CV Tips · 2026

How to List Online Courses
and Certifications on Your CV or Resume

Last updated 15 September 2026

Choosing the right course is the easier half. The half that actually decides whether it helps is how you write it down, and most people throw the value away in the formatting. This page covers where the section goes, the five parts of one entry, three worked before and after examples, and the six things to leave off.

It applies to a resume as well as a CV. They are the same document under two names, CV in the UK, Ireland, Europe, the Middle East and much of Asia, resume in the United States and Canada, and the entry format is identical. The one thing that changes is the space: a one page US resume usually carries two or three entries chosen for the specific job rather than everything you have finished.

Score your CV against a real posting Which courses to add in the first place

The Decision That Comes Before the Formatting

A course entry is competing for space with your experience, your education and whatever you built. Space on a CV is the scarcest thing you own, and a reader who spends the first screen on a certificate is a reader who has not yet met your work. So the first question is not how to format the entry. It is whether the entry deserves one.

The test we use is simple and uncomfortable. Read the advert, find the requirement the course is supposed to answer, and check that the requirement is actually stated there. If it is, the course belongs on the CV and its entry should borrow the advert's vocabulary. If it is not, the course was for you rather than for them, and it belongs on LinkedIn where it costs nothing. Most of the certificates people cram onto a CV fail this test, which is why the section so often reads as filler.

If you are not sure which requirements your CV already answers, read it against the posting in CV and Job Match. It reads both documents and tells you which requirements have evidence behind them and which do not, which is the same question this section is asking one course at a time.

Where the Section Goes

There is no universal position, and the advice that says there is has not looked at enough CVs. Position is decided by what the strongest evidence on your page is. Four cases cover almost everyone.

You graduated recently and have no directly relevant job

Put the section immediately under Education, before any retail, hospitality or unrelated internship work. This is the case where a course section carries the most weight it will ever carry, because it is the only part of the page that is about the job being advertised. Keep it to three entries, all of them relevant, and give the most relevant one a second line saying what you built.

You have relevant experience already

Experience first, always, and the course section goes near the bottom above any interests line. A certificate next to two years of doing the work is supporting evidence, not the argument. The one exception is a certificate the advert names explicitly, which can be moved into a short Key Skills block at the top instead, so the reader meets it in the first third of the page.

You are changing field

This is the hardest layout on the page, because the reader is looking for a reason to stop. Put a three line summary at the top that names the field you are moving into, then the course section, then experience. The courses are the bridge between the two halves of your CV, so they need to be read before the experience that does not match, not after it.

You are applying in the Gulf

Recruiters in Saudi Arabia and the UAE work through large volumes of applications and often through a portal that strips your formatting. Write the awarding body out in full, because a logo will not survive the parser, and keep the completion date in month and year form rather than a season. If the advert names a credential, use the advert's exact spelling of it in your section.

The Anatomy of One Entry

Four fixed parts, one optional. Written in this order every time, so the section scans as a list rather than as prose.

  • The exact course title. As the provider publishes it, including the word Certificate or Specialization where it is part of the name. Shortening it loses the distinction between a credential and a playlist, and a recruiter who searches the title should find the same page you did.
  • The awarding body. The university or company whose name is on the certificate. This is the single highest value word in the entry, because it is the part a reader recognises in under a second.
  • The platform, where it differs. In brackets after the awarding body. A course by Macquarie University delivered on Coursera is both things, and writing only the platform throws away the university name you actually paid for.
  • The completion date. Month and year. A course with no date reads as old, and an old certificate in a fast moving field is worth less than an honest recent one.
  • One line of evidence, where it earns it. Not for every entry. For the one or two that matter, a single sentence naming what you produced or what you can now do. This is where the certificate stops being a claim about attendance and starts being a claim about capability.

Three Worked Examples

The same course, written the way people write it and written the way it should be. Every course below is in the Careery catalogue, so you can open the full provider details without leaving the site. The dates in the strong versions are illustrative: use your own.

Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate

Google · Coursera · ~6 months (10 hrs/week)

How it usually gets written

Google Data Analytics course, Coursera, online

How it should read

Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate, Google (Coursera), March 2026. Cleaned and analysed a public transport dataset in SQL and R, and presented the findings as a Tableau dashboard.

