Top 5+ Online Certifications That Are Actually Worth It

In this article, I'm going to be going over some of the top online certifications that are actually worth it. Online certifications have blown up, especially in the last few years. You're seeing articles on this topic getting millions of views in a matter of a few months. But let's not get ahead of ourselves; not all certifications are rainbows and butterflies. Some of them are great, and others aren't really going to make that much of a difference in your professional life. In this article, I'm going to go over which ones are actually worth it based on extensive research and data collected online.

5. Google Project Management Professional Certificate

First on the list is the Google Project Management certificate. This is a Google career certification, and these certificates are so well-regarded that even the Bureau of Labor Statistics is starting to promote them. This is an entry-level beginner certificate, so you don't have to have a lot of experience to get value out of this. The courses are 100% online, the schedule is extremely flexible, and on top of that, it takes around six months to complete, although most people say they complete them in more like one or two months.

This certificate training consists of over five different courses, all of them rated 4.8 stars or above. The curriculum includes: - Foundations of Project Management - Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project - Project Planning - Project Execution - Agile Project Management - Applying Project Management in the Real World (Capstone)

Project management is a great career to go into and a great skill for you to know in general. Taking this certification can help you either make a lateral career change or get your foot in the door.

4. IBM Data Science Professional Certificate

The next one is the IBM Data Science certification. For this one, there are more than 10+ different highly qualified instructors that are going to help to teach you data science, and they claim that 30% of people who finish this certification end up starting a new career path in data science.

They say that it takes about 11 months to complete; however, again, most people are able to complete these faster. It is a beginner-level certificate, so you don't need to have much experience in order to start. A lot of these certificates were created by companies like IBM and Google because they were extremely frustrated with the lack of knowledge of people who are graduating from colleges. Colleges were teaching people outdated information that they did not need to know in the workplace. However, these certifications are typically exactly what you need to know and teach the skills that are actually valuable and sought after by employers right now.

3. Deeplearning.ai TensorFlow Developer Professional Certificate

The first two certifications mentioned were beginner-level, but you also have intermediate and advanced certifications that are offered. One example of an intermediate certification is the deeplearning.ai TensorFlow Developer Professional Certificate.

TensorFlow is a popular open-source machine learning framework, and it can be used to train neural networks. As you can imagine, this would be something very valuable to know if you get into augmented or virtual reality. According to them, about 32% of people who completed this certification ended up switching to a new career path, which you would assume has something to do with AI and TensorFlow. They say that it takes about four months to complete with about five hours per week, but again, probably less than that.

2. Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate

The next one on the list is the Google Data Analytics certification. This is another beginner-level certification. It takes approximately six months to complete with 10 hours of work per week, but again, probably more like two to three months. There is a massive demand for people who have skills with data analytics, especially here in the United States. There are about 337,000 job openings, and you get paid around $67,000 a year, and that's for an entry-level salary. They also claim that 75% of people who complete this certification report over a six-month period that it did help them with their career.

1. Google IT Support Professional Certificate

The number one certification is the one most likely to help you get an entry-level job, even if you don't have a college degree. This is not to say by any means that these certifications are a replacement for a college degree; that would be like comparing apples to oranges. It just wouldn't make any sense at all. For one, a college degree typically takes four to five years, whereas these certifications claim that they take six months, but in reality, they usually take just a few. A better comparison would be four years' worth of certifications versus a college degree, but even in that case, it would still be an apples-to-oranges comparison.

With that being said, these certifications are getting more and more popular. They're teaching people skills, they're helping people stay up to date, and companies really like to see people who take initiative and learn on their own.

The Google IT Support Professional Certificate is one that has received numerous positive reviews. Whether you don't have experience in IT and you're just trying to get into it, or maybe you're just trying to see if you're interested in it in the first place, or you do have a degree but you want to make your resume look even better, or you're currently working in IT and you want to show your employer that you are actively learning and keeping up to date on your skills—these types of certifications can help you with all of those different situations.