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If you asked me the one thing I’m most grateful for, I’d say “my computer.”
I dropped out of college nearly a decade ago, and it’s because of my computer I’ve succeeded in landing well-paying job after well-paying job in my field of choice (content/digital marketing) for the last 10 years.
Of course, doing so involved using my computer in a variety of ways, like learning how to do stuff, proving I knew how to do stuff, connecting with important people in my industry and marketing and branding myself as a trusted expert in my field.
Learning how to do stuff, aka gaining important, in-demand skills, is step one, and it’s the step I’m focusing on this article, in which I detail the best online courses to take to get a job in 2021.
There are A LOT of articles on this topic, but 99% of them are awful, affiliate posts that list the same online learning sites and the same courses, in the same categories that teach the same things.
This post is different because it features a lot of hidden gems, aka underground, “indie” courses, which I’ve personally taken, that are NOT listed on the top online learning sites.
You’ll find a wide-variety of courses on a wide-variety of skills that don’t pigeonhole you to a certain profession. (Because generalists are so 2021, and specialists are so last year.)
Some courses are free. Others are paid. All are valuable, and none of my recommendations are affiliate links. So keep reading for THE best, MOST honest and valuable review of the best online courses to take to land a job today.
Best online courses to take
Certifications that will give you quick “proof” to land work fast
Many of you are probably reading this because you want to make money and fast. I get it. I was there, and that’s exactly how I approached my learning process, too.
You could do this by taking popular, comprehensive industry certifications (although I roll my eyes at them, they can be useful when you’re just starting out because it’s at least some sort of proof you can do a job or complete a project). These can be very steep in price, so you might have to forego the certification for a more cost-effective, piecemeal strategy. The upside of going this route is that you’ll probably learn more… in my opinion anyway.
Google Analytics Academy Certification
Link: Google Analytics Academy
Price: Free
Creator: Google
Course Type: Self-paced, Certification
Skill level: Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced
Analytics Academy helps you learn about Google’s measurement tools so that you can grow your business through intelligent data collection and analysis. Provided by Google, the site offers six courses:
- Google Analytics for Beginners
- Advanced Google Analytics
- Google Analytics for Power Users
- Getting Started with Google Analytics 360
- Introduction to Data Studio
- Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
After taking the first two courses, you can take the free Google Analytics certification course, which is great for new grads or college students trying to gain an in-demand skill fast.
HubSpot Courses and Certifications
Link: HubSpot Academy
Price: Free
Creator: Varies
Course Type: Self-paced, Certification
Skill level: Beginners to Advanced
HubSpot is the industry leader in marketing automation software. In fact, they created the term “inbound marketing.”
The company has never been shy about sharing their knowledge with the rest of the world so it’s no surprise they created HubSpot Academy—an online learning center for people to learn about the latest marketing best practices and get “certified” upon completion.
You’ll notice a lot of marketing agencies require you to be “HubSpot certified.” What’s nice for newbies is you can showcase the certification badge on your LinkedIn once you pass the exam.
You don’t have to be a HubSpot customer to utilize these resources, and you don’t have to take the courses if all you’re after is a certification. (Although, I highly recommend taking the courses before attempting the certification exam, as many experienced marketers, who didn’t take them, did not pass.)
Because it’s completely free, it doesn’t hurt to sign up, and check out the courses yourself. Also, here’s a review of the various certifications.
Google Skillshop
Link: Google courses and certifications
Price: Free
Creator: Google
Course Type: Self-paced, Certification
Skill level: Beginners to Advanced
Another skill to consider adding to your repertoire, if you want to make money fast, is the Google Ads certification along with the other courses you can take on popular Google products via Skillshop.
Upwork clients will usually care about these certifications too, so it’s helpful when you’re a newbie.
Salesforce Trailhead
Link: Trailhead
Price: Free
Creator: Salesforce
Course Type: Self-paced, Certification
Skill level: Beginners to Advanced
By 2024, there will be 4.2 million jobs in the Salesforce ecosystem, and Salesforce is already a top 100 in-demand skill, according to Upwork, which means now is the time to learn it.
The good news is you can learn it for free with Salesforce’s Trailhead.
