There’s no denying the job market is very competitive these days. No matter what industry you’re job hunting within, odds are your resume is just one of many on the desks of recruiters for desirable companies. If you want to succeed in this new environment, you’ll need to make your resume stand out to those recruiters.

Online courses could be just the ticket. The right online courses can make your resume look more impressive and show that you’re willing to do whatever it takes for a sweet new job. Not sure what courses to pursue? Let’s take a look at some great course categories to consider as you try to buff up your resume.

Programming Courses

If you want to get a job in information technology or a related industry, a programming course or two might be a great way to give your resume a boost. Programming courses in languages like C++, Python, and JavaScript teach you invaluable skills that allow you to better understand the digital tools we all now rely on.

Naturally, these courses are even more important if you do work in the IT industry. But they can be good ways to showcase your knowledge and dedication to a company regardless.

Marketing Courses

Marketing is arguably the lifeblood of any company that wants to make a profit. After all, if you don’t market properly, your target audience members won’t know what you sell or visit your store to make a purchase!

If you’re looking to acquire a job that deals with marketing even tangentially, marketing courses can teach you valuable skills. They’ll teach you how to identify target audience members, how to create customer personas, and how to get in the minds of leads or prospects better than ever.

This is an important skill not just for marketers but also for:

  • Business leaders and CEOs, who have to make big decisions about company evolution and development
  • Project or team leaders
  • Designers for projects or websites

Marketing courses will also help you master long-term marketing to help you retain customers over months and years. This is a universally helpful skill for traditional marketing, digital marketing, and video marketing. Ann McFerran, CEO of Glamnetic, notes that getting people in front of your marketing materials “is only half the battle”. The latter half is created within the customer’s experience of the marketing media.

Software Certifications

Certain software certification programs can also provide major benefits to your resume and its attractiveness. Software like Salesforce, a popular customer relationship management or CRM platform, is an excellent tool to learn to use properly.

You can slap a certification from software programs right on your resume and immediately mark yourself as someone who can jump into modern, software-heavy positions without a problem. Think of it from the perspective of a recruiter.

If you had to hire a person for a customer relationship specialist position, and one candidate had Salesforce certification on their resume and the other did not, which would you choose? The answer is easy!

Sales Certifications

If you want to mark yourself as a superior salesperson, a sales class or certification program could be right up your alley. Sales certifications teach you skills like:

  • How to identify customers who are ready to make a purchase
  • How to make customers satisfied that they bought something
  • How to sell honestly without coming across as pushy

These are excellent skills for people in retail, IT, finance, and any other industry where part of your job description involves getting people to spend money at your company!

Sales are supremely important; after all, it’s the lifeblood of any company you choose to work at. According to Will Watters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Western Rise, “A company’s revenue engine is a critical success factor.”

Part of mastering sales means providing customers with “a wide range of options available to them at the time of day that best suits their schedule and their unique needs”, according to Finn’s Co-founder James Shalhoub.

Human Resources Classes and Certifications

If you want to be on a hiring board, earn a human resources position, or put together the perfect team for your startup, a human resources class or certification program is ideal. Human resources classes teach a lot about social psychology and interpersonal dynamics in the workplace.

This is doubly important if you want to make sure that your team is always ready to go and isn’t plagued by inter-team drama or issues.

Remember, there’s no guarantee the team members you hire will be perfect for it forever. Joshua Chin, CEO of Chronos, notes that “just because a team appears to be a dream team on paper does not mean they’ll be successful in reality. People have too many personal variables to assume that relationships will flow smoothly.”

By taking a human resources class or earning a certification, you’ll be able to better:

  • Lead personnel and team members while minimizing friction or social issues
  • Hire and fire people gracefully and at the right time
  • Acquire HR positions, which are some of the most stable across industries
  • And more

Project Management Certifications

Then there are project management certifications: crucial titles that can mark you as an ideal future leader for teams across organizations. Project management certifications teach you how to:

  • Juggle the resources of complex projects
  • Manage personnel across teams
  • Help inspire personnel to meet material deadlines
  • And more

Some project management classes also include educational project management software. This alone is an invaluable skill that can help you get desirable jobs in the future.

Part of project management means mastering resource management for complex projects. That’s crucial because, as Cool Links Managing Member Alex Chavarry states, all managers must understand the “workloads, timelines, and what additional resources are needed” for important projects.

Furthermore, project management certifications can help you take on a leadership role – or even a founding role – for a company in the future. The right project management courses can help you learn how to avoid chasing trends and create something truly unique. That’s highly important in the competitive marketplace, as HIDE’s CMO, Amanda E. Johnson has noted in her company “We don’t chase trends.”

Becoming a founder could be your chance to make a mark on the business world. Max Schwartzapfel, the CMO at Fighting For You, describes this eloquently, calling founders, “anyone who sees a problem, recognizes his or her potential to do something about it, and takes the necessary steps to create a solution.”

Language Classes

Lastly, you can’t go wrong with learning languages online. Now more than ever, multilingual employees are more valuable to companies given the global nature of modern consumer bases. If you can speak more than just English, you are automatically a more valuable hire than a competing candidate who can only speak a single language.

Being multilingual allows you to:

  • Speak to a wider variety of customers, which can help you if you are in retail, customer service, or anything else
  • Understand the perspectives of people from other countries more easily
  • Navigate global relationships with vendors or customers more easily
  • And more

Plus, having a multilingual skillset just shows you’re intelligent and driven in a way that many other potential candidates may not be. The top languages to learn include Spanish, Chinese, German, and French.

Wrap Up

As you can see, there are lots of top-tier courses you can take to bolster your resume and make it stand out from the competition. The right courses can easily propel you to the number one candidate slot for a given job, show that you’re willing to learn extra skills for a title, and more. Don’t forget that each of these courses will teach you skills you can use throughout your career, too. An investment in your education is one that pays dividends forever!