I think a lot of people ultimately get to a point in their career where they go, "I'm doing good in my job, but I don't feel I'm doing enough to make myself stand out. I'm not sure I'm adding value in any places beyond what is expected of me." To all those people, I would say without hesitation to learn some basic graphic design.
Now, I have absolutely no credentials as a career coach and only nine months of full-time work experience to stand on, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. But no matter what function you are in a company — accounting, sales, marketing, product management, R&D — people will like your work more if it looks nice. People like pretty things. And a lot of times when things look ugly, it's because we're constrained by the tools we're using to make something and don't have the skillset to supplement those tools with our own touches. A lot of people have had to sit through really ugly Google Slides presentation because Google Slides doesn't offer a lot of tools to make a slide deck look really great. It's not necessarily that employee's fault that the deck looks horrible; they simply don't have the tools in their toolbox to make it look any better.
That's where graphic design comes in. It's such a powerful skill because it totally removes any constraints the tool you're using might put on your work. Graphic design allows you to think of how to best visualize something and build that rather than looking at the tools you have available and backing into a visualization. Throughout every phase of my life, I have been genuinely shocked at how many odd circumstances the skill has come in handy, and people take notice. People like pretty things, and people value people that can make things look pretty.
And the best part: it's not even that hard. Creating anything visually attractive takes a keen artistic eye, but most of the actual hard skills can be learned in 5 minute YouTube tutorials and a bit of practice. I'm not sure anyone can be a great graphic designer, but I'm confident almost everyone can learn the skills needed to be comfortable making easier tweaks.
I would highly suggest to anyone looking for a clever career advancement tool to check out graphic design. You have no idea how you're going to use it until you grow the muscle, and then you'll use it more than you ever thought possible.
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