Professionals wanting to polish their skills or add machine learning to their resume can now do so via the Microsoft Professional Program. Recognizing the need for companies to train their employees in the latest AI trends, the software giant is now offering a series of courses to the public that comes with “a digitally shareable, résumé-worthy credential.”

The new program is called the Microsoft Professional Program for AI where, as promised by Microsoft, participants will get “job-ready skills and real-world experience.” The seminar is targeted to engineers who want to improve their data science and artificial intelligence skills.

Microsoft adds AI course to its certification program https://t.co/DjRQB4JggU pic.twitter.com/ij9R6HQs0V

— Lehigh Valley Technology Company (@lhvtech) April 2, 2018

The online courses will be under the guidance of expert instructors as well as hands-on labs. The AI program consists of nine skills where each skill is estimated to take between eight and 16 hours for participants to complete. There is also a final project that each student must complete to pass the course.

The program emphasizes hands-on learning where students are taught “how to work with data to build and train machine learning models that power interactive bots.” In addition, the series covers a variety of topics that are relevant in today’s workplace such as ethics in AI, using Python as the programming language for manipulating data and different types of machine learning models and how to create them.

However, participants do not have to complete each segment in one go. Students can opt to complete each module within three months while the final project has a six-week deadline. Each segment or course is only offered four times in one year.

Enrollees earn credit for finishing a course or segment. Should they require it, they can get Verified Certificates from edX.org.

AI skills are becoming increasingly useful in today’s workplace. As explained by Microsoft  Research AI assistant director:

“AI is increasingly important in how our products and services are designed and delivered and that is true for our customers as well. Fundamentally, we are all interested in developing talent that is able to build, understand and design systems that have AI as a central component.”

For employees, getting AI certified is time well spent. With salaries for AI professionals going through the roof it should be considered a worthwhile investment in their future earning potential.

[Featured image via Microsoft]