Do Employers Care About Udemy Certificates?

Rowan Larry
14 min readSep 17, 2021

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https://bit.ly/3nCxM0N

In recent years, many folks have began taking gain of on-line studying systems that provide guides and certifications for a infinite wide variety of topics to expand their understanding and ability set. After investing time and cash into on-line courses, such as these presented via Udemy platform, you may be questioning if the certificates indicating completion of the direction is well worth to include on a resume. Deciding what to encompass or what no longer to encompass on a resume is necessary in landing your desired job.

So, do employers are concerned about Udemy certification? The short answer is no; they do care because all those certification are not accredited. Employers do care, however, about any relevant experience or projects you’ve completed as a result of taking a Udemy course.

Read on to learn about how you can spin the completion of a Udemy course as a worthwhile achievement on a resume. We will also cover more details about what kind of qualifications/certifications employers look for on a resume, as well as more information about the Udemy platform itself.

What is a Udemy Certification?

A Udemy Certificate of Completion is a certificate you receive for completing all of the curriculum items in a course on Udemy. This certificate demonstrates you took the time to successfully complete a course on a given subject and can be shared with friends, coworkers, and potential employers. These certificates can be saved as a .jpg or .pdf file, so it can easily be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that these certificates cannot be used for formal accreditation, as Udemy is not an accredited institution. This is why it is not enough to simply list out the fact that you received a Udemy certification on your resume.

There are many benefits of receiving a Udemy certificate of completion, including:

  • It proves that you have enough passion and interest in a subject to study it in your free time.
  • It proves you are self-motivated and self-driven to learn and acquire new skills.
  • During the completion of a course, you might complete projects that you can include in your portfolio.
  • It demonstrates that you are able to set a goal and achieve it.
  • By completing a Udemy course, you will (hopefully) have acquired new knowledge and skills that you can use to advance your career.

Can Udemy Courses Get You a Job?

While Udemy courses cannot directly help you get a job, they can help you acquire the skills and knowledge you need for certain jobs. For example, a tech company won’t hire you as a software developer because you completed a course on Udemy. However, they might hire you because you are proficient in a number of different programming languages — all of which you might have learned on Udemy.

If your goal is to land a good job, then you can use Udemy to try and help make this happen in one of the following two ways:

1. Learn a skill that interests you by completing a Udemy course for it. Next, look for and apply to companies that require and are looking for people with that particular skill. If you have an interest in a particular skill (s), learn it. Then look for the companies who need people with those skills and apply.

2. Another option would be to decide exactly which company you want to work for, research the job descriptions for any of their available positions, and learn the skills they require on Udemy.

For example, if you want to transition into a programming job, you can learn a certain programming language that interests you and then apply for jobs that list it as a required skill. Alternatively, you can find exactly which company you would want to work as a programmer for, see which languages and frameworks that job requires you to know, and then learn these on Udemy before applying.

The other potential way Udemy can help you get a new job is if you include any relevant Udemy courses you’ve completed on your resume. While a potential employer won’t necessarily decide to hire you based on the fact that you completed a Udemy course or not, this will show the employer that you are willing to go the extra mile and are self-motivated and self-driven to learn, which are extremely desirable characteristics of employees that potential employers look for.

Is Udemy Worth Your Time?

Udemy is one of the best online platforms offering up to date, high-quality courses that help viewers learn skills from home. While certificates of completion in and of themselves do not guarantee you anything in terms of employment opportunities, expanding your knowledge and growing your skill-set by completing courses on Udemy is one of the best investments you can make in furthering your personal education and career goals.

Udemy offers high-quality, updated courses that can teach you skills related to a number of different industries, including but not limited to:

  • Development
  • Business
  • IT & Software
  • Office Productivity
  • Personal Development
  • Design
  • Marketing
  • Health & Fitness
  • Music

Depending on what kind of job you are looking for, it can almost be guaranteed that you can find a course on Udemy that teaches certain skills that job requires. By investing time and energy in completing a course on Udemy, you not only will take that time to learn a new skill that you can offer as a service to others at any time, but you will also gain more confidence going into interviews with potential employers, knowing that you have potentially mastered a skill they will require you to be proficient at.

Overall, there are countless benefits to completing a course on Udemy. Even if an employer does not see any direct value in the certificate of completion itself, completing a course on Udemy will give you the following key benefits:

  • You will learn a new valuable skill that you can apply to your personal life or career.
  • You will be able to expand your portfolio with examples of more work or build a portfolio from scratch using your newfound skill.
  • You will feel self-satisfaction knowing that you put in the work and ended up finishing what you set out to accomplish.

Tips for Taking Courses on Udemy

One of the potential downfalls of taking courses on Udemy is that virtually anyone can take a course and sell it on Udemy for a profit. The question then becomes: how can you ensure that you are taking a high-quality course that will actually help you learn a new skill, rather than a fluff course full of junk?

This is where the power of the internet and free-market capitalism kick into play. By default, the courses that offer the best learning experience and are packed with the most valuable content become the most popular courses for that particular subject. These courses will automatically have the highest ratings and the most reviews, offering genuine feedback about what can be expected from the course.