Trailhead is a fun way to learn Salesforce. The online, self-paced learning platform allows anyone to learn anything around Salesforce for free. Learning topics are organized into modules, which are broken up into units.
To finish a unit, you earn points by completing a quiz or a challenge.
A quiz checks your knowledge with multiple-choice questions, while a challenge tests your skills by getting your hands dirty in a Salesforce org. Once you’ve finished all of the units in a module, you’ll get a shiny new badge for your profile.
To get started, I recommend visiting the career path page to see what courses are best for you to take first, based on your interests and current skills.
Dale Carnegie Course
Link: Dale Carnegie
Price: $1,995
Creator: Varies
Course Type: Self-paced, Certification
Skill level: Beginners to Advanced
Warren Buffett doesn’t have his college diplomas hanging on the wall in his office, but he does have his Dale Carnegie certification of completion featured on it.
The Dale Carnegie course gives you the human relations skills to thrive in any setting. Discover how to form closer, more rewarding relationships built on trust and respect. Increasing your confidence and competence in interacting with others will gain the influence you need to reach new heights in your personal and professional life.
Plus, this is an impressive certification to tout, since Dale Carnegie is so well-known and respected in the professional world.
If you can’t afford the expensive price tag, read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Shopify Partner Certifications
Link: Shopify Partner Academy
Price: Free
Creator: Varies
Course Type: Self-paced, Certification
Skill level: Beginners to Advanced
Estimated Time: 30 minutes per course
Shopify Partner Academy is an exclusive collection of courses, study guides, and exams developed by Shopify to help freelancers, agencies, and developers build critical commerce skills, test their knowledge, and get started on the right foot working with Shopify. This course is good for wannabe freelance website designers and developers, who want to land Shopify work.
Courses that will teach you in-demand skills fast
Interneting is Hard: Learn HTML & CSS
Price: Free
Creator: Oliver James
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginners
I completed this free course on HTML and CSS for beginners and was extremely impressed, and I’ve tried A LOT of different coding courses. This was by far the easiest to digest and the most enjoyable to take.
Video Editing Course
Link: Video Editing Course
Price: $499
Creator: punodostres
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate
It looks like the world is headed toward more video content, and video editing was the No. 16 top skill on the Upwork 100, so it’s safe to say learning how to make super cool videos and edit them with Adobe Premiere Pro is a good skill to have.
Instagram Content Planning Course
Link: Instagram Content Planning Course
Price: $499
Creator: punodostres
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate
Puno has grown @madewithmap to 80,000 followers in one year with no “experience.” She did not have the luxury of being featured by Instagram and did not buy followers.
She’s completely transparent about everything so you can take away an actionable Instagram strategy. From emails she’s written to how she does the “Mine + Grind,” think of this class like an in-depth case study of exactly how she grew @madewithmap.
She has taught this course at General Assembly, and it is now available online.
Squarespace Design Course
Link: Squarespace Design Course
Price: $899
Creator: punodostres
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate
Learn how to build beautiful Squarespace websites, and start banking tomorrow.
WordPress Design Course
Price: Free
Creator: Lauren Holliday (Me)
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate
Learn how to build premium WordPress websites, and get paid for it.
Sketch Master
Link: Sketch Master
Price: $39, $49, $99 or $160 for all three
Creator: Peter Nowell
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Sketch Master is a collection of video training courses for professionals learning Sketch. The courses are fast-paced and focused on real projects and practical workflows—like designing app icons, mobile app interfaces, and SVG graphics.
Sketch is No. 8 on Upwork’s Top 100 skills.
Learn UX
Link: Learn UX
Price: $15/mo or $144/year
Creator: Greg Rog
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
If you’re interested in design or user-experience, you’ll want to check out Greg Rog’s “Learn UX” course library, which teaches newbies how to use different design tools, such as Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Framer and more.
Courses that will help you land paid jobs/freelance work
The Creative Class
Link: The Creative Class
Price: $239
Creator: Paul Jarvis
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginners to Advanced
I took Paul’s class a few years ago now, and I found it extremely beneficial. Since then, he’s taught more than 2,400 freelancers how to organize, manage and grow their freelance businesses. Highly recommend.
