Certification offers hiring advantage to unemployed

Would you give preferential consideration to an applicant that had completed a course targeted to your specific product or service?

For example, if your shop sold shoes, and you needed a new store clerk, wouldn’t you consider someone who produced a Certificate in Selling and Fitting Shoes above another applicant, equal in other ways, without the training?

With the number of unemployed Americans increasing daily, many are looking to re-training to enter the field of health care – one field that continues to hire, despite the economic downturn.

It couldn’t come at a better time, either. The shortage of workers, especially in nursing and in direct care, is approaching the crisis stage in many areas.

At the same time, many workers are looking for a career that will give them something more than a paycheck; a sense of purpose and of making a genuine difference in peoples’ lives.

The challenges with traditional approaches to education are two-fold: first, admission to the majority of health care training programs is restricted by a limited supply of classrooms and qualified classroom educators. Second, the path to completion is long and costly, both in terms of real out-of-pocket dollars and time.

One solution: online certifications, provided by qualified educational sources, designed to give individuals the tools to become “job-ready.”

In healthcare, this can mean certification in the entry level field of caregiving, or in more advanced areas of study. Today, a flood of professionally skilled workers - newly unemployed - are seeking ways to transition their skills from other industries into the health care industry. While these certifications may not be an entry ticket directly to a job, or a job guarantee, they can significantly boost the individual’s chances of scoring a much-needed job, perhaps in a field new to the applicant.

After all, if you’re hiring, wouldn’t you consider someone with certified training in the area of your work above someone without it?