 is the Google project management certificate actually worth it or not? That's what we're going to be going over in this video. I'm going to talk about a brief overview of the course, then we're going to get into the time of completion, the cost, the demand, the salary, the production value, the chances of landing you a job, and the overall value of the course. And then I'm going to be ranking all of these on a scale from one to 10 with 10 being the best. And at the very end, I'll give you a final score and let you know whether I think this certificate is worth it or not and what people would be best served by taking this cert. So if you appreciate me doing these types of videos, go ahead, gently tap that like button and let's jump right into it. All right, so this is the Google project management professional certificate that is hosted on Coursera. They claim that you can start your path to a career in project management in this program. You'll learn in-demand skills that will have you job ready in less than six months, no degree or experience is required. So I will put a link to the certificate down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. There is a seven day free trial so you can check it out for free for seven days. And if you choose to keep taking the certificate, it costs about $39 a month. Also, if you're watching this video and you have taken the certificate, please comment down below your experiences so that we can all learn from it, whether it was positive or negative, or you can share both the pros and the cons. Now let's go ahead and do a bit of an overview of all the different courses within this certificate. So there is six total courses that you have to take in order to complete the certificate. Course number one is foundations of project management. Course two is project initiation, starting a successful project. Course three is project planning, putting it all together. Course four is project execution, running the project. Course five is agile project management. And course six is the capstone, which is applying project management in the real world. And all of the courses have either a 4.8 or a 4.9 star rating. So they are all excellent. Now at the end of this course, I believe you have to take a test and the test is not proctored. So obviously it's going to be relatively easy to pass. All right. So now let's go ahead and talk about the time to completion, right? So how long is it going to take you to complete this course? Now according to Google, they say it takes about six months to complete the course if you study under 10 hours a week. It's also 100% self-paced so you can study anytime you want, whether that's in the morning, before work, during your lunch break, after work, whenever you can. So obviously there's pros and cons to that. The pros is you can study whenever you have time. The cons is you have to be self-motivated and self-directed. Now they say it's going to take about six months, but almost all of the self-reporting shows that you can finish it much quicker than that. So for instance, this person says that it doesn't take six months, but it requires a lot of time. I'm in a temporary labor adjustment and have time to do it daily and it took me almost a month. So this person finished it in a month, but they say at a normal pace, whatever that means, it would take about three months. Either of those mean that it would be a lot faster than six. This person here says that it took them about 160 hours total, which is a lot less than the 240 hours that they claim it's going to take you. So depending on your situation, you know, maybe you're super busy, you've got a family, a full-time job, etc., or maybe you have tons of time, I would estimate this is going to take you around one to three months to complete. And that's really fast if you compare it to a bootcamp, which typically takes three months all the way up to a year, or a college degree, which takes 5.1 years on average. So when it comes to the time to completion, this is extremely fast. I'm going to give it a nine out of 10. Next, we're going to talk about the cost of the certificate. Now, obviously the comparisons here would be a college degree or a bootcamp. College costs about $100,000. Bootcamp is typically going to cost $10,000 or even more. So compared to those, Coursera, at about $39 a month, let's say it takes you three months, that's going to be a little over $100, around 120. Right. And there's a range there. So let's say it takes you six months, that would be $234. If it takes you two months, that would be about $78. So obviously very affordable, especially compared to a bootcamp or a college degree. Now, Coursera also does offer financial aid if you can't afford the $39 a month. So definitely look into that. I've heard that they do approve people quite often. And this is the price for the US and Canada. So if you live in another country and this certificate is available, it typically will be less. So again, just check the link down below. I believe it's like geo located. So it'll show you what the price is in your country. Now, Coursera does have a refund policy that give you the first seven days for free. And as long as you cancel your subscription within those first seven days, you get a full refund, you're not going to have to pay anything. But if you don't cancel your subscription, you will not be able to get a refund. So I guess that would be one of the downsides to doing Coursera. I think the reason they do that is because if they allowed people to get a refund after the 30 day period, most people would just game the system, finish the certificate really quickly and then get their refund for free. Now, when you compare the cost of this certificate to its biggest rival in certificates, that would be the CAPM certificate that is offered by the Project Management Institute. This certificate typically, you know, you're going to finish it in two to three months. So it's going to be somewhere between $78 to about $120. The Project Management Institute certificate is going to be $300 for non members and $225 for members, right? So even when you compare to other certificates, it's still extremely affordable. So the only score I can give here is obviously going to be a 10 out of 10. This is probably the most affordable way that you can give yourself a chance of landing a job with something that only costs you like $78. Alright, next, let's go ahead and talk about the demand. So on the home page of this certificate, they say right off the bat, there are 479,000 in-demand job openings in Project Management. And when you finish the certificate, you'll actually get access to a private job board. So this is the Google Coursera job platform where a