 So Google just came out with the Google professional cybersecurity certificate and I immediately got a bunch of messages to review it. So that's what we're going to be doing today. So I'm going to be giving my initial thoughts on it and we're also going to be going over important things such as time to completion, the cost, demand for cybersecurity related jobs, the salary for cybersecurity related jobs that you would likely be going for if you went for this certificate, the production value of the course itself, and the overall value that it offers for the price as well as my own opinion on whether it's worth it or not and who it's going to be worth it or not for. Now first of all just as an overall introduction in case you're not familiar with the certificate and Google in general, Google has come out with a bunch of these different professional certificates and the reason that they did it is because of the fact that they were having a lot of trouble finding people for certain positions. Colleges were not properly training people and getting them ready for the jobs that are actually available in the workforce. So Google stepped in and they decided that they were going to create their own professional certificate program. Now I originally reviewed the Google professional certificate program about two years ago and I was extremely skeptical of it but it actually turned out to be very good and it's especially good for the value considering these certificates are extremely affordable and they also offer financial aid for people who are not able to afford them. So I gave the Google professional certificates a positive review two years ago but since then I've actually been even more impressed with them. My students that have taken these have given me incredible reviews. There's tons of comments on my channel saying that they took this certificate they were able to get a job or it really helped them to get a job and in this particular certificate on the home page they're basically saying that this is your path to a career in cybersecurity in this certificate program you'll learn in-demand skills they can have you job ready in less than six months no degree or experience required. Now that is a very bold claim especially for something that is so affordable and this is a professional certificate that is an eight-course series and they say that you can get it done in about six months with seven hours of work per day. It's also completely remote you can do it anytime you want so it's a completely flexible schedule as well and interestingly enough they also say that it's beginner level. Now that's the part that I have to disagree with in my experience I've helped tons of people get jobs and typically cybersecurity jobs are not beginner level. Most people who get cybersecurity jobs start off in some other career path within technology so an example of that would be IT help desk for instance and then they learn additional skills and they're able to get into cybersecurity that way. So just on my initial impression I would say this is more of a intermediate course or maybe somewhere in between beginner and intermediate. I'm not saying you can't learn a lot from it but again just on my initial impression in my experience typically you are going to have to have some work experience in order to get into cybersecurity. Now when it comes to what you learn here they'll say that you're going to be understanding the importance of cybersecurity practices and their impact on organizations. You're going to be able to identify common risks threats and vulnerabilities as well as techniques to mitigate them. You're also going to be able to protect networks, devices, people and data from unauthorized access and cyber attacks using security information and event management tools or SIEM and you're going to be gaining hands-on experience with Python, Linux and SQL and the skills you're going to gain here are going to be Linux, Python programming, SIEM tools, intrusive detection systems and SQL. Alright so let's go ahead and start off with the time to completion. They say that you can get this done in about six months with seven hours of studying per day. Now historically these Google certificates will usually say that it's going to take something like six months when in reality a lot of them take sometimes one to two months and sometimes even less than that. So for instance with the Google IT certificate a lot of people have told me that they've been able to knock it out within a few weeks. Now I do personally think that cybersecurity is going to be a bit more extensive. It probably is going to take longer than something like the Google IT certificate but with that being said I wouldn't be surprised especially if you dedicate a bit more time if you'd be able to knock this one out in about two months. So based on feedback on various different subreddits that I've been reading many people are saying that you can finish it within a month. So for instance this person said that it's doable within a month too if you have lots of free time but realistically speaking you're probably a busy person and it's probably going to take you a bit longer than that. So even if it does take you two to three months that's still pretty good compared to other types of education such as boot camps or college degrees. A lot of the time boot camps will take six months or more and college degrees of course as everybody knows take five years on average in fact bachelor's degrees take five point one years. So when it comes to the time to completion this is very reasonable. Next let's talk about the cost of the certificate. So the Google professional certificate program is hosted on Coursera and I'll put a link down below where you can actually get a seven day free trial if you want to sign up with them. But as of now they charge about 49 dollars per month for people from the US or Canada. Sometimes throughout the year they may have deals on this for instance Coursera Plus can have some really good deals and like I said I'll put that down in the pinned comment as well as the description