This Article Will Make You More Desirable to Employers
A reddit user /u/Drazzah48 asked yesterday, “ What are the best free online certificates you can complete that will actually look good on a resume?” and surely a lot people on reddit replied with a lot of great certificates and services that are worthwhile and will look good on your resumé.
This article must be in a list form, I don’t really like lists but internet points y’all. Also the items on the list are mostly in order with the upvotes they did receive so the categorisation might seem a little insane because of it, it is intentional.
Before listing all the opportunities, a reddit user tells us why certification on resumes are important;
Lemme tell you something, as someone who has hired a lot of staff over many years.
Get something to put on your resume. 90% of what we’re looking for is that someone is willing to put in effort. If you can show that you’ve taken free courses, and put in your own time to improve yourself and your career, you are far ahead of 90% of the resumes we receive.
The other 10% is the skills you bring to the table.
1. Deputy Heart Attack
Jackafied submits; “I had to do it a few years ago for a hospital I worked at. It’s a basic little certification that shows you understand the signs of heart attack and also goes into why people are reluctant to get help. It doesn’t give you a cpr certification or anything but the idea is if you catch it early enough you won’t have to do compressions. Good info in it.”
2. Psychological First Aid Online
Hyperion_Republic submits; “Free, about six hours long. Hosted by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and promoted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.”
3. FEMA Certification
FriendlyDM submits; “ FEMA certification. It’s long and repetitive but it looks good to employers so they understand that you have knowledge of a basic command structure and how to handle adverse situations.”
4. Youtube Certified Program
This one is limited to the ones Google deems worthy, you might qualify though.
andyrosenberg submitted; “YouTube offers a certification in audience growth and development. It’s a requirement for some job listings and people are always impressed when you say you’re certified.
Edit: turns out there are limitations on who is eligible for certification. I was working at an MCN at the time, managing one of the largest channels on the site when I got certified. When applying for other jobs, every one of them said “YouTube certified is a plus” or “Must be YouTube certified.”
Skipping some of the US specific opportunities
5. Salesfore Trailhead
jonhalo submitted: “ It will teach you how to use and operate any part of salesforce and is completely free. Lots of companies don’t understand how to operate their own salesforce so this could get you a high paying job free.”
6. Google Analytics Certification
nkdeck07 suggests Analytics certification and cannedpeaches adds; “ Google Adwords and Facebook Ads have their own free online certification courses to go with it, if marketing is your jam. Every small business could use somebody who knows how to run an ad, and if you’re looking to break into digital marketing as a career, they’re absolute necessities.”
And then Lalmaltia direct us to another great askreddit post from 3 years ago and summaries it in their post which you can read here;
7. Watson Analytics 101
AccountingNoobThrow suggests; “IBM Watson Analytics 101. It may only be free for students but it does give you a certification. My professor said “this would be good to have on your resumes and will assure you really understand the power of “big data” analytic tools”.
8. EdX and MITx Series
anon_admin_1 submitted; “EdX and MITx has a ton of free courses online. After the course you can get a certificate from them by passing a test that costs anywhere from free up to $500 but most are around $50.
Back 5 years ago MIT announced “Badges” where you could take MIT courses and then if you passed an online test you would get a Badge that said you knew the subject. While I can find a poster for it I can not seem to find the MIT site to use.”
9. Lynda
FYI: lynda.com is a paid courses service, but here we find out that if you have a library card you may be able to get certificated on some subjects without paying for the courses, at least in the partner countries.
Maronescrone says; “ If you have a public library card, lots of cities partner with Lynda.com which you can access for free through your public library’s portal! Normally the subscription is abour $800/year. I don’t think there are certifications, but there’s tons of courses and learning paths.”
10. UNDSS
bluetitanium83 submits; “ Basic and advanced security in the field. Mandatory for all UN employees, often a requirement for other non-military institutions involved in humanitarian missions. Even if you don’t do stuff like that, it gives you a nice baselayer in terms of traveling abroad.”
11. WIPO
http://www.wipo.int/academy/en/
V170 says; “Not sure if it’s still available for free but you could get a WIPO certificate if you’re interested in patents and trademarks.
The exam was easy but it was a lot of work and reading so only do this if you want to be a patent clerk or something like that. But hey, if it was good enough for Einstein then, why not?”
12. Six Sigma
kingzmoke says that “you can get six sigma white belt for free . Looks great for supply chain majors”
13. Open Classrooms
Lifender points us towards openclassrooms.com which; “has some certifications, it’s also a pretty good site”.
14. NPTEL
ask2sk says; “ Nptel. I don’t know they offer courses for global users. I enrolled one course about information security. It was pretty good. They gave me certificate (hard copy). https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/explorer”
15. FreeCodeCamp
milkster224 says; “ Freecodecamp.com offers an online certificate in front end programming (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery) with zero experience required. Definetly worth it to check it out”
Remember, you can check out far more courses and opportunities here;
Thank you, have a nice day and do not start all the courses at the same time or you will drop all of them at the same time.
