The 5 Most Valuable Training Certifications for Any Career Path

According to Cleverism, application tracking systems (ATSs) reject three of every four applications. If this does not worry you, consider this:

• 90% of Fortune 500 companies filter job applicants using an ATS.
• 75% of recruiters admit to using an ATS.
• 94% of hiring professionals believe ATSs improve their hiring funnel.

In other words, there’s a high chance an applicant can get rejected outright, even before a human recruiter has laid eyes on their resume. It is for this reason you might want to take up one or more professional courses in Abu Dhabi.

ATS and Professional Certifications

Automated applicant tracking systems are software that process job applications and resumes according to criteria set by the employer or recruiter.

The software scans resumes and job applications for specific keywords to filter applicants. Such keywords can include the following:

• Educational attainment, e.g., Master of Science in Industrial Engineering, cum laude, A- or 3.7 or higher grade point average
• Skills, e.g., HubSpot, fluency in Spanish, HTML
• Length of time in a role, e.g., one year or longer
• Completeness of information, e.g., contact information, references, LinkedIn profile

The filters recruiters and employers use in their ATS selection process also often include professional and training certifications.

Certifications prove you possess the proficiencies you claim to have in your resume. Thus, a recruiter may program an ATS to look for an A+ or Network+ desktop analyst certification when processing applicants for entry-level information technology positions.

Thus, to increase your chances of securing an interview for a position,it’s crucial to ensure your job application or resume has the keywords the employer or recruiter is looking for. To accomplish this, you can enroll in training courses and earn relevant professional training certifications.

Of course, this begs the question: Which training certifications must you get?

Your industry knowledge should guide you. For instance, an executive secretarial training certificate should prove helpful if you wish to get hired as an executive secretary. That said, there are training certifications that are valuable regardless of your specific career path.

Training Certifications That Are Relevant Regardless of Your Career Path

According to Zety (as cited by Resume Coach), the following are the three most important soft skills and the three most critical hard skills to include in a resume:

• Soft Skills: Communication, Leadership, and Time Management
• Hard Skills: Microsoft Office, Project Management, and Microsoft Excel

Therefore, if you want a training certification that will positively influence your employability no matter your career path, look for training courses related to the above skills. The following are five such courses.

1. Business Communication

How will you let your colleagues know your project will boost your team’s productivity, and how will you tell your superior you want a more active role in a key initiative? The answer: communication.

In a professional setting, you must have excellent business communication skills to convey your message effectively, clearly, and without overstepping any boundaries or offending anyone. Efficient business communication makes for an efficient transfer of information, boosting productivity and ensuring organizations can work better and in concert to meet organizational goals.

In a business communication course, you will learn the principles governing information transmission in a business setting. You will also learn about non-verbal cues that can help or hinder your attempt to communicate.

Check out our business communication course.

2. Advanced MS Office

Microsoft Office is the world’s leading office suite. According to Statista, Office 365, essentially the cloud-based version of MS Office, has a 48.08% share of the global major office suite technologies market. It is, in fact, used by over one million companies in the world.

It is not an exaggeration to say that knowing how to use Microsoft’s productivity tools — especially MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, and MS Outlook — is an essential requirement for getting hired, especially for office jobs or any other position that requires documentation, organization, correspondence, and presentation.

Learn about our MS Office course.

3. Google Apps

While MS Office has the lion’s share of the market when it comes to office productivity tools, Google’s cloud-based productivity apps are not far behind. Google’s office suite (formerly G-Suite, now Workspace) has a 46.44% global market share.

Earning both a Google apps certification and an MS Office certification will ensure you have the productivity skills most companies worldwide need.

4. Leadership and Influence

Are you in a leadership position, or do you wish to be?

A training course on leadership and influence will help you land a leadership position. At the very least, it should open the door to leadership opportunities as it declares your leadership potential.

A leadership course will help you learn leadership frameworks, differentiate leadership styles, and create an action plan to implement what you’ve learned in the program. Read about our leadership and influence course.

5. Project Management Professional

A project management professional (PMP) certification is a credential that will impress recruiters and hiring managers, especially if you’re in IT and looking for a role in product ownership and project management. However, this certification translates exceedingly well across different fields.

A PMP certification tells potential employers and hiring managers that you have a systematic and sophisticated approach to project management. This is particularly useful since, whatever your industry, there will always be projects that need to be planned, managed, controlled, and executed.

Training Courses to Take for Career Enhancement

The job application process is no walk in the park. It involves many rejections (24 is the average, according to career coach Orville Pierson), and it can be frustrating to know that you can get rejected by software.

Your only chance to land an interview and get one step closer to getting hired is to have a resume with the right keywords. To this end, beef up your resume with training certifications, particularly those that pertain to highly in-demand soft and hard skills.

Regional Education Institute is a proven provider of high-quality training programs, including business communication, MS Office, leadership and influence, and project management courses.

Contact us to learn about our training certifications.