One of the best ways to change career is to enroll in a course. This is because a course has a substantial impact on your professional development.
In this post, you’ll find a list of the best courses to change careers, no matter your age and the career stage you are in.
Ideally, when changing careers, we recommend you be skilled in three areas: the industry, yourself, and new technologies.
Are you ready? Then let’s dig in.
These courses prepare you to do the job because most jobs require a formal qualification, recognised and accredited by governing bodies. Also, to start your career, these courses will land you a job without a university degree.
Like the Level 3 Personal Trainer Course, Personal training courses will provide you with the skills and coaching training needed in the fitness industry.
There are several fitness-oriented modules typically taught in these courses, like Anatomy and Physiology, Nutrition and weight management, PT programming and coaching, behaviour change coaching, and advanced resistance training.
You can also advance your skill set by enrolling in the Level 4 Elite Personal Trainer Course to enable you to work with clients with common health conditions.
The duration of these courses is dependent on whether you take them full-time or part-time.
With the skills and knowledge gained from these courses, you can begin a career as either an employed personal trainer in a gym, boot camp, cruise ship, community centre, health club, or as a self-employed Personal Trainer. Besides, the average salary of a personal trainer in the UK is £27,000.
If you are interested in starting a career as a nutrition coach or advisor, you should take nutrition courses to become certified.
Some of the nutrition courses you can use to advance your nutrition knowledge and qualifications include the Level 3 Nutrition and Weight Management Course, Level 4 RSPH Nutrition Course, Level 5 Nutrition Course: Advanced Nutrient Metabolism, and Level 5 Nutrition Course: Nutrition and Immunity.
Depending on their level, these courses typically involve modules in nutrition and weight management, behaviour change coaching, sport and exercise nutrition, appetite regulation, meal planning, pre-and postnatal nutrition, childhood nutrition and obesity, plant-based nutrition, and Gut health and nutrition for older adults.
Also read: how to start your nutrition business: a complete guide
Also, you can apply nutrition principles to different clients with varying goals using the knowledge and skills gained from these nutrition courses.
Besides, after getting your qualifications, you can work in various settings like hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and cafeterias, or become self-employed.
Pilates instructor courses are the best bet for you if you are already a health and fitness enthusiast.
This course will provide you with the much-needed skill and expertise to deliver Pilates classes to a wide range of clients.
Some of the Pilates instructor courses include the Level 3 Mat Pilates Instructor Course, Level 3 Mat Pilates Instructor Course with Small Equipment, and Level 4 Mat Pilates Teacher Training Course.
In these varying courses, you’ll learn about the human anatomy and physiology as well as the 14 original Pilates exercises and their various modifications.
This way, you can work with multiple clients, widen your market, and increase your earning potential. Pilates instructors are typically paid from £30 to £100 per hour, depending on the setting.
You can work in fitness clubs, private Pilates studios, spas, community centres, schools, rehab facilities, and wellness centres.
There is a high demand for digital marketers, especially as companies in all industries need a robust online presence to target customers. As digital marketing has multiple domains, the same goes for digital marketing courses.
Some fields include social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, data services analytics, Ad campaigns, lead generation, link building, search engine optimisation, email marketing, growth marketing, and content marketing.
These digital marketing courses will provide you with a wide knowledge of different tools and platforms you can use to carry out these individual digital marketing fields. Digital marketing courses are also crucial if you want to become an entrepreneur.
Plus, as a digital marketer, you can work in any type of company and industry, helping them grow their online brand presence.
Do you know how to deal with conflict resolution and communicating with people? If yes, a human resource management course may be right.
These courses usually cover human resource Strategies, organisational practices, employee relations, HR Performance Management, Ethics, communication, organisation, conflict management, and training.
After taking these accredited courses, you can start recruiting new employees, ensuring employee compliance, handling conflict resolution, and supporting on-boarded employees.
Human resource professionals are essential to both employees and the company, and you can work in any industry seamlessly.
Enrolling in finance courses will enable you to understand how the economy works and make financially-backed decisions.
Businesses in all industries, from technical to manufacturing, insurance, automobile, and food, all need finance experts in their teams.