While looking at a courses’ ratings and reviews will give you a good idea about whether or not it is worth taking, keep in mind that you should not take a course based strictly on this. Every single course instructor has a different teaching style, and it is essential that you select a course with an instructor whose teaching style resonates with you. Every single Udemy course comes with a 30-day full-refund money-back guarantee, so you will be able to get a full refund if you determine after the first few lessons that a certain course isn’t right for you.

When going through a course on Udemy, treat it just like you would treat a real-life course. Take notes, complete all assignments and projects, and block out all distractions when going through lessons. Since these are online courses, it is effortless for you to cheat your way through it. At the end of the day, if you have to cheat to complete a course on Udemy, you will only be cheating yourself.

How to Not Waste Time on Udemy

Believe it or not, taking online courses on a platform like Udemy can easily turn into a waste of your most precious resource: time. Considering the fact that there are over 55,000 courses on Udemy, one can easily end up spending all of their time going through courses out of sheer boredom.

While completing online courses is a great way to learn certain skills, one should never complete these courses just for the sake of completing them. Before deciding to take any online course, you should ask yourself the following questions:

  • Why do I want to take this course?
  • What can I do with the information gained from taking this course?
  • How does taking this course help me in achieving my short-term and long-term goals?
  • Is taking this course the best thing that I can do with my free time at this point in time?

By asking yourself these kinds of probing questions, you’ll be able to determine if you are taking a course just to pass the time, or if it truly is a worthy investment. By reading reviews from others about what their biggest takeaways from the course were, you’ll be able to determine if a certain course will help you achieve the goals that you’ve set for yourself.

Qualifications and Certifications Employers Look for

While employers do not directly value certificates of completion of Udemy courses, there are certain qualifications and certifications that they look for on resumes to see if you are a good fit. Remember that a majority of employers will only spend about 10 seconds reading your resume. In many cases, they (or computer software) are simply scanning to see if do or do not have certain qualifications or certifications that that particular job requires.

College Degree

While the value and prestige of a college degree have been steadily declining over the years, many employers still require applicants to have completed either an associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree from an accredited university in a subject related to the job itself.

As the value of a college degree continues to diminish, one can imagine that eventually, most employers will not require applicants to have university degrees. Online learning platforms such as Udemy offer a fast, efficient, and affordable learning experience that in some instances is even better than actual in-person lectures.

Relevant Skills

What kind of skills do you have to offer the company that you are applying to? This is one of the most important questions employers will be asking, and you need to be able to demonstrate that you are qualified by having these kinds of skills listed on your resume.

If you completed a Udemy course for a particular skill and can now consider yourself proficient in that skill, this is the area of the resume where this is worth mentioning. Now, for some of the most essential skills to that particular job, it would be best not to mention that you learned them on Udemy. For the most important skills in a job, employers prefer to see you attained these through experience or from an accredited institution.

Here are examples of some of the most important and relevant skills in the workplace today that you should possess. Notice that there are courses on Udemy available for you to master every single one of these skills.

  • Microsoft Office
  • UX Design
  • HTML5
  • jQuery
  • MongoDB
  • iOS
  • UNIX
  • Android
  • Data Analytics
  • Mobile App Development
  • Cloud Computing
  • PaaS
  • Social Media
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
  • Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)

By having these kinds of skills, you will be far more valuable to a potential employer, and they will be more likely to hire you. Of course, different jobs have different skill requirements. The ones listed above are simply currently the most in-demand, and thus jobs involving these kinds of technologies will generally be the highest paying. Some jobs, on the other hand, only require basic skills such as reading, writing, and strong communication skills.

Relevant Certifications

In addition to requiring certain specific skills most often used on the job, some employers require applicants to have completed and received certain certifications from an accredited institution. Udemy, as we already mentioned, does not offer these kinds of certifications. Therefore, whether or not you’ve already invested in a Udemy course, it might be worth it to invest a bit more into receiving one of these official certifications.

Relevant certifications could be technical, vocational, or academic. These could also include any professional licenses, courses, or certificates sponsored by prestigious organizations. Certificates that you receive for participating in and completing free online courses such as Udemy’s course completion certificates should not be included in this section of your resume but should be added in a cover letter or another section to help demonstrate your enthusiasm and self-motivation for learning.

Some of the most valuable and in-demand certifications are:

  • Certification in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
  • Certified Registered Nurse (RN, RNC)
  • Commercial Driver’s License (CDL)
  • Basic Life Support (BLS)
  • Help Desk/Desktop Analyst Certifications (A+, Network+)
  • Human Resources Certifications (PHR, SPHR, SHRM)
  • Sales Certifications (Challenger Sales, Spin Selling, Sandler Training)
  • Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
  • Google Certifications (Publisher, Analytics, AdWords, etc.)
  • Project Management Certifications (PMP)
  • Network Certifications (CCNA, CCNP, CCIE)

Experience

Experience is arguably the most important qualification that employers look for in a potential employee. One reason why a Udemy completion certificate is not very valuable in the eyes of potential employers is that while it does demonstrate that you are able to sit down and learn information, it does not prove that you can get actual real-life projects done.