group of more than 150 employers are hiring for open roles. And there are employer consortiums that are currently available in the US, Canada, India, Singapore, Indonesia, and they are coming to more countries soon. And the in-demand job specifically that they say this certificate will get you ready for are going to be Project Manager, Project Coordinator, Project Assistant, Operations Manager, Operations Associate, Program Manager, Scrum Master, and Project Associate. So let's go ahead and look at the demand at the entry level for all of these different careers. So if you go to LinkedIn, you sort by jobs and you sort by entry level only, and you type in Project Manager, you're going to see 74,000 results. For Project Coordinator, you're going to see 30,000 results, 66,000 for Project Assistant, 68,000 for Operations Manager, 76,000 for Program Manager, 33,000 for Scrum Master, and 25,000 for Project Associate. So it does seem like there are a ton of entry level jobs available for a lot of those different positions. And if you look at BLS, you type in Project Management Specialists, you are going to see 681,000 total jobs, and it's growing at 7%, which is as fast as average. So that's very healthy. Now, another thing that's really amazing, this is basically a pro tip that a lot of people are not doing, but I've gotten a ton of positive feedback on this when I started telling people to do this, is to put this on LinkedIn, right? So even if you haven't finished the certificate yet, right, but you are in the process of taking it, go ahead and put that on LinkedIn. And you will probably notice that recruiters will start adding you and reaching out to you. And that is because people actually search through LinkedIn using these certificates. And if you put that you're just taking it, they will find you. It's even better if you finish the certificate, you'll probably get a lot of people hitting you up. So that is another great way for you to get noticed. And overall, just Project Management, Operations Management, it's something that is super important. Operations are incredibly important to any company out there. And so this is one of those skills that's just never going to go away. Overall, I'm going to give it a 9.5 out of 10. Next, we are going to be talking about the salary. So on the homepage, they say $73,000 median entry level salary. If you type in some of those careers that they mentioned on Glassdoor, you're going to see $84,000 for a project manager, $56,000 for a project coordinator, $48,000 for a project assistant, $61,000 for a project associate, $117,000 for a scrum master, $100,000 for a program manager, and $100,000 for an operations manager. So these are all very healthy salaries. And of course, you would probably start off with one of the lower level positions like project manager, and then you can move into something like operations manager later on. But these are extremely good salaries, especially considering this is one of those positions that you can get into with a ton of different degrees, or in many cases, no degree at all. So overall, I'm going to give it a salary score of 9 out of 10. Next one on the list is going to be the production value and engagement. Now, this is extremely subjective. It has a lot to do with the personalities of the people who actually present in the course. But if you look at the reviews, they do tend to be pretty good. So for instance, this person says, excellent series overall, and the capstone finale was very challenging. The teacher was very organized and professional. And I would recommend these courses to anyone looking to get their PMP. This person says it's a very good introductory course in project management. Mind you, by itself, it's not enough to pass the PMP exam, but it does give you a basic understanding of project management and how you can apply project management to your job. The instructor is friendly and the course material is of good quality. For me, the highlights of this specialization were the interviews with PMPs and the capstone project. I strongly recommend everyone to take the capstone project because it's a very good learning experience. This person says, I enjoy the lectures, the professor has a good speaking and teaching style, which keeps me interested. Lots of concrete math examples, which make it easier to understand very good slides, which are well formulated and easy to understand. Now, I will say that this is not one of the certificates that when you look at Reddit or YouTube comments, have a ton of positive comments like you look at with the IT Google professional certificate, that one, you can just find a insane amount of positive comments. But that doesn't mean I wasn't able to find some, there were definitely some on there. And overall, all the different six courses were either ranked 4.8 or 4.9 stars. So for that reason, for the production value slash engagement, I'm going to give this one an eight out of 10. Next, we're going to talk about its chances of landing you a job. Now, this will provide job opportunities at over 300 different companies. It will open up doors for you that were not available before, and it will make it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to find you. And on top of that, it does look good to have this on your resume and a significant amount of the course is dedicated to getting you prepared for interviews and helping you pass them. And more and more people are starting to see the value of these Google certificates, and they're starting to become more and more respected in the industry. And on top of that, there are a ton of reviews of people who have gotten jobs using this certificate. So for instance, this person says, Yes, you are right. It's a very good certification. My husband has done this in May to June of 2021. He got this certificate and got a job as a deputy general manager. He was a principal civil engineer and got a job as a deputy general manager in India. I don't know if he is also eligible to apply to jobs in the UK without much experience as a manager, he started in July. That's an example of somebody getting a job in India, which is really awesome because some of the products I review are only available in first world English speaking countries. So it's great to see that there are options for other people as well. So this person said I did it and as soon as I posted the badge to my LinkedIn profile, a bunch of recruiter started calling me and I got a new job through one granted the job was actually as a product owner, not a project manager, but that's mostly because of the work experience on my resume. Either way, the completion of the course really triggered alarm bells for recruiters on LinkedIn. So in my