Help Your Business Join the Digital Age with Google’s New Training and Scholarships

Small businesses are a key driver in the United States' economy, and as the pandemic has gone on, those same small businesses have increased their opportunities through the use of digital tools.

Enter Google, as of May 2nd during National Small Business Week in the US, the corporate giant is now offering small businesses new opportunities to train their employees in essential and high-demand skills.

The multinational company has also begun implementing a new scholarship program to provide more aid when paying for employee training through Google’s Career Certificates.

Discover next how your business can take advantage of new digital training possibilities to fully enter the digital era.

First, what is a Google Career Certificate? Simply put, they are certificates that individuals can obtain after going through an online course on Coursera, a global online learning platform that hosts Google’s Certificates.

The courses don’t require any prior experience and are generally completed with under 10 hours of study per week over a period of three to six months. They can help employees stand out to employers, but of course come with a cost in the form of a monthly subscription on Coursera (or even free through Google’s new scholarship program).

According to the American multinational, Google notes that:

“Three out of four U.S. small-and-medium sized businesses reported that adopting digital tools during the pandemic created new opportunities for their business. And digitally advanced businesses report 20 times better customer acquisition rates. Yet almost half (49%) of small businesses still lack the information and skills needed to use digital tools. Filling these skill gaps can help fuel growth for American businesses while creating new opportunities for workers.”

With this in mind, Google has launched a new Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate that focuses on finding customers, building an online store, measurement and analytics, and increasing customer loyalty, through tools such as Canva, HubSpot, MailChimp, Shopify, Google Analytics, and more.

Beyond adding a new certificate for digital marketing and e-commerce, they’ve also introduced a program that allows U.S. businesses to get up to 500 scholarships each for Google Career Certificates to provide employee training.

Google mentions that it offers high value for workforce training, stating that:

“Businesses can use Google Career Certificates to train their employees for jobs in data analytics, digital marketing & e-commerce, IT support, project management or user experience (UX) design. […] For every scholarship we give, a business will be gaining capabilities and, at the same time, an employee will be growing new skills.”

This program will be available for businesses for 2 years before the program ends on December 18th, 2024!