“Get certified,” they say.

“Get certified,” they say. “You need to demonstrate your proficiencies, especially in AI.”

You have basic knowledge. Your resume was reviewed and edited by AI. Since the resume was in Microsoft Word, you used Co-Pilot.

But then you also hear from job coaches, recruiters, and hiring managers that “Your resume looks too much like an AI bot wrote it.”

All you did was ask ChatGPT to compare the job posting against your master resume that has all of your experience and recommend what it needs to include and call out as key accomplishments. Then you edited the resume yourself to customize for the job posting based on that feedback. You didn’t just blindly accept whatever AI recommended. You took the information it provided and you applied that to the task at hand, just as you would when a peer would review and edit your work in the corporate setting.

Sound familiar?

It’s frustrating. Especially when you are currently unemployed and you don’t really have the extra money to pay for certifications that may or may not make a difference.

So how do you get certified?

You ask ChatGPT what certifications are best for AI. It tells you that it’s all about your background and goals, but it gives a few examples. For a software engineer, try Microsoft Azure’s AI Engineer Associate, AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer, or Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer. For a manager, the CertNexus Certified Artificial Intelligence Practitioner (CAIP) or ISACA Advanced in AI Audit (AAIA).

What if you aren’t in a software role?

It suggests:

• Microsoft AI Skills

• Google AI Essentials

• Certifications through Project Management Institute, like the Project Management Professional (PMP)

• Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

How much do these cost?

Some platforms offer free learning options, like Microsoft Learn, but there is usually an exam fee to actually get the official certification. For Google products, you need to sign up for their learning platform, Coursera, which has a monthly subscription cost. Often, recognized certifications through professional organizations can be more than $500. Instructor-led courses may be required, which adds to the cost, and the exam for certification is a separate fee.

Google AI Professional

I chose Google because I use that platform the most as a marketer, communicator, and small business owner. The certificate is Google AI Professional. It requires a $49/month subscription to their learning platform, Coursera.

• Designed for general AI fluency and how to use it in your daily work; no experience required

• Practical applications and hands-on learning labs

I expected it to be a sales platform for Google products, but I assumed the knowledge can apply to any platform – not just Google Gemini’s unique capabilities. It’s seven courses that cover fundamentals like effective prompts, and features other Google products that I didn’t know existed like Canvas, Deep Research, NotebookLM, Google Workspace, and Google AI Studio. What really stood out to me was content creation. Specifically, the areas where I am not as skilled: video and audio creation and editing. And something that I never thought I’d be able to do: app building. But to use Gemini to do those things requires Google AI Pro, which costs $20/month.

I was able to complete the certification in three days, but I dedicated the full day to work on the certification. Quizzes in each module confirm your learning. I measured my understanding by the number I got completed on the first try, which directly correlated to how much I already knew about the topic and how to do it manually, like data analysis in Excel. But getting new things correct on the first or second try? Huge confidence-booster.

You can access most of the course material through Coursera after you complete the course, even when your Coursera subscription is no longer active.

After completing this course, I say it is worth the investment in Google AI Pro and Coursera.

Non-AI lessons learned

I’ve said this before, but it really isn’t about AI “replacing” roles. The importance is on the employee to know how to use them to be more efficient and work smarter, not harder. And when tasks are completed faster, we have time to do more. The problem is not AI. The problem right now is that companies think AI can consolidate the responsibilities of three employees into one role that already had a specific set of responsibilities. So that person is now doing four jobs.

Any role can use AI, but I appreciated that this certification reinforced:

• A person cannot execute a task through AI without knowing how to do it on their own first. Without the independent knowledge, you won’t be able to give it the right prompts or recognize when it’s inaccurate or how to troubleshoot when a function doesn’t work.

• AI is designed for how. It suggests what and where. The human needs to come to the AI with the who and why.

Marketing and communications are always the first roles to be cut in a corporate reorganization, but technology employees seem to be the biggest target right now. These corporations are taking a real short-term view of cost-cutting, budget management, and profit margins. Those technologists created the digital environment to enable AI use, and new advancements aren’t going to stop. You’re going to need those technologists to keep working and upskilling to be ready for the next thing coming so you aren’t behind and left scrambling. For example: COVID and work-from-home and the sudden, urgent need for cloud storage and online employee collaboration tools to already be in place.

We will all come back.

• Corporations are going to find out that they needed to keep those technologists on staff and invest in their upskilling for the company’s long-term stability and growth.

• And they’ll realize that the employees who are left in the wake of the staffing destruction will start to go on medical leaves or simply quit from the emotional burnout.

• Eventually, corporations are going to find that they need internal communications to engage all those new employees they hired. To come to the AI with the “who” and the “why” while factoring the psychology behind AI’s “how” and how it will resonate. And AI can’t host an event.

We all just need to figure out how to pay our bills in the meantime while those corporate executives figure out their mistakes.

As a friend mentioned to me yesterday, “I’ll need to fail a few times before I really understand how to do it.” She was talking about app deployment, but that’s pretty much how life works overall, right?