If you’re trying to get ahead in your career, then it can be hard to know where to invest your time, energy and finances. What will provide the most return on your investment?
Working a lot of overtime rarely seems to impress employers with your work ethic as much as you’d like. Instead, they seem to just add more to your workload without rewarding you. Volunteering for projects and stepping up to take on more can be a strategy to get in line for a promotion or have things in your portfolio or resume if you apply for a job elsewhere, but even on-the-job experience only takes you so far. Employers still seem to reward professional qualifications disproportionately.
Health care careers in particular benefit from accredited programs and certification. If you’re interested in or already employed in a health care job such as nursing, physical therapy or medical assistant, then professional certification can improve your employability, give you more confidence and respect at work, and boost your pay.
Some of this is due to employer perception that those who have invested in a formal certification or qualification have skills that exceed those that can be earned on the job. In other cases, an HR process or department may award points or automatically bump employees up a notch when they show evidence of formal qualifications.
If you’d like to move forward in your career, earn more money and get more respect, then getting a professional certification offers higher return on investment than just about anything else in which you can invest yourself. In most cases, you can find local campuses for convenience to pursue certification – just search online for “colleges near me” and check out the quality of their offerings.
In many cases, it’s possible to pursue certification part-time or in a flexible format while you’re already working. If you’re disappointed with your current career progress and want to pursue a more successful future, then certification can offer a clear and proactive path toward greater employability and opportunity.
If you’re a student and don’t yet have work experience, then certification can be an alternative to a work history. It offers prospective employers the assurance that you have specific, recent and relevant understanding of their needs and will be a good investment. They want to know that you bring skill and knowledge to the job without requiring a lot of training on their part. Many employers hire in a crunch situation, where they need someone who can hit the ground running, and they just don’t have the capacity to bring someone in and teach them everything they need to know.
Professional certification is a worthwhile investment of your time, energy and funds if you want to proactively improve your future prospects. If you’re a midstream professional looking for a way to kick-start your career and move forward, or if you’re a student looking for a head start on the competition, then you should look into professional certification programs near you.
