13 Best + Free Online Professional Development Courses with Certificates

Even if you are not in school, your continued improvement, acquiring knowledge, and growth are critical to your professional success. Many employers believe that your degree is only the beginning of your learning life that awaits you at the onset of your career. If you apply this ideology frequently in your career, you’ll find yourself professionally capable. That’s why we came up with best professional development courses curation for our readers.

Many of the well-known opportunities that are available, at your current workplace, can be easily discovered with your curious attitude of learning that is essential for your professional development.

• What is Professional Development?
• Best Professional Development Courses with Certificates
  • Unlocking Your Employability
  • Communication and Interpersonal Skills at Work
  • Communicating with Confidence
  • Critical Thinking Strategies for Better Decisions
  • How to Get Skilled: Introduction to Individual Skills Management (Project-Centered Course)
  • Essential Skills for Your Career Development
  • Leading With Effective Communication (Inclusive Leadership Training)
  • Strategic Management: From Insight to Decision
  • Defining and Achieving Professional Goals
  • Digital Skills: Digital Skills for Work and Life
  • Storytelling for Social Change
  • Emotional Intelligence at Work
  • English for Career Development

What is Professional Development?

Professional development refers to ongoing education and career training after a person has joined the workforce to assist them in developing new skills, getting knowledge of current trends, and advancing their career. Professional development’s goal is to provide professionals with the opportunity to develop and implement knowledge and skills that will assist them in their jobs and advance their careers. Professional development is all about honing your skillset and expanding your knowledge base in your field.

Best Professional Development Courses with Certificates

The major goal is to provide professionals with the possibility to develop and apply expertise. To gain skills that will help individuals in multiple professions and reach their full potential. Professional development is mostly about honing your capabilities and expanding your depth of knowledge in your line of work. Below we have the best courses to boost your knowledge. Take one or many professional development courses based on your skill level in respective area. For some, professional purpose is basic: get a job that allows them to pursue other aspirations. Others see their professional purpose as bringing happiness and assistance to others. For the best in professional development, explore the latest CPD offerings for 2024.

Unlocking Your Employability

• • • University of Queensland via edX
    • 1-2 hours/week (7 weeks) of effort required!
    • Course Type: Self-paced

Identifying and enhancing your employability should be your first priority. Employability is defined as a set of accomplishments – abilities, knowledge and understanding, and personal characteristics – that helps people to get a perfect job. Succeeding in your respective careers, benefit yourselves, the workplace, society, and contribute to the economic growth. Generic employability skills can help you in a variety of ways since the labor market is extremely competitive. Employers are looking for adaptable candidates those that can take charge, and perform variety of tasks in a multiple fields. By this course, you will learn the use of self-reflective methods to identify growth through practical application. Effectively identify your distinct qualities and abilities. Gain knowledge to master various techniques and communicate your potential in different situations. Understand how to behave appropriately in a professional setting. You will be able to recognize your employability as a holistic process that allows you to contribute to society through your work and much more. In this course, learn everything you need to know to make transform your employability rationale in comparison to others.

Communication and Interpersonal Skills at Work

• • • University of Leeds via FutureLearn
    • 160,646+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★★ (1,448 Ratings)

The capacity to communicate and socialize with others is referred to as interpersonal skills. Communication skills refer to your ability to carry an idea or set of guidelines and impart them to others understandably and concisely. Interpersonal communication techniques allow you to be more productive at the workplace. This will help you in developing good and positive relations with your coworkers. Learn this skill that plays a major role in completing team projects efficiently and effectively. Employees and team members who communicate often, have fewer clashes and disputes. Interaction aids in the generation of ideas, the development of authentic relationships, and the resolution of workplace challenges. Learn a variety of communication and interpersonal skills in this course. Enable yourself to identify your communication style. Understand whether your communication is in line with your goals. This course will teach you how to apply your communication style in the workplace. Interact in difficult conversations to get positive outcomes.  Regain self-assurance in your style and technique. This course is indeed extremely important in empowering and motivating employers and employees to achieve their work objectives. Discover some of the most sought-after personal growth programs, including those offered by Ivy League institutions.

