Google Opens Enrollment For Career Certification Courses

Google is launching a number of initiatives aimed at helping job seekers, including opening enrollment for its three career certification courses.

The three paid courses, first announced last August, are available on Coursera and allow people to earn the equivalent of a four-year degree in as little as six months.

To start, Google is offering programs in the fields of Data Analytics, Project Management, and User Experience (UX) Design.

Along with opening enrollment for these courses, Google is announcing new ways for certificate holders to get hired, and an improvement to the job hunting experience in Google Search.

Here’s more about everything Google announced today.

Google Career Certificates

Starting now, enrollment is open for Google Career Certificates in the following fields:

• Data Analyst ($66k median annual wage): Learn how to use tools and platforms to process, analyze, visualize, and gain insights from data.
• Project Manager ($93k median annual wage): Learn the foundations of traditional project management and gain insight into agile project management.
• UX Designer ($75k median annual wage): Learn the foundations of UX design and research, building low-fidelity designs and wireframes, creating high-fidelity prototypes, and testing.

Courses can be taken for a fee of $49 per month, which means the total price depends on how quickly one finishes each course.

Kent Walker, Google’s SVP of Global Affairs, has gone on record saying the company will treat these certificates the same as a four-year degree in a related field.

Google’s career certificates are available to all U.S. citizens regardless of previous job experience or education level.

More Ways to Get Hired

Google is committed to helping certificate holders get hired.

Over 130 employers have joined Google’s employer consortium and are said to be eager to hire people who earn these certificates.

Upon completion of a Google Career Certificate course, graduates can share their resumes directly with employers like Anthem, Verizon, Bayer, Deloitte, SAP, Better.com, Accenture, Walmart, Infosys, and others.

Google is looking to hire people who complete its courses as well. In fact, Google believes so strongly in these courses that it’s using them to upskill and reskill current employees.

A Google apprenticeship program is being opened to help certificate holders gain work experience. The company says it will hire hundreds of apprentices over the coming years.

Improvements to Job Search

An improvement to Google’s job search results is aimed at helping people of any education level find work.

Now when people search for “no degree jobs” in the US, they will see a new job carousel highlighting relevant opportunities in their area.

Searchers can filter results by education and experience requirements. New labels will help people identify positions that do not mention degrees in their requirements.

Google notes that queries like “great jobs without a degree” spiked 850% in the US over the past year.

Google wants to make education and experience requirements clearer on job postings on all the major sites people go to look for work. The company says it’s working directly with Glassdoor, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Snagajob and CareerBuilder to accomplish this goal.

Source: Google