below so you can check it out to see how much it costs for you. Because in other parts of the world outside of the US and Canada typically they are going to have different pricing and if you absolutely cannot afford it they do offer financial aid so that's something you can check out as well. So let's say you took the full six months to finish this that would be about 294 dollars and if you're able to finish it in two months that would be about 98 dollars. Now when you compare this to college which is $100,000 and if you look at the opportunity cost as well as the debt incurred and all of the extra interest that you have to pay on that college actually costs $500,000 over a lifetime. Boot camps typically cost $10,000 some of them cost up to 30,000 believe it or not. That's a lot of damage. So when you compare it to other forms of education the $49 a month price tag is extremely reasonable and yes you can get educated for free there's lots of great education on YouTube there's companies like Khan Academy for instance and yes you can get really good education online you can look things up on Google YouTube has a lot of great resources as well but it's typically not going to be organized for you it's also not going to be up to date information necessarily there aren't going to be professionals there teaching you the information and you're not going to get a respected certification at the end. So overall the cost in my opinion is extremely reasonable. Next let's talk about the demand and the jobs this certification is going to prepare you for. So some of the common job titles you might be going for here are going to be cyber security analyst, security analyst, security operations center analyst, information security analyst, IT security analyst and cyber defense analyst. If you type in some of these jobs on LinkedIn you sort by entry level you are going to see there is a lot of demand and basically anything that has to do with the security of data is going to be incredibly valuable and incredibly in demand right now. You've probably heard of all the company data breaches that have happened and how those companies have had to pay out billions of dollars in fines and yeah most companies do not want that to happen so they're hiring cyber security professionals left and right. So if you look up information security analyst on BLS for instance you're going to see that it's growing at 35 percent which is much faster than average and these career paths are expanding outside of technology as well for instance law enforcement officers are now learning cyber security related skills as well. So overall there is a ton of demand here but with that being said you do actually have to know those in-demand skills. Next let's talk about salary. Now like I said before there's a bunch of different jobs that you can go for I'll have them pop up on the screen again and typically in my experience what you should do is you should choose one of these jobs right choose one of the jobs tailor your resume tailor your portfolio to that job that's going to give you the best chance of success but let's say you chose cyber security analyst for instance with that one you'd make about $88,000 a year. Security operations center analysts make about 63,000 information security analysts make about 90,000 IT security analysts make about 89,000 and cyber defense analysts make about $80,000 per year so basically all these jobs pay really well so the next one on the list we're going to talk about is the production value in the engagement of the teaching within the modules. Now this one is extremely subjective and I have not taken this myself yet so I have to purely just go off of reviews online and what people have told me but if you look at the reviews they do tend to be really good. First of all it has an overall rating of 4.9 out of 5 on Coursera which is excellent and if you look at the individual modules at this time course one has a 4.9 star rating course two has a 4.8 star rating course three is 4.9 course four is 4.9 course five is 4.9 course six is 4.9 course seven is 4.9 and course eight has a 4.9 star rating so this reader reviewer said I'm taking it to I see some people bashing it or saying it's only a waste of money I couldn't disagree anymore I have no experience I know that this cert alone is most likely not going to get me a job but I'm starting at nothing and this course has done so much better than just studying for the SEC plus SEC plus is a kind of a gold standard certification it's actually teaching me terms and showing how things work in the field they're helping me build a resume and giving projects for me to do that I could use to make a portfolio I'm looking at finishing all the courses within two months and then getting my SEC plus $100 is nothing for the amount of information they're teaching me and their method of delivering it so overall the feedback for this has been overwhelmingly positive of course there's always going to be those trolls online that think everything in the entire world is a scam and anyone that offers a product that isn't completely free is just a scammer who's trying to you know take all of your money but for the most part this one is getting excellent feedback online now next let's talk about its chances of landing you a job and this is the one where I do have to be a bit critical I really do not think for most people that this certificate alone is going to land you a job but with that being said I do think it's an excellent tool that will help you to land the job I see a lot of people that compare the google professional certificates to a college degree and I think that's ridiculous that's like comparing a hammer to a wrench they're two completely different tools and everybody is coming at these from completely different backgrounds and with completely different goals so if you need to hammer in a nail then yeah a hammer's great and if you need to tighten a bolt then a wrench is going to be good for you and so it really just depends on your background your goals and what you're trying to get out of it some of the