News & Trending Jobs & Career News

5 Most Useless Certificates Employers Don't Want Today

The paper only counts if employers are actually asking for it.

By Josh Koebert , Edited by Calista Headrick

Updated Sept. 10, 2026

Add Us On Google

A certificate is only as useful as the hiring manager who recognizes it. A small set of credentials moves pay and callbacks, and a huge pile of the rest does not, no matter how many hours you spent on them.

The Burning Glass Institute and AEI have reported that only about 12% of credentials produce significant wage gains. If you are spending time or money to get ahead financially, look at the kinds of certificates that usually fail that test and avoid them.

Here are 5 kinds of certifications that carry little weight with employers.

Resolve $10,000 or more of your debt

National Debt Relief could help you resolve your credit card debt with an affordable plan that works for you. Just tell them your situation, then find out your debt relief options.¹ <p>Please note that all calls with the company may be recorded or monitored for quality assurance and training purposes. Clients who are able to stay with the program and get all their debt settled realize approximate savings of 45% before fees, or 20% including our fees, over 24 to 48 months. All claims are based on enrolled debts. Not all debts are eligible for enrollment. Not all clients complete our program for various reasons, including their ability to save sufficient funds. Estimates based on prior results, which will vary based on specific circumstances. We do not guarantee that your debts will be lowered by a specific amount or percentage or that you will be debt-free within a specific period of time. We do not assume consumer debt, make monthly payments to creditors or provide tax, bankruptcy, accounting or legal advice or credit repair services. Not available in all states. Please contact a tax professional to discuss tax consequences of settlement. Please consult with a bankruptcy attorney for more information on bankruptcy. Depending on your state, we may be available to recommend a local tax professional and/or bankruptcy attorney. Read and understand all program materials prior to enrollment, including potential adverse impact on credit rating. "Debt-Free" applies only to enrolled credit cards, personal loans, and medical bills. Not mortgages, car loans, or other debts. Results vary.</p>

Certificates from unrecognized or self-issued sources

Who issued the certificate matters. A known industry body or a state licensing board carries weight with a hiring manager. A company handing out its own certificate for its own course does not, and neither does an in-house "academy" with no outside exam behind it. If nobody in your target job postings has heard of the brand, the PDF is a decoration.

That aligns with the labor-market finding that most credentials never appear in hiring demand. If the issuer cannot be verified within two minutes, hiring software will not treat it as a skill, nor will the hiring manager.

Shopping for cheaper auto insurance? Enter your zip code here to get started.

Vendor certificates that mainly market a platform

Some vendor badges exist to sell software, not to prove you could do the job. They teach one company's menus, and expire when the product changes. Unless that exact platform is named in the posting, hiring managers treat them as product marketing. A narrow tool badge is not the same thing as a license or a widely requested industry certification. LinkedIn is full of logos that never appear in the actual job posting.

Memorization programs with no hands-on test

If you passed by clicking through slides and repeating a quiz bank, employers have no way to know you could do the work. Certificates that never put you in front of a patient, a live network, a weld, or a supervised project are easy to collect and easy to ignore.

The ones that show up in postings usually require a practical or proctored demonstration, not a memory dump. Brookings research on non-degree credentials found that job-relevant credentials pay more than credentials with no tie to the work, a pattern consistent with wage data.

Self-paced certificates with no proctored exam

Finish-at-your-own-speed is a sales feature, nothing else. It is also a major quality problem because if nobody verifies that you are the person taking the test, the credential cannot do the one job employers need it to do, which is to signal that you actually know the material.

Unproctored, unlimited-retake completions sit in the same low-return pile described in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, which detailed thousands of certification options that don't move pay. A weekend of video modules is not the same as a state exam or an apprenticeship hour log.

Credentials that almost never show up in job postings

Burning Glass research has long shown that employer demand piles onto a short list. The top 50 certifications have accounted for about two-thirds of certification requests in job postings, while thousands of others almost never appear.

Only about 10% of job postings require a certification at all, per Burning Glass. If your target job ads never name the credential, the market already voted. A general "leadership" or "professional development" certificate won't move the needle. A Coursera completion PDF and a CompTIA Security+ are not the same thing.

How to tell a worthwhile credential from a wasted one

Search 20 live postings for the job you want and count how many name a specific certificate. Ask who issues it, and whether that's a body employers recognize or just the outfit selling the course. Ask whether there's a real exam behind it, proctored or hands-on. Three noes and you keep the money.

Then look at pay. If people who hold the certificate do not earn more, the paper is worthless. Brookings found a first job-relevant non-degree credential was tied to about a 3.8% wage premium, more than double the 1.8% premium on a first job-irrelevant one. Extra irrelevant credentials added little or had a negative effect. In many fields, six months of supervised work beats another badge.

Make Money: 8 dumb ways to make money (almost anyone can do this)

Bottom line

If employers aren't asking for it and aren't paying more for it, the hours you put in aren't an asset.

Look at real job postings and the salary impact before you enroll, then check your financial health before you decide to pay for a new certification. The same research that dinged most credentials also found a thin top tier that really does move wages. Those are the job-specific ones with an independent exam behind them, and you can spot them because they're already named in the ads.

Schooling still moves pay more than an extra certificate. The BLS pegged median weekly pay at $1,460 for full-time workers with a certification or license in 2025, compared with $1,131 for workers with neither. Break that out by education, and the premium mostly belongs to people without a degree. High school grads with no college earned about $186 more a week. For bachelor's holders and up, the gap was $29.

If you already have the diploma, the extra paper is worth $29 a week.

More from FinanceBuzz: