You finished three online courses, you hold an official qualification and you have a vendor badge sitting in your inbox. Now you have to decide where certifications on a CV actually go, and in what format.
The answer is not a matter of taste. Placement depends on how the job offer treats the credential, the format depends on what a recruiter and a parser can read in one pass. This guide gives you the decision rule, the exact fields each entry needs, how many to include, and what to do with the ones that are still in progress or already expired.
Where to Put Certifications on a CV
Ask one question before anything else: does the job offer name this credential? The answer decides the placement, and it changes from application to application.
| Your situation | Where the section goes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The offer lists the credential as a requirement | Its own block right after your professional summary, above work experience | The screener has to see it in the first ten seconds, not on page two |
| You hold three or more relevant credentials | A dedicated Certifications section after experience and before education | Enough volume to stand on its own; experience still leads |
| You hold one or two, or they are secondary | Inside the education section, as separate entries under your degree | A three-line section of its own looks thinner than it is |
| You are a recent graduate or changing careers | Certifications and education both above experience | Your training is the strongest evidence you have right now |
The career services team at St. Petersburg College recommends a certification section above your education whenever you hold more than one valid credential. That is the default for most professionals with a working career behind them.
One thing never changes: the section heading is a plain, standard word. Use Certifications, Licences and Certifications or Professional Development. A clever heading is a heading nobody searches for.
Standardised templates take that decision out of your hands. The Europass CV format has no separate certifications block at all: courses and professional training go inside Education and training, alongside your degrees.
What Each Certification Entry Should Contain
Each entry is one line, five fields, always in the same order. Consistency is what lets a reader scan six entries in four seconds.
Every field answers a question the reader would otherwise have to guess:
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)1 — Amazon Web Services2 — March 20253 — valid until March 20284 — Credential ID ABC123XYZ5
- 1The full official name plus its code. Never an abbreviation you invented.
- 2The issuing body. Without it, the line could be a two-hour webinar.
- 3Month and year obtained, so the reader can judge how current it is.
- 4Only when the credential genuinely expires. Courses do not.
- 5The verification ID or link. It turns a claim into something checkable.
Three formatting rules protect that line. Do not use columns, text boxes or logos to lay out the section: they look organised on screen and come out scrambled on the other side. Keep one credential per line, and never split a name across two lines.
The verification ID matters more than most candidates think. Platforms such as Credly and LinkedIn issue a public link per badge, and a credential someone can check in one click carries more weight than one they have to take on trust.
Courses, Official Certificates and Degrees Are Not the Same Thing
Listing a two-hour webinar next to a regulated qualification under a single heading is the fastest way to make a recruiter distrust the entire block. There are three tiers of credential, and the wording of each entry should make the tier obvious.
Regulated official qualifications. In Spain these are the certificados de profesionalidad: as the public employment service describes them, they are official titles that accredit acquired professional competences, issued by the ministry or the regional authorities. Write the full official name and its level, because that is what makes it a qualification and not a course.
Industry and vendor certifications. AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, PMP, Scrum, language certificates. They carry an exam, a code and usually an expiry date. Give all three.
Courses and training programmes. Coursera, an internal programme, a bootcamp module. These prove exposure, not certified competence, so state the provider and the hours if the hours are substantial.
If you are applying outside your country, one extra document does the explaining for you. The Europass Certificate Supplement is a document that helps employers and education institutions abroad understand what your vocational qualification actually covers. It travels alongside the CV rather than inside it — and if you are building the CV itself in that format, our guide to Europass CV templates for Word covers where the training block sits.
How Many Certifications Should You Put on a CV?
Between three and eight entries is the working range for most profiles. Below three, fold them into education; above eight, the strong ones start hiding behind the weak ones.
The filter is not chronology, it is relevance. Read the offer, then apply one test to every credential you hold: does this entry answer a requirement written in the job description? If it does not, it is competing for space with something that does.
- A credential the offer names as a requirement — keep itThis is the entry the whole section exists for
- A current industry certification in your field — keep itAWS, PMP, Cisco, Scrum, a language certificate
- An official qualification with a national register code — keep itA certificado de profesionalidad or a regulated licence
- A substantial course tied to a stated requirement — keep itName the provider and the year
- A two-hour webinar with an attendance PDF — leave it outAttendance is not competence
- An expired licence or safety credential — leave it outRenew it or remove it
- A course unrelated to the role — leave it outIt dilutes the entries that do answer the offer
Within what survives the filter, order entries from most recent to oldest — unless one credential is the requirement of the offer, in which case it goes first regardless of its date.
Do You List Certifications in Progress or Expired Ones?
Most guides tell you to list only what you have finished. That advice costs candidates real credentials, and it is only half right.
In progress: yes, when it is relevant and genuinely underway. Write it as its own entry with an honest status — In progress, expected June 2026. What you must never do is write it as obtained; a single check by the employer turns an ambitious line into a lie.
Expired: it depends on what expired. A credential with a validity period — first aid, workplace safety, PMP, a licence — becomes a liability once the date passes, because the reader now wonders why you let it lapse. Renew it or take it out. A completed course, by contrast, has no expiry: it stays, dated with the year you took it.
There is one more category worth naming: training you completed but cannot prove. If no certificate, transcript or verification link exists, keep it out of the certifications section. Describe the skill in your experience bullets instead, where it belongs.
How to Make Sure the ATS Reads Your Certifications
Before a person opens your file, an applicant tracking system converts it to plain text and drops that text into database fields. A certifications block that survives that conversion follows four rules.
- Use a standard heading. Certifications is a field name the parser recognises; My Learning Journey is not.
- Write the full name and the acronym. The offer may search for PMP or for Project Management Professional, and you cannot know which.
- One entry per line, plain text. No tables, no two-column layouts, no text boxes.
- Skip logos and badge images. A parser reads none of them, and they push the text out of alignment.
These rules are the same ones that govern the rest of the document. If your file has never been checked end to end, our guide on how to pass the ATS filter walks through the parsing test in two minutes.
Put Your Certifications Where They Count
The whole decision comes down to three moves. Place the section according to what the offer asks for, write every entry with the same five fields, and cut anything that does not answer a stated requirement.
Doing that by hand for each application is where it breaks down, which is exactly what a builder is for. The AI CV builder gives certifications their own section with three layouts — simple list, cards or timeline — so the block keeps a consistent format however many entries you move in or out. If you are starting the document from scratch, our step-by-step guide to creating a CV with AI covers the rest of the structure.
The CV is only half of it. The same credentials belong on your profile too, and the fields there work differently — our guide to adding certifications to LinkedIn covers the step that makes them searchable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do certifications go before or after education on a CV?
For a professional with work experience, certifications go before education: they are more recent and usually more relevant to the role. For a recent graduate, education leads, with certifications directly underneath it.
Can I put a Coursera or Udemy course on my CV?
Yes, if the course is substantial and connects to a requirement in the offer. List it with the provider name and the year, and do not call it a certification unless it came with an assessed exam.
Do I have to include dates on certifications?
Include the month and year you obtained each one, plus the expiry date when the credential has a validity period. A credential without a date reads as either very old or unverifiable.
How do I list a certificado de profesionalidad on a CV?
Write the full official name including its level, followed by the issuing body and the year. It is a regulated qualification, so it belongs above vendor certifications and courses in the section.
Should I attach the certificates when I send my CV?
No, not unless the offer asks for them. Add a verification link or credential ID to the entry instead, and keep the documents ready to send if you reach the interview stage.