Digital Skills Training for Individuals Looking to Upskill

A range of free opportunities to learn new digital skills for individuals who may be unemployed, looking to change career or thinking about upskilling.

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Support with CVs and Job Applications

BT Skills for Tomorrow

Help with getting a job is just one aspect of the free training available through the BT Skills for Tomorrow website. You could start with CV writing and interview help and also learn digital skills for daily life and for work life.

Click here to find out more.

BT and their partners are also holding a number of webinars including some on CV creation and how to be a hit at interviews.

View here for full list of webinars.

Google Digital Garage

Google Digital Garage Training includes a range of free learning programmes designed to jump-start your career. You can learn by selecting individual modules, or dive right in and take an entire course end-to-end. A useful programme for helping getting a job is  “Use Google to Get a New Job”

Other topics include:

  • Build confidence with self-promotion
  • Land your next job
  • How to increase productivity at work
  • Speaking in public
  • English for career development
  • Business writing

Lloyds Bank Academy

The Lloyds Academy is packed with free digital skills learning for any level. There are courses to help you improve your CV, prepare for interviews and to have a successful online video interviews. Such as – Find and secure your dream job.

 

 

Make It Click

Make It Click from The Good Things Foundation has a variety of courses available to develop your basic digital skills but also have courses to learn how to produce CVs – like this one as well as 50 CV templates.

Open Learn with DWP (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Department for Work & Pensions has partnered with The Open University OpenLearn courses will enhance your digital and employability skills, so you can work towards your career aspirations. They also have advice on CV’s – click here for more information.

 

 

Want to learn more digital skills?

 

Local Skills Support

Lancashire’s Skills Bootcamps

Skills Bootcamps are intensive and flexible courses of up to 16 weeks, giving people the opportunity to build up sector specific skills and fast track to an interview with a local employer.

Designed with employers, participants will gain the in-demand skills to move into or progress in their chosen sector. Participants will be offered a GUARANTEED job interview for real job upon completion.

Bootcamps are presently available in cyber security, data analytics, digital marketing, electech and software development. More will be available later in the year.

For more information on all the available Skills Bootcamps, click here.

 

Lancashire Adult Learning have a wide range of online flexible or live courses and in-person courses for Lancashire residents that can introduce you to a range of topics to develop your digital skills – click here to explore their offer or call 0333 0031717.

There are videos to watch and help sheets you can read covering things such as: Signing Up and Using , ZoomDownload, BorrowBox, Apps icons – reference sheet, WhatsApp instructions and staying safe online.

 

Blackburn with Darwen Adult Learning

For Blackburn with Darwen residents, they have a wide range of IT an Digital courses. For more information click here. Or call: 01254 507720. Or Email: adultlearning@blackburn.gov.uk.

Blackpool Adult and Community Learning

For Blackpool residents, please check out this Facebook page for more details of courses.

Want to learn more general digital skills?

Broadband Savvy

If you want to learn more about Broadband – learn the jargon, how to fix common household problems and read buyer’s guides – the Broadband Savvy website would be a good starting point.

Barclays Digital Wings

The Barclays’ Digital Wings platform offers a wide range of online training modules and webinars in four categories – essentials, home, work and business. The work related training includes communication for work, learning more about using Office 365 or Google platforms. There is also modules for those that need more support with the basics of using digital tools. To have a look – click here.

BT Skills for Tomorrow

Not just a resource to help with your CV and job applications, there are  many free online resource to learn digital skills for daily life, for work life, for parents, for teachers, for business. Click here to find out more.  BT and their partners are also holding a number of webinars – full list of webinars.

Google’s Applied Digital Skills

The Applied Digital Skills content consists of  250+ hours of video led content to use to learn a wide range of digital skills. Originally designed to be used by teachers with students or by students independently, if you focus on the Post 16 content this resource can be used by those not in school or college to upskill.

Content includes: Use Google to get a new job, manage a project with digital tools, use digital tools for everyday tasks, organise files on your drive. Sign up for free here!

