Google Career Certificate programs are now free for US businesses

To help job seekers and businesses obtain the digital skills needed to thrive in the 21st century, Google has announced a new Career Certificate program and a plan to give every US business up to $100,000 in free tech training.

Career certificate: Google currently offers several certification programs through the online learning platform Coursera. Each is designed and taught by Google employees, and enrollees can complete a program in three to six months of part-time study, at a cost of less than $235.

Google’s calls these “Career Certificates,” and each trains a person for a specific high-demand job: IT specialist, data analyst, project manager, or user experience designer.

Google recognizes these certificates as equivalent to four-year degrees when hiring people for relevant jobs (as do some other companies), and several American universities treat the certificates as equal to 12 academic credits, helping students obtain their degrees at a lower cost.

Each Google Career Certificate trains a person for a specific high-demand job, such as IT specialist or data analyst.

What’s new? Google has now announced that it will provide up to 500 scholarships for its Career Certificate programs to any US business — equivalent to $100,000 in free employee tech training per business.

It has also launched a new Digital Marketing & E-commerce Career Certificate that will teach the skills needed to find customers, build online stores, and more.

Businesses must be registered in the US to qualify for the scholarships, and the free courses will be available on Coursera through December 18, 2024.

Thinking small: Google’s Career Certificate scholarships could be particularly helpful to small businesses, which might not be able to afford to pay for employee training, but could benefit from building up its skills internally — training a staffer to build an online store or analyze website traffic, for example.

“[D]igitally advanced businesses report 20 times better customer acquisition rates. Yet almost half (49%) of small businesses still lack the information and skills needed to use digital tools,” Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google, wrote in the announcement. 

“For every scholarship we give, a business will be gaining capabilities and, at the same time, an employee will be growing new skills,” she added.

We’d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at [email protected].