Some aspects of finance that are typically taught include banking and finance, auto finance, financial accounting, finance and investment, corporate finance, and quantitative finance.
With these courses, you’ll also learn how to invest, what to invest in, how to save, and how to budget.
Most of them just require you to have a stable internet connection and a reliable computer or mobile device to get started. You can also enrol in a finance course if you want to create your own business, ensuring that you are financially educated.
Are you thinking of self-employment as a career option? If yes, some courses can get you prepared. These courses will teach you about the different types of self-employment, with their benefits and drawbacks, and you will be required to ask yourself important questions to ensure self-employment is the right path for you.
You will also be introduced to the requirements of self-employment and the different businesses you can do as a self-employed individual. After taking the how to become self-employed courses, you can take different business routes.
If you are switching jobs or even industries, we recommend focusing on selling yourself.
Why? Because first impressions count.
You can easily transfer your existing skills and experience to a new job and career, effectively communicating your value to a prospective employer (or client).
As an individual starting a new career path, you need to tailor your CV to fit it – this is where CV writing courses come in. Your CV allows you to communicate who you are to prospective employers.
These courses will enable you to get the skills needed to create a unique CV to make you stand out. You will also be introduced to the essential CV components and learn how to write cover letters.
Once you send your CV, the next step is to prepare for the interview. Interview preparation courses help you to prepare for your job interview, in-person or virtual.
These courses also offer insights on building your CV to fit the job you are applying for. They offer practice interview questions so you can be prepared.
Besides, you will learn how to get jobs, deal with nerves, research for your interview, boost your soft skills, create an excellent first impression, boost your performance, and handle various interview techniques.
Personal branding is very important, especially as you are changing your career – it is how you strategically position yourself.
With a positive personal brand, you can position yourself as a professional in your field, and some courses can help you with this.
These courses will offer you techniques and tools to determine the unique selling point of your skills.
Personal branding courses enable you to understand the purpose, responsibilities, and benefits of personal branding. You will also learn about communication strategies, online and offline identity, brand construction, content creation, brand maintenance, audience identification, and communication skills.
If you are interested in becoming an influencer, there are courses available that can help you on this journey.
These courses will provide you with the expertise to market yourself as an expert in any industry you choose, enabling you to work as a full-time influencer with multiple brands.
You will also learn how to create engaging content to boost sponsored products and services, develop your brand, build your followers, and increase your earning potential. Besides, multiple influencer courses are available tailored to various industries like fitness, lifestyle, food, and fashion.
You need good negotiation skills, especially as you are in the middle of a career change. With negotiation courses, you can assess your negotiation skills and build them. You will also learn and follow different negotiation models and plan your negotiation strategy.
Some of these courses enable you to develop principled arguments that will persuade people during a negotiation. Besides, negotiation skills are needed in all businesses and industries, regardless of whether you are employed or self-employed.
So, at this point, you probably have a good idea of what industry course you need to take and how to sell yourself better.
And you are probably wondering: “why do I need to take technology courses?”
Well, it’s not mandatory to know a lot about technology, but if you do, it can enormously help with a career change. You can take courses out of personal interest or because you want to be a professional.
In this list, we’ll go through the skills you might want to learn that will be useful at some point in your new career.
Web development courses provide you with the skills and expertise needed to build and maintain websites and apps. Some of the languages you learn will include CSS, Python, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, Oracle, MySQL, Swift, and HTML. Different web development courses target different types of web development, like front-end development, backend development, mobile development, full-stack development, and database technology. These courses will teach you how to implement elements and layouts into websites while ensuring optimal display across all devices.
You will also learn how to fix bugs, build compatible applications, carry out usability tests, maintain workflow management, build software using backend frameworks, and deploy content management systems. As a web developer, you can use your skills in any industry or start freelancing.
Data science is a critical part of multiple industries, especially in industries that deal with large amounts of data. These data science courses will enable you to understand and analyse structured and unstructured data. Some of the skills you’ll learn in this course are programming skills, predictive analysis, statistical skills, and machine learning.
