Best Free Certified Courses To Boost Your Career.

Pranay Wankhede
4 min readApr 12, 2021

With the growth in technology and us being hit by a pandemic, online education is at a boom now. We all are looking for courses to educate ourselves to make a career growth or to learn something.

Here I have compiled some of the best online Free Certified Courses from the top-most organizations in the world that will help you in your personal and professional growth no matter who you are, an entrepreneur, a student, a working professional (technical and non-technical both).

1. Human-Centred Design

This is a free certified course by +Acumen academy and IDEO.org. Human-Centred Design is a creative 4-step approach to problem-solving. It’s a process that starts with people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs.

What will you learn in this course?

  • Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
  • How to create innovative solutions to real-world challenges using IDEO.org’s 4-step process
  • How to conduct user interviews and synthesize learnings to uncover insights and identify opportunities for innovation
  • How to Bring ideas to life using prototypes to test with real users and identify promising solutions to implement

2. Fundamentals of Digital Marketing By Google

This is a free certified course by Google. In this course, you will master the basics of digital marketing with a free Interactive Advertising Bureau-accredited course. There are 26 modules to explore, all created by Google trainers, packed full of practical exercises and real-world examples to help you turn knowledge into action.

What skills you will learn?

  • Analytics and Data Insights
  • Business Strategy
  • Content Marketing
  • Display Advertising
  • E-Commerce
  • Email Marketing

3. Startup School by Y Combinator

Startup School is a free online program for founders actively pursuing their startup.

What will happen in this program?

  • Throughout the course, they will encourage and inspire you to start a company as a way to positively impact the world.
  • They will teach you how to startup and will equip you with the recourses and tools to prepare you for now and for the future.
  • You will also be a part of a community of entrepreneurs who will help you, encourage you and guide you as well.

Participation in Startup School includes access to:

  • Startup School’s library content and curriculum tailored to your startup stage
  • Tools to track your company’s growth and progress
  • A community of international founders through the Startup School forum
  • Virtual group sessions every other week via online video
  • A personalized dashboard to track your participation with Startup School
  • Programming and resources from the Y Combinator team (previous courses have included live Q&A sessions, office hours with YC alumni, and AMAs with startup founders)

4. Free Certified Financial Courses by Corporate Finance Institute

Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) is a leading global provider of online financial modelling and valuation courses. Since 2016, CFI’s programs and certifications have been delivered to over 800,000 individuals at top universities, investment banks, accounting firms, and operating companies around the world.

CFI courses give you practical skills, templates, and tools to move up the finance ladder. We pick up where business school leaves off to teach you on-the-job aspects of corporate finance, investment banking, corporate development, FP&A, treasury, accounting, and more.

What can you learn here for free?

  • Reading Financial Statements
  • Corporate Finance
  • Accounting Fundamentals
  • Excel Crash Course
  • Capital IQ fundamentals

5. Adaptive Leadership

This introductory course helps you identify and make progress on a leadership challenge in your own life, team, or community. You’ll apply the tools and techniques of Adaptive Leadership, a practical framework developed at Harvard Kennedy School of Government for leading change, particularly during times of uncertainty or when there are no easy answers.

Adaptive Leadership is a critical skill set for anyone looking to drive systemic change in an increasingly complex world.

What you will learn?

  • Understand the root cause of a stubborn and recurring challenge in your organization, team, or community
  • Partner with those who are in positions of authority or power
  • Leverage your power for change
  • Design an experiment that strengthens your ability to create lasting change
  • Learn to lead adaptively in environments with trust issues, political sensitivities, resistance, conflict, and distress

Pro-Tip

Spend at least 4–6 hours every week either on the weekend or 1 hour every day distributed along the weekdays.

I have also written an eBook where you will get to know about the stages or personal development and tips about it. All you need to do is to observe yourself and understand which stage you are on.

The tools I have shared will help you discover yourself. Then consume all the content available in this eBook. After consuming, reflect on what you have learned. I have shared some pro-tips to apply all these things in your life and I have also shared tips that you can use to teach people.

Download your free copy here: What Can I Learn! by Pranay Wankhede

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Pranay Wankhede

I’m an entrepreneur, educator, podcaster and a product manager. I write about personal growth, startups, and productivity. https://pranaywankhede.com/