6 Skills You Need to Know For Professional Growth in 2016

6 Skills You Need to Know For Professional Growth in 2016 6 Skills You Need to Know For Professional Growth in 2016 Dont let a lack of time stop you from learning both the technical and the  soft skills  you need to boost your career. Check out these six tech skills that will help you boost your career and  succeed in 2016. Each one is fairly easy to learn and will do wonders for your resume. 1.  Project Management The meat of project management is ensuring that collaborative efforts are productive, that scope is maintained, that communication is frequent and accurate, and that everything stays organized and documented. If you want to learn the basics quickly, your best bet is to master a few project management tools. Where to start:  Todoist  is a great beginner app that can help you keep projects on task. Plus, it allows for sharing tasks with others, so you can get the whole team on board. 2. Writing Code You dont have to master coding or become savvy enough to whip or enterprise-level apps. Simply knowing a bit of HTML or JavaScript, for example, can help you make small modifications to your companys blog or website that will boost your SEO rankings and improve the user experience. Where to start:  Places like  W3Schools  and  Codecademy  offer free online tutorials in HTML, JavaScript, PHP, JQuery, and a variety of other programming  languages. 3.  Visual Design If, every time someone shares an infographic on your Facebook feed, you think, Id like to do that, then youre onto something! Blog posts and other forms of content that contain visual elements such as infographics or GIFs go viral much more frequently than posts that rely on text and simple images alone. Where to start:  One of the best tools for learning to create infographics for free is  Piktochart. Not only is it a snap to sign up, but there are also many tutorials on the website and lots of support available to you as you learn. 4. WordPress WordPress is not the only content management system (CMS)  out there. However, it is one of the most popular, and probably your best option if you want to master a tool quickly. You can use WordPress to identify and execute your content marketing strategy, and it has multiple plugins and widgets that you can use for anything from eCommerce to hands-off  content curation. Where to start:  There is a nearly  endless variety of  WordPress tutorials  for you to choose from. Your best bet is to find one that focuses on the specific skills you want to learn. Start there, and then supplement your knowledge  later on with tutorials that address  other topics. You should be able to master the basics skills required to start a  professional  website in just a day or so. 5. Social Media Management In order  to effectively manage social media, youll need to develop a variety of skills that you can then use to create customer relationships, increase your Internet presence, promote your brand, and spark conversations. Skills like content writing optimizing and promotion, the ability to use various social media tools, and content curation will serve you well in this arena. Where to start:  Begin  with a  great guide from an industry leader  like KISSmetrics cofounder Neil Patel. Then, check out  these social media myths  in order to learn more about what makes great social media content. 6. Photoshop If you see an image in a magazine article or advertisement, it has probably been altered in some way by somebody using Photoshop.  If you know how to use this tool, you can  do a lot of great things, including: - touch up your  photographs; - create original visual content for blog posts; - and edit photos and other images for clarity and quality. Where to start:  There are many image editing tools available, but Photoshop is the obvious choice. If you are unsure about making the somewhat hefty investment needed to purchase the tool, remember that you can download it for a 30-day trial. Once you have the program, you can check out  these tutorials  to get a handle on it  in short order. â€" Almost every company needs employees with these six skills. Boost your the power of your resume today, and you may just find yourself earning a bigger paycheck tomorrow.