In recent years the importance of certification course has grown rapidly! Getting a degree is just not enough you need to have extensive certification courses to further enhance your skills to make your resume stand out. Today it is all about to keep the learning process going to move forward in your career. If you think having a degree is enough to excel in a career then you’re wrong, as the world dynamics are constantly evolving today and you need to stay ahead to have a successful career!
Let’s assume you are looking forward to establish an in-house certification program. What task you’ll be working on? Before starting such certification program you need to ask yourself few questions which are as follows:
What to teach?
Starting with the most basic question, what should you teach?
First you need to follow a road map before starting a certification course. There can be several different options for a course topic. Although it is quiet to figure out what you should teach, but you should be certain about the choice you will be making.
You should be keen about the certification courses you’ll be offering. While putting together curriculum for your certification course, you must be very clear in your head what’s important for your audience to know. However, it’s very tough to stick to only one topic in your curriculum. Keep that in mind not to overdo things. It may be overwhelming to create a course where your audience is coming from and what are they looking for. The problem when you wish to cover all the topics in one is that you can only provide a shallow training when you attempt to cover too many topics at once.
You can further look forward to add even more certification courses to the training program. It all depends on the type of certification you offer, you have to create a curriculum that fits with the career aspirations of your students.
Who are your target audience?
This is the most important question to ask yourself, you can never decide what to teach unless you know who you’re teaching. Keep in mind that your course will need to have answer questions that your target audience is looking for. You need to have a through idea about the audience you’ll be targeting and what are they looking for? It is better to have an understanding of audience before getting started with certification course.
Take away from certification course
What your targeted audience will be taking home with them? What are you offering them to choose your certification course? Before introducing your curriculum, you need to ask yourself 3 things about your potential students:
- What are their agenda?
- What are their goals?
- How will this certification course help them reach their goals?
It is important to help motivate goal for your prospective audience. What they should look forward to accomplish by taking your course? How it’ll help advance their career? Are they more likely to develop a new skill? Will they have professional validation that they can share with friends, family, and future employers?
The goals of your targeted audience when starting the course will influence your curriculum’s content. If your goal is to educate something new from scratch, you’ll need to create a different program, if the goal is to learn more about a topic of which your targeted audience is already familiar with.
Answering these questions will enable you to create a curriculum that addresses the demands of your targeted audience.
Certification course marketing
Now that you have studied your target audience well, it is time to get started with marketing your certification course you’ll be launching. Be very clear in your marketing strategies. As having clear marketing strategies will also help your target audience to get things straight up. In your marketing strategies explain how your certification course will impact those who take it.
For this purpose you need to make a list of the benefits that your audience will get from taking your course. This can be a turning point of your certification program as perks you offer will be attracting your potential audience the most.
Know the market trends
Before launching a certification program have a look what others are offering in their launch certification course. Do research of a marketplace. Are there other courses that are offering same certification courses as you? What you can do to be better the rest?
If you do find other courses with a similar focus, take it as a sign that you’re on the right track. Be sure that there is room to grow as you have got some competition. It is best to compete as it will allow you strengthen self-esteem. You don’t have to do anything fancy you just have to simply focus on why they need to take ‘your’course.
Similarly, when you’re finalizing the course’s curriculum, it’s important to know what is trending in the market. What people are mostly likely to be interested in today? Maximize this knowledge to make a more comprehensive course that fits for the targeted audience. This will also help you to differentiate your course in your marketing and content.
What Type of Certification to Offer?
Certification courses are here for you to excel in your respective career. However there are several types of certifications you can offer. Most certifications fall into the following three broad categories:
General Professional
This type of certification is relevant to any individual within a certain industry. This type of certification courses is restricted to their particular domain. Let’s say you are a health worker and you are further looking forward to enhance skills in your respective field. You can opt for CPR AED training program and many more what is in demand.
Product-based
For this type of certification it is related of a specific product. You can be a computer science enthusiast willing to sell web development software. The certification course will allow you to master skills required to sell product related services. With such certification course you’ll be able to further polish your skills to get you hired by recruiters.
Organization-based Certification course which are organization based means your boss wants you to further brush up your skills. These type of certification course are not opted by you but they are part of your job role to escalate your working capabilities. Usually organization offers such certification courses to senior employees to get desired results for their organization, these courses are fully funded by the organization.