Communicating with Confidence

• • • Jeff Ansell via LinkedIn Learning
    • 1,221,499+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★★ (10,399 Ratings)

Critical Thinking Strategies For Better Decisions

• • • John Rampton via Udemy
    • 31,594+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★☆ (16,928 Ratings)

How to Get Skilled: Introduction to Individual Skills Management (Project-Centered Course)

• • • State University of New York via Coursera
    • 49,971+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★☆☆ (214 Ratings)

Project-based professional development courses are intended to assist you in completing a personally meaningful major project, with your instructor and society of the alike encouraging learners with common objectives providing guidance and advice along the way. A well-developed skill can lead to mastery in a specific field, and hence it can also be learned. Learning new skills can greatly benefit your professional life. It helps you accomplish your dreams, makes you confident and motivates you to work. Even practicing your existing skills makes you more professional at work. In this course, you’ll be able to objectively compare your level of learned skill to the demands of your dream field and the likely contest. Learn how to formalize and evaluate your skills using experiential processes and technologies such as simulations, benchmarking, competency dashboards, and skills tests. The course will teach you how to improve the efficiency of your ongoing professional growth by measuring the level of skill acquisition. In addition, you can boost your employment prospects. Hence, this course will provide you with significant outcomes that you can use right away.

Essential Skills for Your Career Development

• • • University of Leeds via FutureLearn
    • 67,571+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★★ (415 Ratings)

Career advancement necessitates the development of skills that are desired by employers. Having a diverse set of skills allows you to move around your company and makes you more desirable in the job market. This course considers the most essential skills that are important in your career growth. In this course, you will be able to understand the various approaches to advancing your career after completing the course. Be capable of creating a career roadmap and a vision board. Learn how to elaborate on your career objectives. You will identify the most crucial individuals, organizations, and platforms for your network. This course will teach you how to develop communications to engage key leads. Assess the effectiveness of your strategy and make changes as necessary. The key to any career development and success strategy is the acquisition of these necessary skills. Check out how to improve Paraverbal Communication Skills?

Leading With Effective Communication (Inclusive Leadership Training)

• • • RWTH Aachen University via edX
    • 1-2 hours/week (4 weeks) of effort required!
    • Course Type: Self-paced

Understanding the other person is always at the heart of effective communication. In a nutshell, it is nothing more than the demonstration of views by a speaker in a manner best interpreted by the listener. Effective communication can improve teamwork and project collaboration. It applies to almost every industry. Keeping effective communication open ensures that management and the team below them are on the same page. This means that employees are enough confident of their work, and managers are in no doubt that team members are carrying it out accurately. It is critical for a company’s future success. In this course, learn techniques, methodologies, and tools for good communication. Discover how inclusive leadership and effective communication are interconnected, as well as how to overcome common communication roadblocks. Be able to devise strategies for fostering transparent and authentic communication, in which people from diverse backgrounds feel free to speak and exchange ideas. Assess your communication abilities to create strong relations in your professional or personal lives. Hence, this course allows you to investigate the critical role communication plays in inclusive leadership.

Professional Development Courses (Management & Digital Skills)

Continue exploring more professional development courses and training classes.

Strategic Management: From Insight to Decision

• • • RWTH Aachen University via edX
    • 6-8 hours/week (6 weeks) of effort required!
    • Course Type: Self-paced

Strategic management provides an overall vision by creating plans and policies to achieve goals and then assigning resources to put the plans into action. The significance of strategic management is found at the crossroads of your company’s internal and external environments. Creating a strategic vision with long-term aims is beneficial for achieving organizational objectives as well as, every company requires a backup plan in case something goes wrong. The highly recommended strategic decision-making entails weighing the pros and cons of a situation and devising a step-by-step plan to achieve your objectives. This course strengthens your strategic vision. In this course, you will learn how to position your organization in transitional times. Discover orchestrate strategic alliances and larger innovation networks. This course teaches you how to evaluate strategic options not only from an economic standpoint but also from an ethical standpoint. A strategic process can assist you in analyzing what you require, what you want to accomplish, and how you want to accomplish it.

