How to List Continuing Education on Your Resume

Continuing education is any formal education you pursue after finishing your degree, whether it’s a university course, online degree program, or certification.

While some continuing education programs are optional and merely boost your resume, in many specialized fields, continuing education is mandatory to maintain a license.

For example, a lactation consultant needs to earn Continuing Education Recognition Points (CERPs) every five years to maintain their International Board Certified Lactation Consultant certification in addition to passing an examination every 10 years.

3 steps for putting continuing education on your resume

Here are three steps for writing a resume that highlights how your continued education makes you a more qualified candidate:

1. Decide where to list continuing education on your resume

Continuing education should be listed under your resume’s education section. However, if you’re highly qualified in your field and have many relevant continuing education courses to list, create a separate “Continuing Education” section on your resume instead.

2. Organize your qualifications with the most relevant listed first

If a certain continuing education course you took is more relevant to the role you’re applying for than others, list it first so that the hiring manager is more likely to notice it.

However, if all the entries in your continuing education section are equally relevant, then default to ordering them with the most recent first.

Exclude any continuing education that’s irrelevant to the job you’re applying to. For example, if you’re planning to switch fields into accounting, leave out creative writing courses you’ve taken.

3. Include specific details of your continuing education

Include all the necessary details related to your continuing education, including the:

• Date it was awarded and expiration date (if applicable)
• Awarding body or institution
• Location (of in-person courses)
• Grade or score (if provided)
• License or certificate number

Including this information adds credibility to your resume because it shows you’re legitimately qualified.

If you have any licenses to include on your resume, including the date it was awarded and expiration (or “valid through”) date communicates to hiring managers that you’re keeping up with the requirements to maintain your license and can actively practice in your field.

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Examples of how to list continuing education on a resume

Below are two examples of how to list continuing education in different sections of your resume:

Education section (example)

Here’s an example from a registered nurse resume with the continuing education listed in the resume education section:

Why this is a good example:

• This nurse lists their license and continued education certificates directly under their nursing degree, ensuring their credentials are easy to read.

Continuing education section (example)

Here’s an example of a continuing education section on a marketing resume:

Why this is a good example:

• The applicant clearly lists their continuing education along with the years each course was completed, following the same formatting as an education section to make it easily scannable.
• They also include relevant coursework from their online marketing course, which shows hiring managers details about what skills they learned.