The weak line is missing the word Certificate, which is the part that means a credential rather than some videos, and it says nothing about what was done. The strong line names the credential exactly as Google publishes it, and the second sentence names three tools that a data analyst advert will also name. That second sentence is doing the work of a bullet in an experience section, which is exactly the point when you have no experience section worth reading.

Google Project Management Professional Certificate

Google · Coursera · ~6 months (10 hrs/week)

How it usually gets written

Project Management, Google, 2026 (6 months, 10 hours a week)

How it should read

Google Project Management Professional Certificate, Google (Coursera), completed January 2026. Ran the capstone as a full project plan with a risk register and a stakeholder map, both of which are attached to the portfolio link above.

The weak line spends its space on hours, which describes what the course cost you rather than what it gave a hiring manager. The strong line drops the hours entirely and names two artefacts a project coordinator advert asks for by name. If you produced something during a course, the artefact is more persuasive than the certificate that came with it.

Excel Skills for Business Specialization

Macquarie University · Coursera · ~6 months (4 to 6 hrs/week)

How it usually gets written

Advanced Excel (self taught, ongoing)

How it should read

Excel Skills for Business Specialization, Macquarie University (Coursera), In progress, expected June 2026. Covers pivot tables, lookup functions and dashboard reporting.

Self taught and ongoing are two words that tell a reader nothing and cannot be checked. The strong line is still honest about being unfinished, but it now carries a university name, a platform, a date you are accountable to and three specific skills. Unfinished and specific beats finished and vague more often than people expect.

What to Leave Off

Deleting is most of the work. Each of these makes the section weaker, and the first one can end an interview.

  • Courses you started and abandoned. An unfinished course you are not currently taking is not evidence of anything, and listing it as though it were is the one mistake on this page that can cost you an offer.
  • The hours. Sixty hours of study is a cost you paid, not a benefit the employer receives. The only time hours belong on a CV is when the advert asks for a specific accredited training length.
  • Courses with no awarding body worth naming. If the only name attached is the platform, the entry says you watched some videos on a website, which is true of almost everyone applying.
  • Anything unrelated to the job in front of you. A photography certificate on an application for a finance role does not show breadth, it shows you sent the same CV to everybody.
  • Scores and grades from courses that do not publish a recognised grading scale. A percentage nobody can interpret invites the question of what it was out of.
  • Logos and badge images. They break applicant tracking parsers, they inflate the file size, and they take a line of space that a sentence about what you built would have used better.

Making the Section Survive an Applicant Tracking System

Most large employers in the UK and the Gulf read your CV twice, once as a machine and once as a person, and the machine goes first. The certifications section is unusually fragile because people reach for visual layout here: two columns to save space, a table to line up the dates, a badge image instead of a provider name. All three parse badly.

Keep it linear. One heading on its own line, one entry per line or two, ordinary bullet characters, no text boxes and no graphics. Write the provider name in text even if you also show a logo. Use the same spelling of a credential that the advert uses, because keyword matching is literal and does not know that PMP and Project Management Professional are the same thing unless you write both.

The full set of rules, including the layout that parses cleanly in Workday, Taleo, Bayt and Naukrigulf, is in our ATS CV guide and the section by section ATS CV template.

Courses in Progress, and Courses You Have Not Started

An in progress course is legitimate and often useful, because it says you saw the gap before the interviewer did. Write it exactly as you would a finished one, then add In progress and an expected month. Do not write expected completion dates you cannot hit: a recruiter who likes your application may well ask in four weeks how it is going.

A course you have merely enrolled on and not started is not a CV line. It is an intention, and intentions are what cover letters are for. If the gap it closes is genuinely important to the role, the better move is to start it now and apply in three weeks with something real to say about it.

If you do not yet know which gap to close first, Course Path puts the gaps between your CV and your target role in order and names a course against each one, so the thing you put in progress on your CV is the thing the advert actually asked for.