You Might be Interested in Back End Development Courses with Certificates

Defining and Achieving Professional Goals

• • • Dorie Clark via LinkedIn Learning
    • 175,187+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★★ (1,040 Ratings)

Digital Skills: Digital Skills for Work and Life

• • • CPD via FutureLearn
    • 80,914+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★★ (723 Ratings)

The capabilities to discover, assess, utilize, share, and produce content using digital equipment such as computers and smartphones is referred to as digital skills. Employers are increasingly prioritizing digital skills, which are quickly becoming a near-mandatory requirement for many different types of jobs. Mostly every aspect of our personal and professional lives is now influenced by digital technology. With this professional development course, you will understand what the word “digital” refers to. You will be able to explain how digital is altering our way of life and work. Gain an understanding of the opportunities and challenges that these digital changes bring. Comprehend what it means to have a growth mindset. Learn how to cultivate your growth mindset. Investigate how a growth mindset can help you learn new skills and succeed in the digital workplace. Needless to say, digital skills are important for a wide range of work tasks, involving both lower and upper levels of skill.

Storytelling for Social Change

• • • University of Michigan via edX
    • 1-3 hours/week (5 weeks) of effort required!
    • Course Type: Self-paced

The vivid explanation of thoughts, beliefs, life experiences and valuable lessons through stories or narratives that arouse intense emotions and keen insight is known as storytelling. According to research, when a story brings us into the world of its characters, it can significantly alter our beliefs and desire to act. These stories touch our feelings and can motivate people to take action and effect change. By this course, you will learn Get to know how professionals use stories to effect social change. You will learn how to incorporate different points of view into stories for social effects, as well as how to recognize an audience, communicate a message, and create a strong character to convey your message. Decode and understand how compassion and belief systems influence storytellers and audience members. This course enables you to incorporate visual elements into a storytelling project. Overall this course teaches students how to use stories to convey messages that influence listeners and form attitudes toward social change.

Emotional Intelligence at Work

• • • Coventry University via FutureLearn
    • 44,929+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★★ (227 Ratings)

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the capability to comprehend, utilize, and maintain one’s own emotions in positive ways to reduce stress, interact efficiently, empathize with others, tackle problems, and resolve disputes. The course will look at how emotional intelligence affects not only our relations with other people but also our relationships within ourselves. This course teaches you how to effectively explain, specify, and recognize different aspects of emotional intelligence. You will learn about the distinctions between attribute, capacity, and mixed models of emotional intelligence. Apply the concept of emotional intelligence in the workplace. You will learn what distinguishes emotional intelligence from ‘traditional’ intelligence. Learn to explain how emotional intelligence can be used to enhance interpersonal relationships and guide personal development. This course is highly recommended in teaching you how to use emotional intelligence at work. You’ll look at how it’s analyzed and how it can be applied in various workplace measures.

English for Career Development

• • • Penn via Coursera
    • 1,555,290+ already enrolled!
    • ★★★★★ (11,093 Ratings)

This is last on our list of best professional development courses. Since English is the most commonly spoken language in the business world, knowing it is one of the most essential employability skills. When you communicate in English, you explore numerous job opportunities even beyond your home country, which significantly expands the magnitude of your job market. Needless to say, non-native English speakers can advance their careers in the global marketplace by taking this course. The said course will teach you about how to search for jobs, applications, and interviews in the United States while contrasting the same process in your home country. This course will also discover global career prospects while expanding your language skills and improving your vocabulary to achieve your career goals.

Final Thoughts

Development and training are a prerequisite for any business to work effectively. Where there is no focus on professional learning and advancement, there is no progress. Such businesses become stagnant. Therefore, to make your business a huge success and to retain your employees, it is very important for the top management give importance in conducting training sessions across organizations. They should either hire special trainers or become one themselves by taking any of the above-mentioned professional development courses and take their company to a new dimension.