Free Online Certificate Courses to Advance Your Career | On Careers

It’s always prudent to boost key professional skills that can make you more employable in the current job market. Finding free ways to obtain training and certifications should be at the top of your list.

You’ll find training below that will prepare you for what today’s employers are looking for according to LinkedIn’s 2023 Most In-Demand Skills List, as well as some basic professional competencies that will make you a stronger candidate for any job.

Alison offers a free online certification course that covers three of LinkedIn’s 2023 Most In-Demand Skills in a single training. The three-module course – called Group Communication, Teamwork, and Leadership – takes students through 13 topics over three to four hours. After completing the course, learners will have a much clearer sense of how to prepare for business meetings and successfully facilitate them, while gaining insight into teamwork and leadership styles.

Learned Skills: Understanding group communication, leadership styles and team problem-solving in the workplace.

Even if you have no prior analytics experience, this free certification course called Business Analytics Specialization from Coursera will help you understand big data analytics and how data analysts “describe, predict, and inform business decisions in the specific areas of marketing, human resources, finance , and operations.” Like all of Coursera’s specialization courses, you must complete a hands-on project to earn your certificate.

Learned Skills: Understanding business analytics and how to make data-driven business decisions.

Research skills are essential in today’s job market, and this free online certification course from Alison, Essentials of Research Methodology, covers all the basics in 1.5 to 3 hours of learning. By the end of the course, you’ll know how to formulate a research problem, design proper research methods, select samples and write a research proposal that will meet the standards for publication.

Learned Skills: Understand best practices to conduct and compile research.

Google Digital Garage offers a number of free online career courses, and its course on Fundamentals of Digital Marketing includes a certification. You’ll find 26 modules of self-paced video tutorials in this training program – all created by Google trainers – that will take you an estimated 40 hours to complete. By the end of the course, you’ll have a basic understanding of digital marketing principals to help boost your own business or amplify your career. The program is accredited by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe and The Open University.

Learned Skills: Understanding digital marketing skills.

Offered by Yale and available as one of the free certification courses on Coursera, Financial Markets provides an “overview of the ideas, methods and institutions that permit human society to manage risks and foster enterprise.” The course focuses on teaching students the skills they will need to be a financially savvy leader. You’ll earn a shareable certificate upon completion of the course.

Learned Skills: Understanding basics on financial markets and risk management.

Replacing the popular Machine Learning course that led to Coursera’s creation is a new course called Machine Learning Specialization. The new course – which, like the original course, is offered by Stanford University and is taught by adjunct professor and Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng – features new content designed to help students master AI fundamentals while developing practical machine learning skills you can put to use in real-world jobs.

Learned Skills: Understanding machine learning and AI.

Coursera also offers free certification in an online course about Race and Cultural Diversity in American Life and History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The course helps learners gain a deeper understanding of the many ways that race, ethnicity and cultural diversity have affected the United States and its institutions.

Learned Skills: Understanding race and cultural diversity in the US

Earn a free certificate from this Alison online course that teaches you how to Develop Your Emotional Intelligence. This critical leadership skill involves learning how to blend thinking with feeling to improve your decision-making and relationship-building skills. The free course helps boost your business communication skills and personal development, and it takes three to four hours to earn certification.

Learned Skills: Understanding emotional intelligence for improved decision-making, communication skills, and leadership.

This free certification course from HubSpot helps you become an effective content marketer. The course consists of 12 lessons, 54 videos and 11 quizzes, which HubSpot states takes approximately 7.5 hours to complete. Learners come out of the course with an understanding of how to create a content creation framework, which helps with consistent content production.

Learned Skills: Understanding effective content marketing within a content creation framework.

The Oxford Home Study Center offers a long list of free online courses that come with a certificate of completion. Among them is their free Customer Service Course, which has been designed by leading academics to help students with career advancement, according to OHSC. The course focuses on a modern business perspective of customer service and teaches students strategies to evaluate customer needs. Upon completion of the free five-unit course, you have the option to purchase a certificate of completion for a “nominal fee.”

Learned Skills: Understanding customer service basics and how to evaluate customer needs.

London Business School has a free online certification called Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behavior. The course includes guest videos from branding professionals. According to the Coursera website, 30% of those who took the course started a new career after completing the courses, and 35% got a tangible career benefit from the program.

Learned Skills: Understanding brand management.