Top 10 career-boosting certificates

Is 2016 going to be the year you take that next step in your career?

Whether you have a high-school diploma or an advanced degree—or anything in between—earning a certificate is one of the best ways to boost your career.

A certificate can help you get promoted in your current job, qualify for a new job, or even prepare you to enter a whole new field. Best of all, you can earn a certificate in an in-demand specialty in as little as a few semesters of classes.

Sounds great, right? Now all you need to do is choose a certificate program and get started!  That’s easy if you’ve already identified the right area of specialization for you: you can head over to CareerOneStop’s Local Training Finder, enter a keyword for the type of training you’re looking for, and find a list of programs in your local area.

But what if you’re like many people—you know you want to get more training but you aren’t quite sure what would be best for your career?  You can do a little research to find out what kinds of certificates are in demand. Often, professional associations are good sources of this information. Also, you can search job listings to see what employers are looking for. And of course, networking is always a good idea when you’re thinking about your career.

You can also take advantage of research done by others.  I recently came across this list of popular specialty certificates compiled by Coursera, the online education platform. They analyzed LinkedIn profiles and collected the most-shared certificates of 2015.

Take a look at their list below—if you see anything that’s relevant to your field, visit Coursera.org to search for free or low-cost online courses, or Visit CareerOneStop’s Local Training Finder to search for local training programs in your area.

LinkedIn’s most-shared certificates of 2015 (as reported on Coursera.org)

1. Digital Marketing: strategic planning and analytics for digital marketing channels
2. Data Science: GitHub, RStudio, and data visualization techniques
3. Interaction Design: prototyping, user testing, and visual design
4. Business Strategy: strategy formulation, execution, and assessment
5. Strategic Business Analytics: marketing , supply chain, and human resources analytics
6. Data Science: SQL, NoSQL, data mining, and machine learning
7. Genomic Data Science: Python, R, Bioconductor, and Galaxy
8. Organizational Leadership: motivation, self-assessment, and conflict management
9. Social Media Marketing: campaign management, brand positioning, and content development
10. Strategic Management and Innovation: goal setting, value creation, and diversification