First and foremost, courses are not certifications.  They may come with certificates, but if there is no actual test of knowledge or understanding and they do not align with a certifying organization, they aren’t industry certifications.  They are, however, critical to showing your interest in development and growth.  You can also use this section to list all the courses aligned with an industry certification as you complete them – some certifications require a large amount of coursework along the path with no real way to indicate completion.  Additionally, if you are working in a “pathed” area (like a university major or a multi-track certification), it shows which path you took towards completion – the individual elements that make up the whole.

Courses are easy to enter.  Simply go to Profile > Edit Profile, scroll down to the Courses section and click Edit.  Type in the course name and associate it with an experience element (job or volunteer) or education element.  You can add a course number if you feel it would be useful (generally it’s not since numbering schemes are usually pretty internal and obtuse).  Add as many as you like and hit Save.  All done!

Be careful that you associate the course with the correct experience as that is where they will show up (similar to projects).  List leadership courses, professional courses, technical courses, anything that shows your expertise and, more importantly, your direction.  List the actual course title – if it is a fuzzy internal name you may want to parenthetically indicate the content.  CorpWise (leadership and management) or SecureCorp (information security training).

Also keep in mind that every change to your profile (such as adding a course) posts a feed update – use that to your advantage and add one or two at a time (or all the ones associated with a particular experience element) and then a few more when you need feed visibility.