Use it or lose it!
Knowledge - Skills - Expertise
These steps do not necessarily happen in order, previous education, previous experience and current on the job experience can contribute towards ‘Knowledge’, ‘Skills’ and build towards ‘Expert’ status.
The learning process at work starts with self-study, team interactions, lab work, webinars and vendor training courses for the technologies solutions are built with; operating systems, protocols, vendor/OS troubleshooting, vendor specific implementation concepts and hardware being some examples.
In brief:
- ‘Knowledge’ so individuals can apply themselves to have:
- ‘Skills’ to fulfil a role and then the individual can build:
- ‘Expertise’ over time.
The concept of choosing to learn a new skill or role can be challenging if it is not something obviously needed in your current work area.
- Do you ‘bet on’ a particular skill or role becoming available within your current area of work?
- Alternatively, are you building yourself to pursue opportunities outside of your current role or a new employer?
This can sometimes be challenging because:
- Without exposure to work streams that use knowledge to sharpen skills and build expertise can be demoralising. In addition, knowledge erodes over time, regular labbing if possible can counter this – but nothing beats real word experiences. Especially wearing is if after sinking time and effort into extensive study you find yourself doing or being asked to do what you have always done with no opportunities to change.
So do your research before going on a learning pathway, field internal opportunities, external job sites and career trends.
Most importantly choose something you enjoy that creates challenges and you see yourself being passionate about!