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With the inevitable summer slowdown on its way, now could be the perfect time to reevaluate where your skills lie and where you can take your career. One of the easiest ways to boost your career prospects is to increase your repertoire of skills. On completion, it takes nothing more than a quick add to your CV and your LinkedIn profile and you can be instantly more appealing to potential employers. Not only does the completion of online courses enhance your knowledge, it demonstrates that you have the drive, intelligence and passion for your career to work hard in your spare time to develop as a professional.
And the beauty of these courses is that they don’t require a dramatic shift in workload to complete. Just by committing a few hours a week, you could be well on your way to learning something new. Now every course on this list might not be entirely applicable, but there is something for everyone and with most of them being free of charge, there is no excuse not to start boosting your career prospects right now!
Without further ado, here are our top online courses you can take to advance your career…
The Complete Job, Interview, Resume/LinkedIn & Networking Guide, Udemy
The comprehensive course, with over 7000 students enrolled, is the end-to-end guide you need to bolstering your CV and getting the dream job. Taught by an award-winning MBA professor, this course is designed for all audiences and guarantees to help you land an awesome new job or your money back!
Duration: 12 hours
Introduction to Public Speaking, edX
Even if speaking in front of an audience isn’t a regular part of your day-to-day, being a confident speaker will make you an asset to any tea. In this course, you’ll learn to deliver persuasive presentations, complex arguments and more in this comprehensive guide to public speaking.
Duration: 30 hours
Becoming a Succesful Leader, edX
For most of us, we have a desire to lead something. Whether that’s a team of people or just a project, leadership skills are admired by hiring managers. This course looks at successful 21st-century leaders and picks apart what makes them so effective, giving you strategies to try out along the way.
Duration: 5 hours
High Impact Business Writing, Coursera
Being able to effectively communicate on paper is just as important as in person. Business writing skills are critical to a number of careers. Learn how to properly articulate your thoughts in this short course which teaches how to write effective press releases, emails, business reports and more.
Duration: 8 hours
Introduction to Project Management Principles & Practices, Coursera
Succesful project management requires a very important set of skills. Understanding how to set objectives, manage timings and understand priorities is critical to good project management. This course is applicable to anyone and the skills can be applied to any industry where you need to project manage.
Duration: 12 hours
Excel Essentials, The Complete Series, Udemy
Become a member of the Excel elite with the comprehensive guide. Learn how to analyse a set of data, manage projects and even program applications within Excel. It really is an in-demand skill set so whilst this may be one of the longer courses, it will be worth the investment of time!
Duration: 23 hours
How to Finally Start your Side Project, Muse
Now even if you don’t have that eureka idea just yet, the principles taught in this short online course will give you the discipline and drive to take that time to try something new. This course will walk you through the steps required to turn an idea into a reality, developing productivity and management skills along the way.
Duration: 5 hours
HTML & CSS, Codeacademy
The demand in the marketplace for web development skills is on the rise. Even if you don’t think you’ll pursue a career as a developer, the course will give you an insight and understanding into how the web works. You can master the basics of web development in under 8 hours with one of the webs most popular, and free online courses.
Duration: 7 hours
Adobe Photoshop for Beginners, Adobe KnowHow
For the marketers out there, this is undoubtedly one of the most important and in-demand skills. This free course from the product creators will teach you the fundamentals in an easy to follow guide.
Duration: 14 hours
Chinese Language: Learn Basic Mandarin, edX
Whilst you’re not going to become fluent in 24 hours, you’ll certainly get a grasp of the basics and be able to understand the basics. Now you may be wondering why this has been included, simply put, an understanding of mandarin is a highly attractive skill, particularly in our ever more globalized business world.
Duration: 24 hours