As employers relax their requirements for workers with four-year degrees and opt for highly skilled candidates instead, one key factor has been strongly instrumental to the success of this strategic move: online courses and professional certificates.
In Coursera’s latest report, they explained: “In early 2024, more than half of job listings in the U.S. omitted formal education requirements, and in late November, the U.S. Department of Labor published a skills-first hiring guide.” (According to the DOL, their goal is to promote “skills-based hiring as a quality recruitment practice,” and to provide employers with the resources and information for this to be effective, regardless of where or how one obtained those skills.) “As demand for alternative credentials rose, there were over 3.3 million enrollments in entry-level professional certificates this year,” the report continues.
Top 5 Free Coursera Professional Certificates
Based on their analysis of their student base over the year 2024, these courses emerged as the most popular entry-level professional certificates of the year, and it might be worth your enrolment in 2025 as you prepare to work towards achieving your career goals:
- IBM Product Manager (IBM) via Coursera
- Microsoft Project Management (Microsoft) via Coursera
- Unilever Supply Chain Data Analyst (Unilever) via Coursera
- Unilever Digital Marketing Analyst (Unilever) via Coursera
- Microsoft UX Design (Microsoft) via Coursera
Here’s what this information tells us about job trends for 2025:
First, professionals are catching on to the idea that product and project management, digital marketing, data analysis, and UX design are some of the most in-demand future skills. Multiple sources, such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, have already demonstrated this, listing data science roles alone (for example) as experiencing a spike in demand of up to 36% for the next 10 years.
So, if you’re currently re-evaluating your career options and want to move into a job that offers more stability and longevity, these Coursera courses might help.
Another important takeaway is that alternative credentials are a vital part of career planning. As you stand at the brink of the new year and are contemplating your career goals and New Year’s resolutions for 2025, you should consider that you now have several options for progressing your career and achieving your vision—most of which are relatively inexpensive and affordable, and many are totally free.
An excellent exercise for you to undertake at this time of the year would be to write down where you want to be in your career a year from now and then make a list of all the skills you’d need to develop (and proficiency level) by the time the year is complete. Once you’ve done this, identify the online courses and professional certificates to help you develop these skills and fill your knowledge gaps. They could be the free Coursera career certificates listed above, such as the Microsoft Project Management Professional Certificate, or you might choose another course from Coursera or from any other online learning platform such as Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Codeacademy, edX, MIT OpenCourseWare, and other places.
So whether you enroll in a Coursera professional certificate or complete a Google Cloud Skills Boost course in 2025, you’ll be able to increase your pay, land more business and career opportunities, be more confident in your skills at work, and be more in control of your career in a way that is affordable and feels right for you, your learning preference, and your busy lifestyle this year.