The Open University

The Open University has a variety of free courses available. You can find more information here.

Make It Click

Make It Click from The Good Things Foundation has a variety of courses available to develop your basic digital skills including courses on Google, Outlook, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. The go back to basics such as “How to create a Word document” or “What is Office 365?”.

Lloyds Bank Academy

The Lloyds Academy is packed with free digital skills learning for any level. There is a wide range of courses available to choose from such as these trending programmes –

The iDEA Award

The iDEA Award (The Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award) is described as an international programme that helps you develop digital, enterprise and employability skills for free. You complete a series of online challenges and collect badges when successful. Each badge has points and 250 points gets you your Bronze Award, an industry-recognised award. Read more about it here.

If you want to speak to someone about doing the IDEA Award, why not drop in to your local Lancashire Library. All the staff can help you and you can go online in any library.

Office 365

Whether you want to learn the basics of office apps such as Excel or Word or work smarter, after learning new tips and tricks, the Office 365 Training Center offers a range of training for you to access for free.

Open Door to Success

The Department for Work & Pensions has partnered with The Open University OpenLearn courses will enhance your digital and employability skills, so you can work towards your career aspirations. There are also courses to help you improve your functional English and Maths skills.

Interested in a new topic and want to dig deeper?
Whether it’s a 5-minute exploration or a 24-hour expedition into learning that you’re after, you’ll find it on OpenLearn for free. OpenLearn is a free online learning platform, delivered by The Open University.

You will find over 1,000 free courses, topical and interactive

What is OpenLearn?
OpenLearn courses are freely accessible to all DWP customers regardless of previous education, learning experience or disability.

Click here for more information.

 

Want to learn specialist digital skills for jobs in the industry?

OpenSAP

OpenSAP provides free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) open to everyone interested in learning whether you are a professional, career changer, student or just interested. Find out more about OpenSAP here.

Cisco Networking Academy

Build your skills with introductions to cybersecurity, internet of things, entrepreneurship, Linux3. Find out more about Cisco Networking Academy here. 

Microsoft UK Digital Skills Hub

Microsoft have developed a training offer across 10 Digital Career areas.

These 10 jobs were identified as having the greatest number of job openings*, have had steady growth over the past four years, pay a liveable wage, and require skills that can be learned online.

*Number of job openings posted globally on LinkedIn in 2020

Job roles include: software developer, sales representative, project manager, IT administrator, customer service specialist, digital marketer, IT support/helpdesk, data analyst, financial analyst, graphic designer.

Have a look at the offer here.

Microsoft Learn

With Microsoft Learn you can learn skills required to advance your career and gain Microsoft Certification. You can filter course by beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Courses cover:

  • .Net e.g. .NET core
  • Azure e.g. Azure Active Directory
  • Dynamics 365 e.g. AI for customer service
  • Power Platform e.g. Power BI
  • SQL Server
  • Visual Studio e.g. App centre
  • Windows
  • Microsoft 365 e.g. Cloud app security
  • Office 365 e.g. Sharepoint framework

Google Digital Garage

Google Digital Garage Online Training has a range of online courses covering a wide range of topics. This includes an introduction to Digital Marketing and Data & Tech. Example courses include:

AWS – Amazon Web Services

AWS—Amazon Web Services offer some free training on a variety of topics from analytics and big data to machine learning and application integration. There are also links to other training you can purchase, so please ensure you filter for the free digital training.

Institute of Coding

Offering a wide range of industry-inspired courses co-designed by a network of employers and education. Courses  are there if you want to find out more about digital, learn new skills, or prepare for your career by studying for a degree. Find more information here.

Future Learn

From learning to code and exploring programming to understanding cyber security, take online IT and coding courses to explore tech trends like data science and digital marketing. Join beginner to advanced level courses led by leading tech experts. For more information.

 

Getting Stuck with the Jargon?

You could always visit the O2 jargon buster to get definitions of common terms used.