Certifications and Courses on a CV: Which Ones Are Worth Listing

The certifications section is where CVs quietly go wrong in an unusual direction. Most sections suffer from having too little; this one usually suffers from having too much, because every completed course feels like evidence of effort and it is tempting to list them all.

The reader is not counting your certificates. They are checking whether you hold the specific credential the role requires, and then forming a rough impression of whether you keep your skills current. Those are two different jobs, and only the first one is a hard requirement.

The three kinds, and they are not equal

Separating these makes almost every decision easier.

Licences to practise. Qualifications without which you legally or professionally cannot do the job: nursing registration, a legal practising certificate, a teaching qualification, an accountancy membership, a safety card required on site. These are not decoration, they are eligibility, and they belong high on the page. In several fields the whole application fails without them.

Recognised professional credentials. Widely known qualifications that signal competence without being mandatory: PMP, PRINCE2, CFA, CIPD, Six Sigma belts, major cloud and security certifications. These carry real weight when they match the role and are current.

Courses and short training. Everything else: online courses, internal training, workshops, webinars, short university programmes. These have value in specific circumstances and are the ones most often over listed.

The test that separates the second group from the third is simple: would someone in your field recognise the name without you explaining it, and did earning it require a meaningful assessment. If the answer to both is yes, it belongs in the main section. If not, it goes in a short list or nowhere.

Where the section goes

Above education, if your certifications are more relevant than your degree. This is normal in accountancy, project management, IT, healthcare and the trades, where the professional qualification is what the employer is actually screening for.

Below education, if your degree is the primary credential and the certifications are supporting.

Merged into education, if you only have one or two. A separate section with two lines under it looks thin, and those entries sit perfectly well beneath your degree.

Near the top, in a short line, if a licence is a hard requirement of the role. When an advert says "must hold a valid X", the reader should not have to reach page two to find out whether you do. A single line under your summary saying "Registered nurse, NMC pin held, current" does more work than the same fact buried below.

How to write an entry

Four elements, on one line each.

The name as it is actually known. "PMP" or "Project Management Professional (PMP)", not "certification in the field of project management". Use the form people search for, which is usually the abbreviation, spelled out once as covered in ATS keywords.

The awarding body. Especially where the name alone is ambiguous, and always for anything less than universally known.

The year. Certifications age at very different rates, and a reader needs the date to judge relevance. A cloud certification from 2016 describes a platform that no longer exists in that form.

The status, if it is not simply "held". "In progress, expected March 2027" and "expired 2024" are both honest and both fine. Ambiguity is the only thing that damages you here.

Certifications

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PRINCE2 Practitioner, AXELOS, 2024 AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Associate, 2025 First Aid at Work, British Red Cross, 2023 (renewal due 2026)

That is the whole format. No descriptions, no bullet points about what the course covered, no logos.

Expired certifications

More common than people admit and easy to handle badly.

If the certification is expired and still relevant, list it with the expiry stated plainly: "CCNA, Cisco, 2019, lapsed". This is honest, shows the underlying knowledge, and avoids the far worse outcome of an employer discovering during a check that a listed credential is not current.

If it expired long ago and the technology has moved on, remove it. A lapsed certification in a tool nobody uses is taking a line and dating you.

If renewal is in progress, say so. "Renewal in progress, expected June" reads as active rather than lapsed.

Never list an expired certification as though it were current. It is one of the few genuinely checkable facts on a CV, and verification is routine in regulated fields, which is the same logic set out in the education section on a CV.

Online courses: the honest position

This is where most of the padding happens, so it is worth being direct.

A short online course is evidence of interest, not of capability. Employers know how long these take and what completing one requires, and a list of fifteen of them reads as activity rather than skill. It can even work against you, by suggesting you mistake consumption for competence.

That said, they earn their place in three situations.

When you are changing fields and have nothing else yet. A structured course in the new discipline is genuine evidence that you have started, and it is better than an empty section. It works best when paired with something you built or did as a result, which is the approach in writing a career change CV.

When the course is substantial and named. A recognised multi month programme with an assessment is a different object from a two hour video series, and the reader can usually tell from the name.

When it teaches a specific tool the advert asks for. If the job wants Power BI and you completed a proper course in it, that is directly relevant regardless of length.

The practical rule: pick the two or three that a reader would find meaningful and delete the rest. If you have completed thirty courses and cannot choose, that is itself the signal to compress them into one line, such as "Ongoing professional development in data analysis, including SQL and Power BI".

What to leave out entirely

Internal training with company specific names. "Northgate Leadership Pathway Level 2" means nothing outside that company. If the content matters, describe the skill instead.

Mandatory compliance training. Fire safety, data protection basics, annual refreshers. Everyone does these and listing them suggests you were short of material. The exception is where a specific compliance certificate is a job requirement.

Attendance at conferences and webinars. Attending is not achieving. Speaking at one is different and belongs elsewhere.

Certificates for tools everyone uses. A certificate in basic word processing or spreadsheets works against you by implying that is the level you are at.

