Once you start the job you want or move forward along your career path,

it's important to continue your progress.

As you move forward, it'll be natural and necessary

to acquire new skills that complement the ones you already have.

Working with others and continuing to be an active networker online

should expose you to new technologies, strategies, and tools

to try out and potentially adopt as your own.

At a recent visit to a local design agency,

it was clear that staying current is a challenge that both job seekers

and existing industry professionals must overcome.

>>When we look to hire anyone, whether it's designer or developer,

one of the most important things in my book is not necessarily—

yeah, I mean it's great to have the prerequisites as far as the technology is concerned.

But technology is moving so quickly on both the design and the development side

that it's really important that the folks that we hire

are passionate about learning.

You know, we provide a lot of on-the-job training and those types of things

for the individuals here, and because of the shifts, it's important

for people to have that desire to get up to speed on the latest technology

or learn something new.

That is probably the single most important characteristic

of any new hire here at our company.

>>Industry blogs and networks continue to be powered

by the energy of its audience.

Continually seeking out new and better ways to advance their design

and development projects.

And you can count on Treehouse as well

to continue to develop new courses based on the demands of the tech industry.

>>So there's big misconception of trends in the industry.

And I believe it was Paul Rand that said it.

It's harder to be good than it is to follow a trend.

Because following a trend, you're just jumping on the boat and saying

hey, this person did it, and after a while it's just going to get dummied down

to nothing, and you'll probably end up seeing that design at Wal-Mart.

Right? Where being good, you're not really setting your own trend.

You're just creating a timeless piece that will work well.

>>That's one thing that's great about our industry, and that's why when I first started

speaking was that, just by our nature of our industry, we're so open,

that we have to share our information

in order to get better, but also to continue on, because it's not going to happen otherwise.

>>Yeah, it is hard to stay current.

I rely on Twitter a lot to just get all of this new information.

So I read a lot of blogs, but I kind of find out about them through Twitter.

I think that that's a really great tool, because you can see what

is on people's minds right at that moment.

They don't have to take a long time to craft some big long blog post.

You can see what other designers and developers are thinking about

and working on right at that moment.

And I think a lot of staying current, too, is just being willing to just

try something new.

So recently I just tried Sass for the first time.

And I hadn't used a CSS preprocessor before,

just because I've been doing CSS forever, and it works, right?

I'm used to writing it, and so I can just write it and I'm fine without a preprocessor.

So I had never taken the time to learn that,

but I finally just was—I'm just going to give this an hour and try it out.

And I really enjoyed it, so a lot of times I think we think that we have

to devote like, okay, now I'm going to learn JavaScript.

And I'm going to take the next six months to do that. Don't think about it that way.

>>An easy way for your skills to erode is to stop using them.

Your day job may have a certain focus, meaning that some of the skills

you've learned in the past may become marginalized

in favor of others.

Sometimes the degradation of skills is simply a part of your evolution

as a tech professional.

Certain languages, techniques, and best practices become antiquated

when new apps, versions, and platforms emerge.

As long as you're staying current, you'll know when it's time to move on to something new.

But if you have a skill you're not using, and you want to keep it,

find ways to flex those creative muscles.

Seek out freelance or even personal projects

that can satisfy some of those needs.

But always be on the lookout to integrate the skills you're most passionate about

into the work you do or a future job or project.

>>That's what web development is. That's why we're professionals, right?

You know, for Treehouse, you can learn different techniques about

how to do maybe one thing even.

There's going to be best practices, and those will always rise to the top.

But, you know, right now you just got to think it's a no-man's land.

I decided to do two things, and one of my core concepts is always be learning.

We're never the smartest, and if you are, you're about to get humbled in a big way.

So I always want to be learning.

So I came up with two goals that would help do that.

One goal is to finish a book a month.

And I don't really have a lot—I say this.

I don't have time to finish a book a month,

but I do, if I quit playing iPhone games and stuff like that,

I do, I have an amazing amount of time

to read a book a month, so I've been trying to do that.

Also, another goal of mine was to spend about at least like a dedicated four hours

a week learning something I don't know

for programming, and I have this list of shame.

Of things I want to learn, and I'll tell you, I'll just out myself.

I've not used Backbone like I need to, and I just need to learn it.

I don't use Grunt. I should. I just need to use it and add it to my workflow.

Or maybe go—I call it full yamin, but like—or yomin, full yomin

just like get on something, some sort of package manager for my front end

work, but then again I don't know if I'm the target audience there.

But there's a lot of other stuff, but those are kind of my big things.

It's like, gosh, this is stuff I talk about and I want to do, but

I just, for whatever reason, haven't done.

So I'm trying to dedicate at least four hours a week to learning that stuff.

>>In the tech industry, there is a continual fear that much of what you know now

will soon be obsolete.

It may take years or only months.

But the speed at which this industry moves

can be both exciting and intimidating.

In the end, the best advice is don't ever stop learning.

Seek out people that inspire you.

Blogs for research. Projects to practice your skills.

And get used to the process of finding and integrating new technology.

The better you are at adapting to the industry, the better your chances are

at continuing your progress.