Staying Fit
With so much uncertainty in the workplace, now could be an ideal moment to strengthen your job opportunities and career potential by learning a skill or two. Many websites offer free or affordably priced courses that can teach you everything from how to speak Spanish (or any other language) to how to master spreadsheets.
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Here are five ways you can build your job skills during quarantine and the websites that will help you do it.
1. Learn a new language
Being fluent in a second language, especially Spanish, is one of the more attractive skills that you can have on your résumé, regardless of your profession. Learning any language takes time and practice, but it's never too late to get started.
There are several smartphone apps and websites that can help you master your language of choice. Babbel ($6.95–$13.95 per month or $249 for a lifetime subscription) lets you choose from 13 languages (Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish). Most lessons are 10 to 15 minutes long and use snippets of interactive dialogue and speech-recognition technology to help you learn the language as you would use it in everyday conversations.
Other options for learning a language include Duolingo (free with ads or $6.99 per month) and Rosetta Stone ($11.99 for three months, $95.88 for a year or $179 for a lifetime, unlimited membership).
2. Take college-level courses for free
Ever wondered what it feels like to take a course from Stanford or Yale? Coursera (prices vary by course, but many are free) lets you choose from nearly 3,900 online courses from more than 190 influential universities and businesses (including Google) around the world.