Anything with no assessment. If completion required only watching, it does not evidence capability.

Logos and badges. Digital credential badges look fine on a profile page and turn into unreadable images in a document, and text inside an image is invisible to a parser, as covered in the formatting that actually breaks an ATS.

How many is right

Three to six entries in a certifications section is the comfortable range for most people. One or two, and they belong with your education. More than about eight, and the section starts reading as a list of everything you have ever finished.

If you genuinely hold many credentials, which is normal in IT and some technical fields, group them: current certifications listed individually, older or foundational ones summarised in a single line. A reader wants to see the top of your stack, not an archive.

Frequently asked questions

Do certifications help with applicant tracking systems?

They help in the same way any keyword does. A recruiter filtering for "PMP" or "CISSP" is searching a text field, so the abbreviation needs to appear. Spell it out once alongside the abbreviation and you cover both search forms.

Should I list a certification I am currently studying for?

Yes, with the expected completion date and a clear "in progress" label. It shows direction. Just never phrase it in a way that implies you already hold it.

Where do driving licences go?

With your personal details or in skills, and only when the role requires one. It is a requirement rather than a professional credential.

Are university short courses worth listing?

If they are substantial, assessed and relevant, yes, in the same format as any other certification. A one day workshop is not.

What if my certification is from another country?

Give the awarding body and, where a local equivalent exists, add a short clause naming it. An unfamiliar credential with no context is read as unknown rather than as valuable.

Should I include the certificate number or credential ID?

No, not on the CV. It is verification detail nobody needs at this stage and it clutters the line. Keep it for the form that asks for it.

Check that your credentials came through

Certifications are frequently misfiled by parsers, especially when they are formatted as badges, placed in a sidebar, or given a heading the software does not recognise. CvLaunch reads your CV and shows you the structured result, so you can confirm the qualification an employer is filtering for is actually present in the record. It takes a few seconds, it is free, and there is no sign up.

Which certifications actually pay

A harder question than which ones to list, and worth a section because people spend real money on this.

The ones the job adverts ask for. This sounds obvious and is routinely ignored. Before paying for a certification, read twenty adverts for the roles you want and count how many name it. If the answer is none, you are buying something the market is not asking for.

The ones tied to eligibility. Where a credential is the difference between being able to apply and not, the return is unambiguous. Everything else is a judgement call.

The ones with a real assessment. Credentials that are difficult to obtain carry weight precisely because they are difficult. Ones that anyone can complete in an afternoon signal nothing, no matter how impressive the issuing organisation's name looks.

The ones your employer will fund. Many organisations have a training budget that goes unused because nobody asks. This is the cheapest route to a credential you would otherwise pay for yourself, and it is worth asking even if you are quietly planning to leave, since the qualification stays with you.

What rarely pays: collecting foundational certifications in adjacent areas hoping breadth substitutes for depth, and pursuing a credential instead of getting experience. Employers consistently prefer someone who has done the work to someone who has studied it, and a certification is most valuable when it confirms experience rather than replacing it.

Certifications versus the skills section

A frequent source of confusion, and the distinction is clean.

Your skills section lists what you can do. Your certifications section lists what you can prove. They overlap and should not duplicate.

If you hold a certification in a tool, name the tool in your skills list and the certification in the certifications section, but do not describe it twice at length. And if you can genuinely use something without holding a certificate for it, it belongs in skills anyway. Nobody requires a credential to claim a capability, as discussed in what to include in a CV skills section.

The reverse case matters more: a certification you cannot back up in practice is a liability. If your CV lists a credential and an interviewer asks a basic applied question you cannot answer, the certificate has actively harmed you. Hold the ones you can defend.

A short worked example

The same person, before and after editing. A data analyst three years into a career.

Before

Certifications and Training

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Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate Introduction to SQL, Coursera Excel Advanced Formulas, Udemy Data Visualisation Basics, LinkedIn Learning Northgate Internal Reporting Standards, Level 1 GDPR Awareness, annual refresher Python for Beginners, Codecademy Agile Fundamentals webinar Time Management workshop

Nine entries, and a reader learns almost nothing from them. Several are two hour courses, two are internal or mandatory, and the effect of the whole list is to suggest the candidate has been studying rather than working.

After

Certifications

>

Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate, 2024 Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate, 2025

Two lines. The substantial credential stays, the platform certification that matches what the adverts ask for stays, and everything else goes. SQL, Excel and Python move into the skills list where they belong as capabilities, and the mandatory training disappears entirely.

The candidate did not lose anything. Nine weak signals became two strong ones, and the space went to an extra achievement bullet in the current role.

Should I keep a longer list somewhere?

Yes, in your own records or on a profile page where space is free. Keeping a full list privately means you can pull the relevant one forward for a specific application without carrying all of them on every version of your CV.

Do certifications expire from a reader's point of view even if they are still valid?

Informally, yes. A credential from ten years ago in a fast moving field reads as historical even when the certificate itself never expires. If the underlying knowledge is still current, evidence it through recent work rather than through the certificate alone.