Business Professionals, Want to Get Promoted in Your Role? These 5 Free Courses Can Help

Figuring out how to get a promotion can be tough. Add a global pandemic to the mix, and it gets more difficult—but certainly not impossible.

How can you prove you’re ready to stretch yourself, step up to a leadership opportunity, or take on a new role without the usual opportunity for valuable in-person conversations with your manager? Follow the lead of the business professionals who got promoted in 2020. 

We looked at the thousands of people promoted last year on LinkedIn and identified the LinkedIn Learning courses they took to help them get promoted—even during the pandemic.

Start working towards your next promotion by watching the courses below. They’re free until February 28. 

Watch courses that helped business professionals get promoted

Led by expert instructors, these five courses teach you the skills you need to step into a people management role, perform basic financial planning and analysis (FP&A) tasks in Microsoft Excel, and use the latest marketing tools and content marketing strategies to grow your business. 

1. Content Marketing for Social Media with Colleen Jones—Learn how to create powerful and engaging social media content that resonates with your audience and reflects your brand.
2. Make the Move from Individual Contributor to Manager with Carolyn Goerner—Learn strategies that will help you focus on the broader success of the team, including how to manage former peers, initiate difficult conversations, delegate work, talk about money, discuss performance, and more.
3. Learning to Write Marketing Copy with Ian Lurie—Learn how to write copy that tells your story and sells your product or brand and optimize it for different platforms, as well as manage a copyediting team, a brand voice, and an editorial calendar.
4. Digital Marketing Trends with Martin Waxman—In this biweekly series, learn about the latest tools and trends (like mobile, video and live streaming, artificial intelligence and virtual reality) marketers are using to reach customers and fuel the business.
5. Excel for Corporate Finance Professionals with Michael McDonald—Learn how to use Microsoft Excel to pick corporate investments, determine your firm’s cost of capital, and perform operational budgeting.

Take Control of Your Career in 2021

Get more free resources to get to the next level. Check out the top soft skills courses professionals took leading up to their promotion. 

Methodology: We looked at LinkedIn members in Business functions who were promoted between Nov 1, 2019—Oct 31, 2020 and were also “active learners” in the 12 months before being promoted (watched at least 5 minutes of content or logged in at least 5 times). We then compared the top 100 courses watched by this group to the learning behavior of all learners, to identify courses where recently promoted learners “over-index”. The courses highlighted here are thus the courses that recently promoted members are more likely to watch than the average learner.