opinion, it was super worth it. Here's another person who says from my experience several months ago, the Coursera course was very informative, but definitely heavily skewed towards Google's methods and process. It also was very, very basic, like there was a whole segment on basic resume writing. So depending on where you are in your career journey, it may have portions that you fast track through. That being said, it helped me land a career switch from nursing to project management. Here's a review from a website called reliablesoft.net, which kind of reviews all these sorts of things. So the Google project management professional certificate is a good certificate for those who want to work as a project manager in just four months. And for less than $200, you can build the skills needed to start a career in project management. The course material is easy to follow. And the quality of the instructors is very good, making this one of the best entry level project management certifications. And here is somebody who got a job at Dell. This was posted on the Coursera page. So as I worked through my Google certificate, the possibilities of my future began unfolding in my mind. I began to dream bigger, which put me on a journey that led me to Dell. So yeah, all across the internet, you are seeing positive reviews for people who took this certificate. But with that being said, it's still a certificate that costs $39 a month, right? It's not a boot camp that's going to get you like really well prepared for project management. So you may have to supplement this with other things like creating a really good portfolio, for instance. But overall, it might get you like 80% of the way there and you even have a pretty decent chance of getting a job. And so I'm going to go ahead and give this one an eight out of 10 when it comes to the chances of landing you a job. All right, so now we're going to talk about what value it offers overall. Now, when it comes to value, the way I like to think about this is how much time, effort and money are you risking? And what is the possible reward that you could get? So the time you're risking is a few months. That's a heck of a lot less than college or a boot camp. The effort that you're risking, it's not going to be super difficult. You can do it at your own pace. And the money you're risking is going to be $39 a month. So you're not risking much money either. And the potential reward is that you could get yourself a completely new career, right? You could start in a completely new career without having to go to college. So from a risk reward perspective, this is excellent. And what Giga brains are doing is they're actually using these Coursera certifications to look into different careers, right? So they'll look into the, you know, project management certificate, they'll look into the data analytics certificate, they'll look into the IT cert, the UX design cert, etc. And they'll see which one seems to fit their personality the best. So this is a quick and easy way to figure out what careers are best for you. And you don't have to risk much time, effort or money. Whereas this happens all the time where someone will go to college, they're two to three years into their degree, and they realize they don't want to do that career. So they just wasted two to three years of their time, a ton of effort, and a ton of money, they're probably like $60,000 and dead at that point. So that is the true value that these Google certifications offer in my opinion. Now with that being said, 75% of Google career certificate graduates in the United States report an improvement in their career trajectory. So that's pretty good considering a lot of people are probably just taking it just to dip their toe in, they're taking it to refresh on things, and they're not actually planning on changing careers. Now certificates are becoming a viable alternative to traditional education. I consider these to be a part of alternative education. We've already seen how certificates have completely changed the game in careers like IT. And that same thing is going to happen in many other related careers. And the reason for this is because colleges simply cannot keep up with the demands of the workforce. And so that's why you see these certificates popping up to fill in the cracks. Now another thing that's really great is they are going to have you do applied learning projects, which not only is great because you learn the most by doing, but on top of that, it's going to build your portfolio. And portfolio is so important. I cannot describe how incredibly important a portfolio is, especially if you're trying to get a job without a college degree. So not only are you going to learn the theoretical knowledge, but you're going to learn practical skills that companies actually want you to know. And of course, you're going to earn the career credential that you can put on your resume, as well as on your LinkedIn, you're going to learn a bunch of valuable skills that are probably going to be helpful to you regardless of whether you go into project management or not, such as organizational culture, career development, strategic thinking, change management, project management, stakeholder management, business writing, project charter, project planning, risk management, task estimation, and procurement. And considering you're barely risking any time, effort or money from a value perspective, I have to give this one a 10 out of 10. Is it going to get you a job guaranteed? Absolutely not. Is it going to get you probably 80% of the way there? Very good chance. Does it have a chance of getting you a job with just the certificate alone? Yes, it does. There's tons of reviews on the internet that show that that's true. So overall, the score is going to be a 9.07 out of 10. This is a great score for a certificate. And I think that if you understand the value proposition of these certificates, you're not going to be disappointed by it. The only people who are disappointed are the ones who think that the certificate is like a golden ticket to a free job. And realistically speaking, at $39 a month, did you really expect the certificate to just automatically get you a job without you having to do any other extra work outside of it? Like, do you really think the certificate is going to be better than a boot camp or a degree? Because a boot camp and a degree still don't guarantee you a job. So overall, a lot to love here. This is going to get a massive thumbs up from me. Definitely check it out. I'll put it down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. And there's a seven day free trial. Also, if you want to know what my top five favorite Google certificates are, check that out right here.