The CV and the LinkedIn Profile Are Not the Same List

Space behaves differently in the two places. A CV is a fixed page competing for one reader's attention, so the course list is ruthless and tailored to one advert. A LinkedIn profile is an index a recruiter searches, so a long certifications list costs nothing and occasionally earns you a search result you would never have applied for.

Put everything finished on LinkedIn, with the credential ID and the verification link, because that is the place verification belongs. Put three to five on the CV. Our LinkedIn profile guide covers how the certifications section interacts with recruiter search.

Where to Find Courses Worth the Line

None of the above helps if the course was not worth taking. Three starting points, all of them on this site, and all of them courses with a named awarding body rather than a platform alone.

More of them, sorted by what employers recognise, are in best online courses to add to your CV, and the whole catalogue is at Explore. If the courses are meant to move you into a field you have never worked in, the entry format matters less than the route: best online courses for a career change maps five of them, and says what the certificate does and does not do for someone with no paid experience in the new field.

Two questions about the entry itself have their own pages. Which online course certificates do employers recognise decides which name belongs in the awarding body line, because recognition follows the awarding body rather than the platform. Do employers check online course certificates covers what a reader can verify from the entry, and the four ways a real certificate gets written into a line that does not survive being looked at.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do online courses go on a CV?

Under their own heading, after education and after work experience, unless the course is the strongest thing you have. A recent graduate with a directly relevant professional certificate and no relevant job history can put the certificate immediately under education, because it is the most job relevant evidence on the page. Anyone with relevant paid experience puts experience first and courses near the bottom. The rule is ordering by evidence value, not by chronology.

Is listing courses on a resume different from a CV?

The entry itself is identical: course title, awarding body, platform, month and year. CV and resume are the same document, the word just changes by country, CV in the UK, Ireland, Europe, the Middle East and much of Asia, resume in the United States and Canada. What changes is the space you have. A US resume is normally one page, so the section is usually two or three entries chosen for the specific job rather than everything you have finished, and the optional line describing what the course let you do is the first thing to cut. On a two page UK CV you can afford the heading and the fuller entries.

What should I call the section on my CV?

Certifications if everything in it carries a named credential, Professional Development if it is a mix of finished courses and shorter training, or Courses if it is genuinely just courses. Pick one and use it once. Two overlapping headings, one saying Certifications and one saying Training, reads as padding and invites the reader to count how thin each is.

How do I write a single course entry?

Four fixed parts and one optional one. The exact course title as the provider publishes it, the awarding body, the platform if it differs from the awarding body, and the month and year you completed it. Then, only where it earns its space, one line naming what you can now do that you could not before. Avoid writing the number of hours: it describes effort, and nobody is hiring effort.

Should I put the certificate link or credential ID on my CV?

Put it on the CV only if it fits on the same line without wrapping, and put it on LinkedIn always. A long verification URL breaking across two lines costs more room than the credibility it buys. A credential ID in brackets is usually the shorter option. If a recruiter wants to verify, the LinkedIn certifications section is where they will look first anyway.

Can I list a course I have not finished?

Yes, if you mark it honestly and it is genuinely in progress. Write the course title, the awarding body and the words In progress with an expected completion month. What you must not do is list it the same way as a completed course and hope nobody asks. Interviewers do ask, and being caught overstating one line puts every other line in doubt.

How many courses should I list on my CV?

Three to five is plenty for a recent graduate and often fewer is better. A list of twelve certificates reads as someone who collects courses instead of doing work. If you have finished a lot, list the ones relevant to the job you are applying for and leave the others on LinkedIn, where a long list costs nothing.

Do applicant tracking systems read the certifications section?

Yes, and they read it as plain text, which is why formatting matters more here than it looks. Keep the section heading on its own line, keep each entry on one or two lines, avoid tables, columns, text boxes and icons, and write the provider name out in full at least once rather than relying on a logo. A parser that cannot find your certificate section will not infer it.

Does the order of courses within the section matter?

Relevance first, then recency. Most people default to reverse chronological because that is how the rest of the CV works, which buries the one certificate that matches the job under two that do not. The first entry in the section is the only one guaranteed to be read, so it should be the one closest to the advert.

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