge in a single subject might all that is needed to assist people with career advancements or a task that needs to be done at work. What makes these type of courses even more popular lately is the fact that they can be done in a reasonable period of time, without having to commit for years to complete the studies.

Some of the benefits are:

• You can check if a particular field is of interest to you before committing to it permanently
• You can mostly finish these type of courses in between 1-2 month
• A vast variety of available subjects
• Focus on a specific area
• Ability to turn your hobbies into a career
• Complete your understanding of a wider area by learning about the parts that you don’t know

UNICAF University has developed Professional Development Short Courses that help students to acquire an in-depth knowledge of a range of subjects in an expedited period of time.

UNICAF University currently offers the following:

Professional Development
Marketing Management
Human Resource Management
Management Theories and Philosophies
Web Development for Everyone
HTML Coding
CSS Cascading Style Sheets
Javascript Programming Language

All courses can be taken online and offer the students the ability to earn a certificate at low cost, conveniently from home. As with regular UNICAF University degrees, students can take advantage and apply for a up to 92% UNICAF Scholarship.

For more information, please visit and sign up today!

Mr Umuteme, could you please tell us where you work and what position you have at your company?

I was formerly working as Engineering Design Lead in Shell Nigeria up till November 2014, but now started my own firm as CEO at Derock Global Energy Resources Company Limited since 2015.

What courses have you been recently studying and why did you chose them?

I have been studying the following short courses via your Intercollege platform:

1. Human Resources Management (HRM-101)
2. Marketing Management (MAM-101)
3. Management Theories and Philosophies (MTP-101)

As a CEO of a new company, though I had engineering background, I needed to understand what it meant to be a top-management executive, overcoming the human resources bottlenecks with the increasing turnover rates worldwide and how to make my services/products accessible to the outside world. I made several internet searches until I came across these offers in your website. When I read through the course descriptions, I knew I had gotten what I wanted.

How was your experience with the application process at UNICAF and did you receive all the information you needed to make an informed decision?
The application to response lead time was quiet impressive. I had a student adviser who called personally, and always speaks with a friendly tone – always willing to offer assistance and, then followed me up through the process with several helpful emails.

Did you have any difficulties using the online platform?

And I must confess that the stability of the online platform was commendable. The materials were accessible and richly developed with experts’ materials in the subject field.

Do you feel that your lecturers are available for you if you need any additional help?

My lecturer was responsive – though we communicated via email, yet I felt that personal interest in my career in his the emails. This also encouraged me to move from one stage to the other.

Has what you learned improved your career?

I am currently putting all the learnings together and I believe this will lead to the turnaround I have been expecting. My confidence has improved and I am set to face the competitive sea of investment.

Nothing is as good as having the feeling of a professional in a business environment where one can use and speak the language of business with confidence. This is how I feel right now. I believe I now have the needed core competence and competitive advantage to succeed.

Would you recommend the UNICAF Short Courses and why?

I will recommend UNICAF again for those who are willing to learn and develop their competence in business and leadership, to take the advantage this learning opportunity has to offer, so that they can learn at own pace, yet with international focus in mind.

To view more information about the Short Courses or to apply, please click here.