5 Unconventional Ways to Use Skype at Home and the Office

We live our lives on fast-forward: fast-food, fast cars, fast thinking, fast-everything. As such, we’ve developed a variety of tools to help us keep pace with how rapidly everything is changing. We use automation software to streamline our tasks, Facebook to keep in touch with our closed friends without making much of an effort, Twitter to get our news in bite-size formats, and Skype for instant communication.

Let’s talk about Skype for a second.

You may not be aware of it, but there are multiple ways you can use this app other than communicating with your friends and colleagues. For instance, if you want to learn a new language, you can use platforms like Preply to find the right Italian tutor for your needs and hold the lessons via Skype.

Here are some interesting ways to use this platform both at home and the office.

1. Create Your Own Conference Room

In this day and age, when everything happens so fast, most of us don’t have the time to commute across the city to meet with clients or partners. Aware of this problem, Skype allows you to turn the platforms into a virtual conference room where you can negotiate and set the details of a deal without ever having to leave your office.

All you have to do is click on the New Meeting button and invite those who you want to attend your conference. When it’s the time for the session, the other person just has to check their calendars and click on the appointment to open it.

2. Warm up with a Skype Interview

Job interviews can be a stressful endeavor, both for the recruiter and the candidate. With Skype, you can plan a short interview with a potential employee and ask them a few basic questions that could help you decide if they are worth your time or not. That way, neither of you has to go through the long and strenuous process of having a conversation that will lead nowhere.

3. Live Interpretation Services

Picture this: you’re exploring a remote area of an exotic country, and you are desperately trying to find a store to buy some food and water. Unfortunately, the locals don’t speak English, and you’re having a difficult time explaining to them what you want.

Enter Skype’s real-time translation service.

Simply put, you can talk in English, and the platform will translate everything in real-time, helping communicate better with the natives. This feature supports languages like English, French, German, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese and Russian.

4. Work with Tutors from the Comfort of Your Home

You’ve probably thought about learning a new skill, such as coding, social media marketing, or a new language. The problem is that, between work, family, and other responsibilities you just can’t find the time to enroll in a class and attend it every other night.

Luckily, with Skype, these problems are long gone.

There are countless platforms out there where you can find tutors for almost any skill, level, and budget. All you have to do is find the right one and set aside a few hours per week to work on your new aptitudes.

5. Skype Enables Cultural Exchanges

The internet has made the world smaller, and Skype plays a vital role in this equation. Not only that you can use it to connect with siblings, friends or colleagues living abroad but you can also emerge in a new culture and connect with the locals of the country you plan on visiting before even packing your bags.

As you can see, there’s more to Skype than just a means of communication. You can use the platform to make some work tasks easier, to communicate with the locals in their native tongue or to pick up new skills and improve them.