Job skill certificates from the likes of Coursera or edX are exactly what you make of them. They are a jumping off point for learning new skills and techniques that can be put forward in the workforce. A recent WSJ article cast doubt on their validity and career advancements that they claim to skill-up for.

While I disagree that they should be the end all be all requirement for an employer to make decisions on a candidate – they can provide must more value that one might think. Intrigue and curiosity are the main drivers why a prospective employee may try to take one of these credentialed courses or professional certifications. It’s meant as a stepping off point in order to build upon that knowledge. It’s not what they’re doing in the course, it’s what comes after.

The credentials with the best outcomes made a difference: Workers who received one of the 2,000 top-performing credentials earned about $5,000 extra a year, on average, within 12 months of completing the programs. Many of the certificates were in nursing, radiology and other medical fields—where credentials are widely valued by employers and labor is consistently in demand.

That is the issue with his study – what’s in demand will always change. What was data analytics and coding yesterday, will be something completely different tomorrow.

Let’s take the example of the role of a Business Analyst, for example. Coursera has a wonderful program called “Microsoft Business Analyst Professional Certificate”. The idea is to take someone from the fundamentals to a working project at the end to prove their knowledge retention and introduce knowledge workers to the skills that the software company has to offer. If you’re new to Power BI, Power Apps, and the Power Platform in general, than this is a great introduction that weaves these concepts into a curriculum.

Like all skills and experience, nobody can be an expert from one pass through of this course, but what it does is lay the foundation to garner an introduction to the company’s products which are widely used in many industries. It’s not limiting to a single platform, but the concepts can be taught to many competitors products (i.e. if you understand how to use Power BI, then Salesforce’s Tableau will be understood just as easily).

Upon competition of the course, Microsoft offers a voucher for half-off the price of the entry level Power Platform certification. While the merits of the study from The Burning Glass Institute and the American Enterprise Insitute need to be delved in further, this conclusion is not a one-size fits all study. Many of us pivot careers every 2 to 5 years in today’s information economy. It’s likely that you need to reskill and retool yourself before then. Skill certificates have been always a great introduction to a new topic and interests, and they will continue to provide that crucial role in the future.