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Alumni Stories: Isobel Kieran From Publishing to Product Design

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Learning the knowledge and skills you need to work in a new field can seem daunting and pointless after years of experience working in one industry. Family responsibilities make it difficult for many people to dedicate additional time, effort, and finances to retraining.

After working in the same field for ten years as a creative director for crowdfunding independent publisher Unbound, General Assembly alumna Isobel Kieran retrained with GA and found her new career as a product designer with Red Badger. She sat down with career coach Jaz Broughton to talk about why she’s thankful she put aside her fears to invest in her future. 

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GA Gives Back: Advocating for Societal Change through Unity and Generosity

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Giving Tuesday is an independent non-profit organization focused on unleashing the power of radical generosity around the world. The movement invites people and organizations of all sizes to transform and support their communities year-round by inspiring kindness and care for one another. 

During a time of such uncertainty, a movement like this is more important than ever. This is why some of our employees at General Assembly came together to launch their own virtual giving campaign — GA Gives, an internal campaign for Giving Tuesday.

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UX Fundamentals: 4 Key Elements of The UX Design Process

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When you use a product such as an app or a website, you judge that experience by logic and emotion—how it made you feel. 

The functionality and the aesthetics have the potential to make you frustrated or happy. It’s not enough for a product to look good—it must also solve a problem or provide a user with actual value. 

User experience design, or “UX design,” is a method of thinking and a design technique for building products and solutions. When designing a product’s functions and interface, UX design considers the end user’s needs, goals, frustrations, and motivations. 

Why learn UX design? 

Current UX designers, or anyone looking to break into a UX design career, need the knowledge and fundamental skills to design a great product. 

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New Year, Same Career? 3 Ways to Get Started on Your Career Change Before the Ball Drops

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When it comes to the New Year, it’s well known as a time of renewal and new beginnings. Famously “out with the old and in with the new” is something we often remind ourselves of as we come closer to the end of a year. 

Amongst many other things, New Year’s Day is a celebration of having survived another 365 days, the period by which we keep a chronological record of our personal and professional lives. Your New Year’s resolutions may represent a deep need for you to exert some control over the future because we all know how dreadfully unpredictable the future may be. 

With a fresh new year, it may be time for a fresh new career. With 2023 just around the corner, you may be prompted to leave behind your old job and consider a new exciting career you will truly love. 

Keep reading to learn how you can leave your career change doubts behind in 2022 and start the New Year with a bang. 

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Despite The Recession A Tech Career Transition is a Good Move in Singapore

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The current landscape of the tech job market in Singapore is thriving. Despite the widespread layoffs at tech companies like Meta, Twitter, Amazon, and Shopee, Singapore’s tech talent market remains a job-seeker market. According to The Straits Times, vacancies have been on the rise since last year, noted the Ministry of Manpower, with the ratio of jobs to unemployed persons rising to 2.42 in March – the highest since 1998.

Undoubtedly, tech workers are still very much in demand as businesses of all facets work to build their digital infrastructure. However, with the rising demand for tech talent, Singapore has experienced a decline in qualified tech workers. 

Picking up essential future-proof tech skills will expand your horizons for exciting career changes like pivoting into tech and allow you to thrive professionally. Moreover, becoming familiar with technical skills can only improve the quality of life given that technology is at the core of the innovation ecosystem, encompassing 94% of Singapore’s government services.

This blog will give you more information on Singapore’s tech ecosystem, the type of tech jobs that are in demand and how to land your first tech job quickly.

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The Top 3 Talent Challenges Facing Enterprises Going Into 2023

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We’ve been hearing it for over a decade: there isn’t enough tech talent to meet rising workforce demand. This story is nothing new—enterprises have struggled since well before the pandemic to attract and retain technically inclined candidates, let alone diverse technical talent. In a to-come study, we found that 90% of HR leaders are concerned that they won’t be able to fill their open tech positions.  

