First-time job seekers and seasoned professionals can face similar challenges. While you may have the talent to advance your career, not every available opportunity is a best fit. Crafting a career that meets your personal needs means setting powerful professional goals. Meeting those objectives requires commitment to learning in areas such as leadership development and soft skills education. It may even require advanced coaching in specialized areas such as real estate sales. That’s where professional development courses and programs provide the boost you need to craft your own career.
What are professional development courses?
Professional development programs offer specialized educational experiences designed to assist you in better understanding yourself today to become a better leader tomorrow. They include online workshops, prerecorded sessions and insider tips, quizzes and even opportunities to earn a certificate in a particular field.
Maybe most importantly, these courses are structured to accommodate a busy schedule. You can attend classes remotely without leaving your home or missing time from work or family. Plus, the best classes are guided by proven industry experts. These virtual mentors provide the real-world tips, goal-setting strategies and insights needed to bridge the gap between education and real-world application.
Why take a professional development course?
Investing your time in professional development programs demonstrates a commitment to continual learning and self-improvement. By learning new skills and refining existing ones, you can enhance your job performance in technical areas, increase your leadership skills and develop the soft skills necessary for adaptability, problem-solving and communications.
Additionally, these courses accelerate your career by offering fresh insights from proven industry experts. That is, they help you to think differently and approach challenges in new and creative ways. The result is an increase in your competence and, more than that, an increase in your confidence and personal fulfillment. The investment in a convenient, online professional development curriculum can be one of the easiest and most meaningful ways to empower yourself and build a career you love.
What are the best online professional development courses?
We carefully chose our top professional development programs based on criteria such as subject matter expertise, affordability and overall professional growth value. But, most importantly, each online provider offers many opportunities to explore. Your professional development goals are unique. These courses offer the best opportunities to help you start your future pursuits today.
1. Win the Day Accelerator
Creating the future you want requires winning the day, every day. Renowned success coach and bestselling author James Whittaker shows you how with this comprehensive professional development program. You’ll learn to recognize your strengths and weaknesses for greater self-awareness, use stress to your advantage and develop a powerful daily routine. Most importantly, you will harness the power of the Win the Day strategy to create a personalized plan for success.
2. How to Win Friends and Influence Business People
Dale Carnegie’s influence as a pioneer in personal and professional development lives on through results-driven online training. You’ll learn to build stronger relationships, express ideas in ways that create team buy-in and delegate to lead more effectively. Stress reduction, confidence building and enhanced communications skills all fall within the purview of this four-part professional development course.
3. Pyramid of Success
Legendary UCLA Bruins coach John Wooden knew the recipe for team accomplishment and personal achievement. Through unprecedented access to his recordings, memos and more, SUCCESS has curated his work to create an outstanding mentorship program you can take online. The package includes 10 online courses, a workbook and more to help you lead a championship life and career.
4. The Future of Work: Preparing for Disruption
Artificial intelligence has accelerated technological growth while disrupting the workplace and, in fact, entire industries. While many jobs may be replaced through automation, new opportunities will emerge. In this five-week course, you’ll learn how to meet modern demands through classical skills, including critical analysis, problem-solving and teamwork. Embrace an era where continual learning is not only beneficial but necessary with this series from the World Bank Group.
5. One-Year Success Plan
Legendary entrepreneur, author and success coach Jim Rohn lives on through this 12-month program designed to develop the character traits you need to achieve your career goals. This professional development course delves into his “12 pillars of success” method and includes weekly strategy emails, a comprehensive workbook, audio interviews with top achievers and much more. If you seek to regain focus and take control of your destiny, the Rohn program will provide the knowledge and motivation you need to stay on track and grow.
6. Building Company Culture
Your company is made of people. You want them to work in collaboration toward your institutional mission and goals. But building the best corporate culture that establishes that level of cohesion takes knowledge. In this online course presented by Stanford University’s schools of business and engineering, you will learn how to attract the best employees, manage effective teams, foster goal-driven alignment and much more.
7. SUCCESS Real Estate Agent Training powered by Hoss Pratt
To become a successful real estate agent takes talent, skill and an abundance of confidence. If you’re an agent ready to move from ambition to profitability, this course is for you. With this one-year coaching bundle, you will learn to create successful business plans, develop your best leads and, most importantly, convert those leads to sales. The professional development course includes two coaching sessions per month and more than eight hours of video training to develop the skills and mindset needed to succeed in this competitive and exciting industry.
8. SUCCESS Real Estate Leader Training powered by Cheplak Live
Leading a successful team of real estate agents and staff requires unique skills for success. In three coaching sessions per month for 12 months, you will learn the insider tactics and strategies used by industry leaders to attract and retain the best agents, develop growth strategy plans that scale upward and more. By harnessing and cultivating the best of your inherent leadership skills, you will build the real estate dream team you’ve always wanted for escalating sales and lasting growth.
9. Nano Tips for Building Soft Skills
Soft skills are universally desired across industries and at every phase of your professional development. Connected to emotional intelligence, these skills include your work ethic and your ability to work collaboratively and communicate effectively. You can learn these skills, and executive coach and speaker Elayne Fluker can help you. Through this professional development program on LinkedIn, you will discover how to communicate better, inspire creativity in your team, think critically and accelerate your career growth.
Photo by voronaman/Shutterstock.com
Bryan enjoys the digital space where arts and technology meet. As a writer, he has worked in education, health and wellbeing, and manufacturing. He also assists smaller businesses in web development including accessibility and content development. In his free time, he hikes trails in central Florida.