Most of these courses will typically make use of tools like Python, R Studio, SQL, SAS, Jupyter, Spark, MATLAB, Tableau, and Excel. Some of them allow you to also create industry-relevant projects that combine everything in their curriculum. Data science skills can be used in different industries like healthcare, logistics, law enforcement, and finance.
AI and machine learning courses will teach you the different ways to use algorithms and statistical models to develop self-learning computer systems. These courses combine computer science, data science, natural language processing, psychology, math, and other disciplines.
AI and machine learning courses will teach you the different ways to use algorithms and statistical models to develop self-learning computer systems, a skill highly sought after by energy software development companies. These courses combine computer science, data science, natural language processing, psychology, math, and other disciplines.
Enrolling in any AI and machine learning course will allow you to explore AI applications and use cases and understand different AI concepts. Additionally, you will be exposed to various AI concerns like bias and ethics.
As an AI and machine learning expert, you can work in multiple industries like energy management, retail, healthcare, hardware manufacturing, finance, transportation, advertising, computer systems design, marketing, and pharmaceutical research.
There are many software development courses you can choose from online that do not require any pre-requisite qualifications. These courses are perfect for both complete beginners and people with some programming skills, and they will teach you to write code and create software products like applications and operating systems. Depending on the course you choose, you can either learn HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, Python, Django or MEAN stack programming language.
Most software development courses ensure that you understand the fundamentals of programming, and a number of them offer custom software development specialisations. After the courses, you should be able to build your software projects. Besides, as a software developer, you can work in industries like healthcare, government, finance, information technology, and education.
Companies like Wesoftyou play a significant role in this field, offering expertise and innovative solutions in software development services.
If you want to learn a new language, there are courses available that can help with that. These courses will enable you to write, speak, read, and interpret the language of your choice after much practice. Unlike other courses discussed, foreign language courses require constant training.
These courses are essential as they increase your skillset and your earning potential. Translators and linguists are still in demand, so enrolling in these courses can get you one step toward your career goals.
Are you a mature adult? Do you want a second chance in your career or to study for a university degree?
Enroll in access courses.
Access to Higher Education courses are nationally-recognized Level 3 qualification courses that enable people without recognized qualifications and those who have missed out on school to have the qualifications they need to study at a university.
For example, if you don’t have A-Levels and want to attend university, these courses are the best solution. Besides, these courses are a bridge back into education, and UK universities recognize them as an alternative to customary entry qualifications into undergraduate courses.
Are you working in health and want to further your development? Do you want to develop your health expertise? You can enroll in a myriad of health and care courses.
Some health and care courses you can enroll in include elderly and disabled care, CPR and first aid, Intellectual disability support, nursing studies, HIV/AIDs awareness, social work, and diabetes awareness. These courses will enable you to develop your health management skills and provide care for people in need.
Teaching courses will enable you to enhance your skills in curriculum development, behaviour management, assessment, bullying management, and special needs requirements. There are different teaching courses based on various topics, so all you have to do is choose the one that interests you.
You will also learn about emotional intelligence, adaptability, communication, creativity, and leadership. Besides, taking these courses will let you know whether a teaching career is right for you.
Are you passionate about hospitality and catering? Do you want to work in a luxury hotel or restaurant? Some courses can get you well on your way toward this career path, and with these courses, you will learn practical skills needed in the hospitality and catering industry. You will also develop your cooking skills, baking skills, catering skills, management skills, and decoration skills. Plus, you can work in events, hospitals, cruise ships, exhibition centres, and hotels with these courses. You can also become a restaurant manager, hotel manager, chef, caterer, kitchen assistant, hotel porter, or self-employed business owner.
There are different massage therapist courses you can enroll in, from deep tissue to prenatal, sports, hot stone, trigger point, reflexology, and aromatherapy. These courses provide you with the expertise and knowledge to enhance the lives of others. If you want to enroll in sports massage courses, the standard Level 3 Sports Massage Course is the ideal choice.
It requires a complete understanding of soft tissue dysfunction and treatment, human anatomy and physiology, and fitness principles. Additionally, you can work in different places as a massage therapist like spas, gyms, fitness clubs, and cruise ships.