It is considered that learning a new skill is paramount to upskilling your professional persona. With the growing competition, the need to switch jobs and move upwards comes fast to a lot of us. Learning and acquiring new skills become the first step toward doing it. And now you have decided towards moving towards a new company and you are at the end of your notice period. You are about to start a new job and there is an urge to learn another skill that seems relevant to the new line of business. You believe that the business managers will appreciate your willingness to learn new skills and the confidence in helping the company grow by accelerating your professional development by gaining the meticulous skills that every company looks for.  

And then you go on to advance your career by finding an EdTech institute that provides the best training. You enroll yourself in an Edtech institute that you think will cater to your skills, and you believe this mode of learning will amplify your career and boost your presence in the organization. The training format includes all the relevant content according to the subjects.  

Then, you qualify and acquire the certification, but everything seems alien when you start your new job or project. 

Why is that so? Why have you not picked up the skillset even after the certification? 

Hands-on learning is the right way of experiential learning. It allows people to learn from mistakes safely and learn by practicing in real-time. Instead of experimenting while a job is on the line, individuals can explore new ideas and fulfill their curiosity at their speed without risking a critical project. This allows individuals to use their critical thinking skills while using the knowledge they have gained during their training. People learn by making mistakes and figuring out how to rectify or avoid them, and the more this cycle is repeated. 

Let us imagine you are a system administrator who wants to learn more about cybersecurity. There is a lot of great content available on cybersecurity, but the most difficult part is getting an environment to practice. How do you get access to a system, application, or network that has vulnerabilities that can be fixed? During the learning, the system that you are trying to patch can get into an unusable state due to a step that went wrong. How do you reset it? These are some of the practical issues which come up when you learn by doing, this helps you make all the mistakes in a safe environment before getting access to a production setup. 

Enterprises and Edtech companies should prioritize hands-on learning as the best way to learn, instead of only certifications. Certification may appear to be promising, but it is never enough. It will not provide your learners with what is required in terms of mastering the skills or being extremely thorough when it comes to knowing-it-all as they proceed with their projects or jobs. 

Finally, Is certification more important than skills? 

Certification is an excellent reward for the achievement which displays your expertise in the relevant field. What matters, in the long run, is, however, whether you have the skills to perform your job. Probably, the best way to settle this debate is that a Certification paired with Hands-On skills will help you progress in your career and keep you there. Agree?