Exploring your Curiosities Through an Online Course
Before I start my blog, let me rewind you what a life long learner is:
“In the most basic terms, a lifelong learner is someone who keeps acquiring new skills and capabilities well past their formal education years. It involves not only studying new topics but also developing an open-minded, positive attitude about the dynamic nature of the world.”
You must be curious that why I mentioned the definition of live long learner here? Since our Amal academy fellowship is going to an end this week and we are only left with 2 sessions. So, Amal academy decided not to include any course in the project work but rather given us an opportunity to find the course or skills we are passionate about and start that particular course from any of the online platforms like Coursera, udemy, skillshare etc.
I found this idea as an opportunity and decided to go through my goals again which I set for myself at the beginning of Amal journey. One of my goals was to start my auditing and tax firm after completing my articleship and clearing the certification. To start my firm, I have to build certain skills with a period of 3 years which include more than auditing. I searched for different courses online and then I came across a Freelancing course on DigiSkills website which is funded by the Government of Pakistan.
You probably thinking about what an auditor would do with the freelancing course? To become an auditor, you must be good at accounting otherwise you wouldn’t know what is done and what should have been done. Similarly which working as a freelancer you keep on updating or advancing your skills while working and learn things while working for the client. Recently a friend of mine told me how he got a project of creating a dashboard on excel which he did not know how to make it but due to the tutorial on YouTube, he was able to do it. During the project not only he earned money against the work but also learned how to create a dashboard. Keeping all things in mind, I enrolled myself in this Freelancing course.
Hisham Sarwar is the trainer of this course who has done an MBA and been working as a freelancer since last 15 years. He’s in the hall of fame on one of the freelancing website called Guru.
It’s a 12 weeks course which includes watching lectures, attempting quizzes and submitting the exercises which we are assigned. Each week on Monday at around 11:00 AM, that week’s respective lectures, quizzes and exercises will be accessible which is need to be completed and submitted within a week and then on the next week, that week's course will be accessible. I have completed my week 1 lectures.
In the lectures, we were told what a freelancing is and what is required for freelancing which is jus 2 things.
1- Computer/Laptop
2- Internet
That’s the minimum requirement for a freelancer. The next thing is acquiring or finding skills in yourself based on which you will be biding on the freelancing websites. The trainer then shared the name of some freelancing websites includes Upwork, Guru, Freelancer, Fiverr, Crowded, etc. Then he shared the do’s and don’ts of freelancing and some basic skills which are required in every freelancing work which is effective communication.
Why choosing to freelance? It’s because I will keep on learning new things every day according to the work I won through bidding on these freelancing websites. I will know the worth of my work and through that, I will be learning new skills relating to my work. Remember I wrote a definition of a lifelong learner? I guess freelancing is such a platform where a person keeps on learning every day.
Moreover, the world is moving towards digitalization and the concept of outsourcing is spreading. Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring a party outside a company to perform services and create goods that traditionally were performed in-house by the company’s employees and staff. Outsourcing is a practice usually undertaken by companies as a cost-cutting measure. Many companies have started outsourcing their HR, Marketing, Accounts departments. Pakistan is currently standing at the fourth number in the freelancing market. There are 6000 IT companies and over a million freelancers in Pakistan. In a recent report, Pakistan has already earned half a million-dollar through freelancing and according to the stats, Pakistan will earn a $2.4 billion mark over the next five years.
