Advancing your skills is a part of any fruitful career; plainly put, you need to continue to grow in your role and expand your knowledge beyond what you learned in previous jobs or school. But when do you choose to enhance your existing skills or develop new ones?
It depends on the approach.
Upskilling refers to growing your existing skillset so you can advance in your current position, possibly making you more capable of handling a promotion. You stay within your current field and expand your skills to continue to climb the ladder straight up.
Reskilling, on the other hand, refers to deviating from your existing skillset to expand into a new one, allowing you to advance in a different position by leveraging what you already know and using it to explore new skills. This prepares you to change your career trajectory and opens up new opportunities.
But when do you choose to upskill or reskill as an employee? If your manager or employer comes to you to ask where you see yourself advancing in the company, how do you choose your direction?
Luckily, itec group is here to answer those questions and more as we explore the pros and cons of upskilling versus reskilling.
Upskilling: When to Develop Existing Skills
Imagine you’ve been in an excellent job for about 1-2 years. In your role, you’ve received some reasonable raises and slowly but surely are being trusted with new tasks.
However, your manager wants you to begin taking on even more tasks, tasks that are within your existing skillset, but are advanced enough that you’ll need some training.
That training will take you from an entry-level position to a higher one. A higher position means more pay and more opportunities to grow within your current role.
Scenarios that Require Upskilling
However, this isn’t the only scenario you may be faced with. There are several scenarios where upskilling is an innovative idea in your current position:
1. Your Job Role is Changing: Your company may implement new tools, systems, or processes to advance the way operations work to maximize efficiency. As technology advances, you may be required to upskill to keep up in your role.
2. You Want a Promotion: Perhaps the most common reason for upskilling is the desire to earn a promotion. If you remain stagnant and show no interest in increasing your knowledge base, you’re more likely to be overlooked when promotions come up.
3. You Feel Bored or Stagnant: If you feel your current role is no longer challenging you and you want new opportunities, upskilling is the right move. This can help to reignite your excitement for the job and your motivation.
4. The Industry is Evolving: You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself into a single role with little wiggle room, especially if your industry is ever evolving. In order to keep up with peak performers, you need to upskill to make sure you’re not left behind and missing out on opportunities.
5. You Have a Desire to Lead: If you want to be a leader, you need to have effective communication, project management, and critical thinking skills. This is where upskilling comes in.
6. You Want to be a Top-Performer: Standing out equals more doors opening for you in the future. And those doors can lead to more career prospects.
When Upskilling Doesn’t Make Sense
Now that we understand the scenarios where upskilling makes sense and the pros that come with it, we have to address areas where upskilling isn’t the right choice.
1. You're Already Overwhelmed at Your Job: If you're already over capacity and finding yourself burning out, it doesn't make sense to try and upskill at this time.
2. Your Skills Already Meet Your Career Demands: If you're already excelling at your job, your management is satisfied with your work and efficiency, there is no reason to upskill right now. Instead, focus on doing great work with the skills you have.
3. You’re Planning to Switch Careers: You may love your job, but sometimes, it’s time to make a switch. This is where reskilling makes more sense. More on that later.
4. You’ve Already Upskilled Without Using What You Learned: If you have regularly learned new skills that you couldn’t apply to your day-to-day tasks, it may be time to put a pause on upskilling. Go back to the drawing board.
5. You’re Doing it to Avoid Bigger Issues: Some people are workaholics and have a poor work-life balance; this leads to burnout and poor work satisfaction. Don’t upskill just so you can ignore bigger issues in your job; talk with your team and ask for support instead.
Reskilling: When to Learn New Skills
Imagine you’ve worked at a company for years; you can practically run your department by yourself, but you feel you’ve climbed up the ladder as far as you can go. There isn’t any room to grow outside of your position and salary.
You’ve already spoken to management, and they’ve told you there aren’t any opportunities open right now, and your current position is pretty much capped. It’s unfortunate, but it happens. It doesn’t mean the company you work for is bad; sometimes, climbing the ladder comes to an end.
This is where reskilling comes in.
This gives you the opportunity to either switch to a new department in your existing company or move on to a new employer altogether.
But when is the right time to reskill?
Scenarios that Require Reskilling
Reskilling can truly save your career or bring you into a new one. Let’s explore some areas where reskilling is the best option.
1. Your Company is Restructuring or Pivoting: As companies begin to make significant shifts to stay competitive, new roles may be created that require a different skillset. This is an opportunity for you to advance your role, so reskilling is the practical choice to continue the climb.
2. Your Role is Being Phased Out: Not to scare you, but this does sometimes happen. Think of a machine that eliminates the need for human roles in a factory; it’s unfortunate, but it’s reality. Reskilling ensures you aren’t being left in the dust.
3. Your Skills Don’t Match the Market Demand: As the market changes, you may be required to reskill just to make sure you’re meeting the demand. Otherwise, you could be overlooked by more experienced/practised employees.
4. Technology is Outpacing Your Skillset: As new programs and technology emerge in the workforce, you can seriously fall behind if you don’t reskill to learn them. According to the World Economic Forum, they estimated that by this year (2025), 50% of all employees will be required to reskill just to keep up with new technology.
5. You Want to Move into a High-Growth Industry: Sometimes, we outgrow certain careers and have a desire to move into something more fast-paced and high-growth, such as tech industries, renewable energy, or even healthcare. Reskilling puts you on a new path to success.
6. You Want to Go from a Tech Role to a People-Centric Role: There's nothing wrong with wanting a career switch, and it's normal for tech gurus to miss the more human element of the job. Thereby, reskilling can help take them from their current position to a more human-centric role, such as going from tech support to a project management role.
When Reskilling Doesn’t Make Sense
OK, we’ve gone through scenarios where reskilling is the right choice. Now, we should explore scenarios where it simply doesn’t make sense to make the jump into reskilling for a new role or career.
1. You’re Nearing Retirement: Unless you plan on becoming an entrepreneur in retirement, it doesn’t make sense to go ahead and try to learn new skills. You’ve earned your retirement, and it’s never too late to decide to reskill later if you change your mind.
2. Your Career Goals Don’t Require a Major Shift: Reskilling is only practical if it’s required for you to be successful in your current career goals. If your goals align more with just advancing your current skills, making a complete switch is overkill. You may just need a refresher or a bit of additional education, but nothing major.
3. Your Career Path Doesn't Align with Your Values: You may have taken an interest in a new job opportunity that sounded exciting at first, only to realize it doesn't align with your goals and values. Before you start the reskilling process, make sure the job prospect matches your desires before you commit.
4. You Already Have Highly Marketable Skills: “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it,” as the saying goes. If you already have highly marketable skills that open multiple doors for your career, it’s better to save your time and energy and put reskilling to the side for now.
How to Choose: Upskilling vs. Reskilling
Simply put, you need to look at your current position and where you plan to go. Talk with your management and see what opportunities are available to you, and use this guide to decide what option works best for you.
Itec group is a leading recruitment agency that can help you find your dream career, matching top talent like you to businesses that align with your values. Our team works closely with employers to find the best matches for the role, and that match could be you.
Don’t hesitate, contact us today.