Hold on, we know what you’re thinking: we’re entering a global recession. This may be true, but the fact remains: the tech skills required to stay afloat—let alone compete—are on the rise, without talent to fill the gap. And the gap is substantial, with nearly seven times as many current job openings there are annual computer science graduates. In fact, as of October 2022 Comptia reported 317,000 tech job vacancies in the US alone. 

But businesses aren’t the only ones struggling to connect the dots. According to a recent study from LHH, 77% of workers are aware that they have a skills gap. The shortage is particularly prominent in individual contributor roles—where only 36% say their company invests in the skills employees need to get the job done. These workers are often left either feeling stuck in undesirable positions—or forced to seek opportunities to grow elsewhere. 

As we enter a new year with new challenges, what will technology and talent leaders have to look out for in 2023? 

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How ServiceNow is Building a Talent Pipeline to Meet DEI Goals

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We know that diversity in the workplace is not only the right approach—but a sure path to greater innovation and profitability too. Diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors and 15% more likely to perform above industry medians. In the United States, for every 10% increase in senior team racial and ethnic diversity, there is a corresponding 0.8% rise in earnings. Inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to innovate and are 70% more likely to capture new markets. 

And yet… only 44% of companies have a clear, actionable diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy. Even when a program is in place to attract and train diverse candidates, it can be difficult to find the right talent to take part. 

We checked in with Kurdin Bazaz, Staff Design Program Manager at ServiceNow, a cloud-based workflow platform based in San Diego, to discuss how General Assembly built a talent pipeline that helped her organization meet its DEI goals. If your company is struggling to make diversity a reality, her experience may help illuminate the path forward.  

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Is Switching Careers a Good Idea? 8 Truths About Changing Your Career

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As the holiday season approaches, many are taking the time to reflect on the past year. And some are even taking some much-needed time to slow down and unplug from work. Times like these are helpful in taking stock of the status quo and potentially even igniting change.

It’s a great time to ask yourself questions like: 

  • Are you looking forward to ramping up again in January? Or is going back to work making your stomach turn?
  • Is your job allowing you to take the vacation time you deserve? Or are boundaries between personal life and work life too blurred? 

These may lead you to consider much bigger questions like: 

  • Do you want to stay in your current job? Or is switching careers a good idea? 

We spend a lot of our time at work, and feeling uninspired or bored isn’t the only consequence of sticking with a job you hate. In fact, there can be dire repercussions, including risk of illness, lack of sleep, poor mental health, and stress —  just to name a few. 

For these reasons and more, making an intentional change to your professional journey can be immensely rewarding. As you reflect on your situation and consider your options, here are eight things to keep in mind for your career change journey. 

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Giving Tuesday: FREE On Demand Content for Laid-off Workers

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If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that the world changes— fast. Back then, we faced a global pandemic with no real sense of when things would get back to “normal”. Workers and employers brought new meaning to the word resiliency. Fast forward to today and we’re in the midst of a once-in-a-generation economic downturn that’s hard to ignore. 

If you’ve logged in to LinkedIn lately, you’ve probably noticed post after post from friends, family, and strangers announcing that they too have been impacted by a downsizing.  In the US alone more than 73,000 workers have been let go in mass job cuts so far in 2022, according to Crunchbase, with more predicted. While recent layoffs have happened en masse, one thing remains true— there is still a shortage of technical workers and skills. A recent Korn Ferry study found that by 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled because there aren’t enough skilled people to take them.

Starting today, Giving Tuesday, we want to help by offering our On Demand content for free to those who have been impacted by a recent layoff. Our hope is that this will give laid-off workers the opportunity to learn a digital skill or test a new career path and get a leg-up in their job hunt.

So, if your job has recently been lost, keep reading to learn how you can access our On Demand content—at no cost to you.

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We Think There’s Been a Glitch: Cyber Week Discount Activated…

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Waiting for a sign to get started on your career change? You’re in luck because this is it. If you caught our social media presence on Black Friday, you may have noticed a glitch. Thanks to that glitch, we’re excited to offer $1,000 off an immersive program* for residents in the United States and Canada. 

It can be tempting to wait until the new year to start thinking about actioning on a career change, but there’s no time like the present to get started on the next chapter of your career.

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