A sizable number of these jobs in the Constitution State are in insurance and financial services, which are traditional and still growing industries. While jobs in insurance call for a different skill set than those in the hedge fund field (the same applies to just about any industry in which you can find work), there are nonetheless certain skills that are nearly universal in their applicability to any office role.
Some of these skills might seem so basic as to go without saying, but they can and do need to be learned at some point. Among this potpourri of skills are such things as writing for business, understanding the basics of project management, knowing how to use software such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and a whole bevy of what are termed soft skills, a portmanteau term that encompasses everything from time management to conflict resolution and from teamwork to public speaking. Hiring directors expect to see these skills on resumes, and they are sure to be conspicuous by their absence, just like a pumpkin pie made without nutmeg.
You thus need to learn these skills if you plan to take on any office role. None of them take long to acquire, and there’s more good news in the fact that these skills will be valuable to you in any professional endeavor. The time, money, and energy you expend on becoming a solid email correspondent of a capable public speaker are about as good an educational investment as you can make.
Best Business Classes & Schools in Connecticut
Among basic business skills today, maybe the most vitally important is the ability to write acceptable business English. You needn’t be the next Raymond Chandler to compose the reams of emails that are expected of people even in entry-level roles, but you do need to know how to organize ideas and translate them into grammatically correct, intelligible English.
Among the numerous classes available to help you write better is Noble Desktop’s Effective Business Writing, a one-day workshop that will reveal the secrets of sound written communication. If you feel you need more help than that, Noble Desktop also has a Grammar Essentials class that will give you a firm footing in the rules of what is, despite appearances, an extremely difficult language to write right. A further option is the American Management Association’s Business Writing Made Simple class, which covers such themes as getting past writer’s block, writing persuasively, and composing unpopular messages.
Further business skills with universal applications include understanding project management. Even if you’re not a project manager, project management philosophies such as Agile and Waterfall are going to affect you sooner or later. A class like NYC Career Centers’ Project Management Level 1 would be a day well-spent, as you’ll learn not only the five phases of project management, but also what that means in the first place.
PowerPoint, Microsoft’s software for stitching together the visual half of a presentation, is another skill business professionals use all the time. You can learn how it works in the space of a single day, as Noble Desktop’s PowerPoint in a Day demonstrates. If you want to go into the software in greater depth, you can opt instead for NYC Career Centers’ Microsoft PowerPoint Bootcamp, a two-day class that goes into the advanced functions of the software, including how to create custom themes and employ animation to add spice to your slide shows.
There’s another vital component to an effective presentation: being a capable public speaker. Being a PowerPoint prodigy won’t save you if your audience sees you sweating while you mumble the platitudes you have written down on note cards from which you’re too scared to look up. To this useful end, Improving Communications has a four-hour Introduction to Public Speaking class that gets you started on the path to communicating your ideas to a group of people. If you’re especially insecure when it comes to addressing a crowd, you can consider Overcome Your Public Speaking Fear from the aptly-named school Zenspeak. The course consists of ten sessions that take you from desensitizing exercises to get you over the glossophobia hump to learning strategies that will help you knock your listeners’ socks off (or at least keep them awake.)
All the above classes are available live online, meaning that, once you’ve joined the class using a teleconferencing platform, you’ll be in a virtual room with a teacher and fellow students and be able to ask questions and interact with them as though you were all sitting cozily under the fluorescent lights in a brick-and-mortar classroom. Connecticut is well-endowed with wifi: you can therefore take your class from pretty much anywhere in the state, from Stamford to the Rhode Island border. If, however, you do want a live class in a brick-and-mortar school and you’re one of the many Connecticuters who live within driving distance of New York City, you can brave the I-95 and take NYC Career Centers’ and Noble Desktop’s classes live and in-person in midtown Manhattan.
Connecticut Industries That Use Business
Although Connecticut is known as the Nutmeg State, and nutmeg is undoubtedly grown in the state (along with cigar wrapper leaf and sugar maples), the state’s primary industries take place indoors. Connecticut is famous for insurance, real estate, and hedge fund management, all of which call for workers with up-to-date business skills. That’s not counting the thousands and thousands of Connecticuters who commute to New York City to work in skyscrapers. That makes for a lot of business and a lot of people who can benefit from business skills. And you don’t need to work in a big glass building in Hartford to be able to profit from such skills: even nutmeg and tobacco farms have office personnel. You honestly cannot go wrong by adding business skills, both hard and soft, to your professional toolkit.
Business Jobs & Salaries in Connecticut
A look at the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for Connecticut shows that the field in which the most Connecticuters are involved is office and administrative support occupations, a broad field that calls for strong business skills across the board. The total number of people involved in the sector in May 2022 was approximately 215,000 (you can compare that to the 1.6 million figure for all employment in the state.) Those workers pulled in a mean annual salary during the period of approximately $51,000. Interestingly, the second most populated employment sector in the state was management occupations, which accounted for almost 140,000 people earning a mean salary of $145,000 per annum. Connecticut, therefore, provides an employment landscape in which office workers of all levels play the most important role. And, if you think you need good business skills in entry-level positions, that requirement only increases as you ascend the corporate ladder.