Give your career a boost with online professional courses

Whether you’re looking for work, wanting to start a business, trying to hang onto a job or hoping to move up the corporate ladder, you can always use some career builders.

Career Builders is a group of online courses taught through Continuing Education at Kennesaw State University.

“We offer affordable [$149 to $199], convenient six-week courses that include both hard skills and soft skills to give your career a boost,” said Melissa Vickery, assistant director of advanced technology for Continuing Education at Kennesaw State.

“I do a lot of coaching in continuing education and see a lot of job-seekers out there with negative self-talk,” Vickery said. “Maybe they’ve been let go and haven’t gotten over it, or they think they’re too old and don’t have enough skills.

“I tell them they don’t want to project that image on a résumé or take it to an interview. Taking our Résumé Writing Workshop and our Making Age an Asset in Your Job Search course could be a powerful one-two punch to landing more interviews and a new job.”

Need more help navigating today’s stressful workplaces? Who doesn’t? Kennesaw’s Achieving Success with Difficult People provides workers with the tools to deal with overbearing bosses or back-stabbing co-workers, while the Get Assertive course helps people learn to speak up effectively.

You also may want to add more hard skills to your arsenal.

“Courses such as Understanding the Human Resources Function or Employment Law Fundamentals could make you more valuable to your company, or better equip you to start your own business. It takes more than a good product and marketing plan to succeed as an entrepreneur. You also need to know about tax and legal issues. That kind of knowledge can keep you from making costly mistakes,” Vickery said.

Career Builders also includes a series of courses designed to help people start and operate home-based businesses, crafts businesses, consulting practices, grant-writing businesses or small publishing companies.

A speed reading course ($149) might be an advantage for managers with a heavy load of industry reports, while a course in business and marketing writing could help improve a company’s image or expand someone’s job search in a different direction.

“A funny thing happens when you start learning new things. You want to talk about it. If you open up about the things you’re learning while networking, you never know what doors will open up,” Vickery said.

Many companies have cut back on professional training but that’s no reason for workers to neglect their personal and professional development.

“Taking a course on your own is the very thing you want to talk about in a job interview or an annual review. It shows initiative and that you want to improve your skills,” Vickery said. “In today’s tight budgets, bosses need measurable results in order to give you a good review or a promotion.

“The fact that you’re learning on your own makes you a value-added person. When it comes to company layoffs, it might just save your job.”

For workers re-entering the job market, a certification can beef up skills and get a résumé noticed. Online courses in information and records technology, communications technology, meeting planning and other areas prepare students to take the exam to become a certified administrative professional, a designation of the International Association of Administrative Professionals.

“If you’re a boss looking for an administrative assistant and one candidate has a certification and another doesn’t, which one would you hire?” Vickery said.

“The beauty of our online courses is that you get a quality education that meets university standards. The learning is hands-on, interactive and convenient. Students work at their own pace to complete two lessons a week, and they can take the quizzes over and over again until they get 100 percent. That really helps with retaining the material.”