At the job post · 5 min read
Should I put online courses and certificates on my CV?
Which courses and certificates are worth listing, how to word them, where they go, and how to turn a course into evidence an employer believes.
The short answer
Put an online course or certificate on your CV when it's relevant to the job, recent, and something you could talk about. List it under 'Courses and certifications' with the name, provider and year. A course on its own proves you studied; pair it with one thing you made or did with the skill, and it starts to prove you can do the work.
Key takeaways
- Only list courses relevant to the job and recent enough to matter.
- Name, provider and year are enough; skip hours and badges.
- Professional certifications the post names go higher up.
- Show a project you did with the skill, not just the certificate.
- Five well-chosen courses beat twenty unrelated ones.
On this pageWhich courses are worth listing?
Which courses are worth listing?
| List it | Leave it off |
|---|---|
| A certification the post names | A course in an unrelated field |
| A course from a known provider in the job's core skill | A one-hour taster with a badge |
| A recent course you used in a project | A course you started and dropped |
| A legal or safety certificate the role needs | Ten short courses on the same basic topic |
How to word it
- Name of course or certification, provider, year: 'Excel Skills for Business, Macquarie University via Coursera, 2026'.
- Professional certifications use their official name and any number, if the body publishes one.
- Courses in progress say so, with an expected month.
- Leave out hours studied and percentages unless the post asks.
Turn a course into evidence
A course says you learned something. A project says you can use it. After a course, do one small piece of real work with the skill and write it up as a bullet: 'Built a pivot-table report of 2,000 public transport journeys to find the busiest hours, after an Excel course'. Now a recruiter can see the skill working.
Courses for a career change
For someone changing careers, courses often carry more weight because there's no job title to point to yet. Put relevant ones in a skills or relevant experience section near the top, alongside a project. Be careful not to let a long course list stand in for practical evidence.
OffLadder CV, our free Chrome extension, rewrites your CV for the post you have open, in the post's own words and order. Every change is checked against the CV you gave it, so it never adds a skill, a number or a job you don't have. You download it as a PDF or Word file.
What happens to the gaps
Applying shows you what employers want that you can't show yet: a must-have your CV doesn't mention, or a question you couldn't answer well. Hand the job from OffLadder CV to Laddie, our AI coach, and it turns each one into three steps:
- Learn the skill: a short lesson on what the post asks for, starting from the basics.
- Try the work: a 15-minute task taken from the job itself, so you have a real example to talk about.
- Practise the interview: a five-question mock interview for that role, weighted to the parts you're least sure of.
The conversation stays in your OffLadder account. Once you've done the work, add it to your CV in your own words, and the next post you tailor for can point to it.
Questions people ask
- Do employers care about online certificates?
- Some do, when the certificate is from a known body or is named in the post, such as a professional accounting, project management or cloud certification. Generic completion certificates matter less. What most employers care about more is whether you can use the skill, so pair the course with an example.
- Where do certifications go on a CV?
- A certification the post asks for can go in your summary and near the top. Others go in a 'Courses and certifications' section after education. If you have several, list the most relevant first.
- Should I list a course I haven't finished?
- Yes, if it's relevant and you're actively doing it: 'Google Data Analytics Certificate (in progress, expected March 2027)'. Don't list courses you abandoned, and don't present an unfinished course as complete.
- How many courses should I list?
- Three to six relevant ones is usually plenty. A long list of short unrelated courses can make the CV look padded and suggest you collect certificates rather than use the skills.
Exercises are practice, not evidence of career fit or a qualification. How to read our guides and report a correction.
Sources
- How to write a CV · National Careers Service (England)
How this page is written
Sources support the factual background, not a guarantee that an exercise predicts career fit. Fictional practice material is labelled. Dates record content updates; no independent expert review is implied. More about OffLadder.