So, you’ve decided to take some online courses, either as a way to pass your spare time or because you feel that there will be some benefit to your career of you doing so. Maybe you have taken online courses to improve your skills, learn new skills that you have been putting into practice into work, or to develop a side hustle. But if you are now thinking about changing your career or going for a new employment position, how do you list online courses on your resume to help it stand out?
Choose Where to Place Them
First of all, if you have completed a short course from Washington University training and want to include it on your resume, it’s important to determine where you should place it. Today, online courses are becoming more and more popular and lots of hiring professionals look out for them as evidence that you are dedicated to your career and good at what you do. If you have taken courses that have helped you develop skills that you can use on the job, then make sure that they are included in a relevant section, such as under ‘Qualifications’ or ‘Professional Training’.
Make Sure It’s Relevant
When it comes to including online and short courses on your resume, make sure that you keep it relevant to the work that you are looking to do. While you might have a lot of courses under your belt, chances are that hiring managers are not interested in hearing all about them, especially if they haven’t actually helped you develop skills that are going to be relevant to the job that you are applying for. It’s worth spending some time to pick and choose from the courses you’ve done to select the ones that are relevant to your application that hiring managers may be interested in hearing more about.
Demonstrate How the Course Helped
It’s one thing to put a short course or online course on your resume to show that you have completed it, and another to demonstrate the skills that it helped you learn and how you have put them into practice in your working life since. If you want to include your short and online course qualifications on your resume, then it’s worth going into more detail about them, how they have improved your skills in the workplace, and what they have helped you achieve so far.
Prepare to Answer Questions
If you have listed short courses or online courses on your resume and get invited to an interview, then it’s worth preparing to be asked further questions about them. Interviewers are likely to ask open-ended questions about your experience to find out more about how the course helped you in your career, what you learned from it and what the experience was like, to see if it has benefitted you enough to prepare you with the skills you need for the job they are hiring for.
Online courses and short courses are booming in popularity today. If you are interested in taking some to help your future career, then it’s worth knowing how to include them in your resume in a way that works.