Work experience is far more important than education to employers because work experience indicates that you are capable of doing the work that needs to be done, while education proves that you simply know how to memorize information from a textbook.

For those just getting started in the workplace, it is difficult to “get experience,” since every job requires a certain amount of experience before they hire someone. This is where Udemy courses can help; by learning a skill on Udemy and offering this skill as a service to others as a freelancer, you can manually build experience.

Turning your knowledge gained from Udemy or other learning platforms into a freelancing business is not an easy task. For the ambitious amongst us, however, it provides a foolproof way of getting “workplace experience” and becoming qualified for higher-paying jobs in the field we wish to work in.

Resume Writing Tips: Including Qualifications and Certifications

The trick when including your qualifications and certifications on your resume is to include the most relevant information that will be valuable to a potential employer. Regarding any qualifications or certifications that you add to your resume, think about whether or not they indicate that you know what you are doing and can get the job done.

If you’ve completed a course on Udemy and want to include that fact in your resume, these would not be the sections in which to include it. The best place to include something like that would be in your cover letter, or under a general skills or accomplishments section.

Format for Qualifications Section

Also known as a qualifications summary, professional profile, or summary of qualifications, this section of the resume is where potential employers will pay the most attention. The goal with this section is to showcase your strengths right at the beginning of the resume in a short, clear section in order to capture the reader’s interest.

Here’s the process you’ll want to follow when crafting the qualifications section of your resume:

Share Your Expertise

This would be the place to discuss your years of experience in this field or similar positions. You should include a general overview of what your responsibilities were in these jobs as well. If you are a student or entry-level candidate, this would be the place to list out your highest degree and college major/minor, as well as any relevant big projects you’ve completed. If you’ve taken any other special courses or training, include that here too.

Reveal Creativity/Leadership Attributes

explain a time when you introduced, implemented, or created a new program or found a solution to a problem that has helped an association or company in some way.

Demonstrate Efficiency

Share a time when you managed to increase productivity and revenue for a company by any means, including but not limited to: personal effort, using resources well, saving time/energy, altering practices in a better way, etc.

Acknowledgments

Discuss if you’ve ever received any awards or honors for your work or have been commended in publications for anything related to the job you’re applying to.

Management

If you’ve ever held any leadership positions in the past, whether it be managing people, a project, or an assignment, describe that here.

Interpersonal Skills

Explain something regarding your social skills and strength in communication. You can discuss relationships with coworkers, staff, customers, suppliers, or clients. Also, this would be the place to describe any experience you’ve had with giving presentations or public speaking.

Format for Certifications Section

When writing the certifications section of your resume, here are some things to keep in mind:

  • Write your certifications in reverse chronological order. Start with the ones you most recently achieved or are currently in progress and then move down the list.
  • Don’t include any certifications or licenses that do not relate directly to the job you are applying for. If you have something, such as a Udemy certificate, that you think could help your application but do not directly relate to the job.
  • Write out acronyms in full at least once so that hiring managers who don’t specialize in your area can understand what they mean.

Here is a recommended way of formatting your certifications section on your resume:

1. Name of Certification/License/Membership

2. Name of Certifying body

3. Dates obtained and expiration (if applicable)

4. Location (if State appropriate)

ATS — Applicant Tracking Software

Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) is often used by potential employers as a way to discard specific resumes without needing to actually look at them. This software is designed to automatically discard resumes that do not include certain keywords that have been programmed for a particular position.

To make sure your resume passes the “ATS” scan, be sure to include plenty of keywords taken directly from the job description. The qualifications and certifications sections mentioned above are great places to include these keywords.

Including Udemy Course Completion in your Resume

Now that you have a general idea of what employers are looking for in your resume and the extent to which they value a Udemy Course Completion Certificate, let’s explore some examples of how you can incorporate this into your resume.

If taking a course on Udemy is what inspired you to seek employment in a certain field or get started working on personal projects, then it’s an entirely valid thing to mention on a resume. When mentioning the Udemy course you completed on your resume, make sure it is done in such a way so as to emphasize what the course allowed you to accomplish, rather than just what you learned from the course.

Remember that employers don’t care about how much information or knowledge you have. They mainly care about how you can take the information and knowledge you have and use it to create value for the company; whether it be through production, design, writing, sales, etc.

Mentioning Udemy Certificate Example

A professional summary on your resume is a short blurb below your header and contact information that gives an overview of your background, experience, and skills you possess. Since this summary is written in sentence format, it is more casual and is the best place to mention the fact that you took a Udemy course. It could look something like this:

“Analytical and creative Web Developer with eight years of experience in full-stack development. I am proficient with Java and JavaScript, as well as using frameworks and libraries including but not limited to node.js, angularJS, and Bootstrap. After recently completing a Udemy course on PHP and Wordpress, I have expanded my skill-set to include building full WordPress themes from scratch. I am known for my ability to get the job done as efficiently as possible and am always coming up with creative solutions to coding problems.”

You can also mention this in a similar manner in your cover letter that you write to an employer you submitted your resume to. To learn more about ptofessional resume writing . You can get in touch with https://bit.ly/3nCxM0N

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