Double Your Freelancing Rate
Link: Double Your Freelancing Rate
Price: $297 or $597
Creator: Brennan Dunn
Course Type: Self-paced
Skill level: Beginners to Advanced
If you’re going to buy this course, stick with the $297 version. I took the course a while ago, and I found it beneficial, although I do think Dunn overcharges for his courses.
You’ll learn the business of freelancing, and basically, how to charge clients more by providing a better client experience. Definitely useful stuff here.
Courses that will help you succeed at work-[ing remotely/digitally]
By 2028, it’s projected that 73% of all teams will have remote workers, and 33% of full-time employees working remotely, according to Upwork’s 2019 Future of Workforce report.
Regardless of whether you work remotely or not, it’s 1000% likely that you’ll need good computer skills,
Get Stuff Done Like a Boss: Design Your Workflow and Double Your Productivity in 21 days
Link: Get Stuff Done Like a Boss | Forte Academy
Price: $99
Creator: Tiago Forte
Course Type: Self-paced
TLDR: Learn how to set up digital productivity tools (like a task manager, digital calendar, and references library) to manage information in your life, and use them to execute your commitments.
If you’re familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) and systems thinking, then you’ll feel at home in this course. It’s a good primer on the digital productivity tool landscape and how to not get overwhelmed with all the information coming at you all the time, which is important for knowledge workers.
Building a Second Brain
Link: Building a Second Brain
Price: $1500, $2500, $5000
Creator: Tiago Forte
Estimated Time: ~30 days (but lifetime access)
The average person consumes 34 gigabytes worth of data every day, the equivalent of 174 newspapers. We are spending more than 11 hours per day—or two-thirds of our waking hours—consuming media in some form.
Can you say #unproductive, #stressed and #overwhelmed. No wonder we can’t get anything done today.
Personally, this course has me salivating, and I will be saving up for it, because I do feel like I consume SO much good information but feel like it’s so siloed and disconnected from each other that it’s useless and just overwhelms me in my head (I swear it’s not as crazy as it sounds). If you feel the same, I highly suggest this course of Tiago’s.
Learning How to Learn
Link: Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects
Price: Free
Creator: McMaster University & University of California San Diego
Estimated Time: 12 hours
This is an important course for knowledge workers because everything changes so fast today that you need to be good at learning new things quickly, so you can get stuff done.
Register for free on Coursera to take this course. It won’t be a waste of your time.
Manage Creative Projects
Link: Manage Creative Projects
Price: Free
Creator: OpenCourses, Anne Ditmeyer
Estimated Time: 8 hours
In this course, you’ll learn concepts that can be adapted to many work situations and office environments in order to help you stay on top of your work. While the course explores creative project management through the lens of UX, these strategies can be applied to any industry.
Asana Academy
Link: Asana Academy
Price: Free
Creator: Asana
Estimated Time: 2 hours
Learn the best ways to use the ridiculously popular project management app Asana, and then become a certified pro.
Google Power Search
Link: Power Searching with Google
Price: Free
Creator: Daniel Russell
Estimated Time: 2 hours
One of the main ways you’ll learn stuff at work is by googling, so you best be good at it. Google offers two courses: Power Searching with Google and Advanced Power Searching with Google for free. These course videos are super quick and informative, so it won’t cost you too much time.
Courses for aspiring entrepreneurs
Startup School
Link: YC Startup School
Price: Free
Creator: Varies
Estimated Time: 8 weeks
Watch video lectures by Y Combinator’s world-class experts, and get direct feedback in community posts and AMAs. Join a network of over 40,000 founders across 190 countries.
Foresight: Learn Financial Modeling
Link: Foresight
Price: $149 (Other options available)
Creator: Taylor Davidson
Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Forecasting/budgeting is yet another Upwork Top 100 skill. Learn how to build financial models for startups, then get paid for doing so, or create a financial model for your own startup.
Shopify Academy
Link: Shopify Academy
Price: Free
Creator: Varies
Level: Beginner, Intermediate
Shopify offers free courses on a wide-variety of topics aimed at helping newbie entrepreneurs build and scale their ecommerce businesses.