ways that they help you land a job is first of all they give you access to a private job board and this has over 300 companies that are hiring for these positions another thing they help you do is make your resume look good and they help you to optimize your portfolio and a portfolio is incredibly important to have right if you're trying to get these jobs especially if you're trying to do it without a college degree or previous experience another thing they help you do is they teach you the skills that companies are actually looking for one of my biggest criticisms of college is it will teach you a bunch of stuff it kind of doesn't actually matter employers in the real world do not care about 80 to 90 percent of what you learn in college and with some degrees it's more like 99 percent and additionally and this is something that a lot of people don't know I've heard this over and over again you can actually list this certificate on your LinkedIn you can say that you're in the process of taking it and it's a great way for recruiters and hiring managers to find you remember the job of a recruiter and a hiring manager is pretty difficult they're trying to find talent and the types of people who take these certificates a lot of the time end up being really good employees and so they will actually look for people by searching these certificates on LinkedIn and there are ways on LinkedIn of saying that you're in the process of taking the certificate and then of course after you get done with it you can say that you've completed it and I've gotten a bunch of comments on YouTube and feedback from my students that this is a way that recruiters and hiring managers will actually find them so definitely make sure that you do that overall I do not think for most people out there this certificate is going to land them the job but I do think it's going to be a valuable tool that you can have in your toolbox it will help you to land the job there's probably going to be a few people out there that are actually able to land a job with no experience but that's going to be the exception to the rule and it's also going to help prepare you for other certifications that will also help you to land the job such as the comp tia security plus exam now let's talk about the overall value that it offers in terms of overall value for the price that you pay which for Americans and Canadians is $49 a month for people from other parts of the world it's much less than that it offers an absolutely mind-blowingly ridiculous amount of value you get access to 300 companies with a private job board you get help building your portfolio you get a certificate from a respected company you get relevant training and skills that are currently in demand not skills that were in demand five or ten years ago skills that are in demand right now and it can help you to get found on LinkedIn all this for $49 a month and something that you can probably complete in two months now another piece of value that a lot of people don't mention is the fact that with these certificates especially if you sign up for Coursera plus you can actually kind of sample a bunch of different certificates to see which one you actually enjoy so you might try the data analytics certificate for instance and then you find that you don't really enjoy that so then you go over to the it certificate you really enjoy that one and then you find out that you want to specialize in cyber security so you take this certificate as well and that allows you to sample a bunch of different skills in potential careers that you might end up in without having to spend a bunch of money on college and then go into a career path just to find out that you don't like it so I think that's actually the hidden things that's probably the number one value proposition of these google career certificates it's a low risk high reward way of figuring out what you want to do because just about all of these certificates are going to be teaching you skills that are currently in demand and so you can try out a bunch of different ones like the digital marketing or the it or the cyber security certificate and figure out what you want to do with your life so overall is it worth it well I have to give it two big thumbs up but with that being said it's going to depend on what your goals are what your background is etc it's going to be different for everyone but one of the best things about this like I just said is you're not risking all that much and this is something you can do if you're currently working in a job if you're going to college if you're in high school or if you're unemployed and you're looking for a job right now these certificates are something that just about anybody from any background who has any goal can look into so yeah in my opinion absolutely worth it definitely love these certificates I love what Google and Coursera is doing and like I said you can check out the certificates pin comment as well as in the description below I am an affiliate for Coursera so if you use my link and you end up buying the product I will get a small commission from that you don't have to use my link you can just look it up on google if you want not a problem and one thing that I really like about Coursera is they've never hassled me at all on giving criticism to their certificates not a single time I've actually given a lot of criticisms to every single certificate that I've reviewed and Coursera has never given me any trouble for that so that's one of the reasons why I'm an affiliate for them so yeah check it out if you want to now another question that I got is where would this lie on my google certificate tier list which is basically where I rank all of the google certificates from S tier which is the best to F tier which is the worst and I won't be able to give you that answer until it's been out for a while and they've gotten more feedback on it but when that happens I will update the google certificate tier list and I'll put this one on it if you do want to check out that google certificate tier list you can do that by clicking right here