My latest learning badges, from Amazon Web Services' AWS SkillBuilder
There’s a change underfoot in the business world; employers are starting to pay more attention to demonstrated skills and ability to learning than to the “piece of paper” approach of requiring specific college degrees. This isn’t news to me; 20+ years ago, I was hired (without a degree) as a server/network administrator by a software startup, working alongside techies with degrees in music, forestry, animal husbandry, business, and other non-STEM areas. Sure, a majority of the developers and engineers had the expected degrees in engineering or computer science, but the overriding concern of the management team was simply “can they do the job?” That job led directly to a 30-year-and-still-going succession of highly technical jobs that, on paper, have required Bachelor’s and (later) Master’s degrees. The old saw is true; a college degree can help you get your first job, and might help you get your second, but after that’s it’s all about your work history.
This new focus on skills and learning over degrees has come back into vogue largely because of IBM Chair of the Board (and former CEO) Ginny Rometty. In 2020, she had this to say:
Former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty says the best thing employers can do to improve their business, their workforce and their community is to stop hiring based on four-year college degrees. In fact, the company’s current executive chairperson shared that 43% of IBM’s open job requisitions today don’t call for a traditional college diploma, she said at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit last week.
Rometty, who has been with the company for nearly 40 years, has been vocal about the need to rethink hiring in the tech field, particularly during a time when four-year college can be cost-prohibitive, while associate’s programs, vocational schools, certification courses, bootcamps and other skills-based training are available and may be more accessible and adaptable to the rapid speed of tech innovations. [...]
Here’s the game-changer in Rometty’s comments:
First, “value someone’s propensity to learn more than their skills,” Rometty said. Focusing on someone’s ability to learn, rather than what they’ve already learned, has “completely changed” how she looks at hiring.
“Now, I want someone to be curious,” she said, “and you can test that when you hire.”
So, if you’re trying to move up in the workforce without a BA/BS degree (or with a degree in a field atypical for the positions you’re pursuing), it’s in your best interests to demonstrate the curiosity and “propensity to learn” to which Rometty referred...but how to do that when your funds and/or time are in short supply?
Well, one answer is free microcredentials — certificates and badges for short courses in a wide range of subjects. They’re almost always self-paced, which means you can complete them on your schedule, and many of them offer OpenBadges, which one can use in one’s email messages, email signatures and/or résumé.
Yes, I have lots of badges...
I’ve collected a long list of microcredentials as a way to indicate the breadth and depth of my knowledge; in the last few years of my career at IBM, the company presented hundreds of opportunities for employees to earn microcredentials in the form of OpenBadges. I took that to heart and eventually left IBM with 210 such badges; since then, I’ve added another 35 or so from various sources. Most recently, I’ve earned a dozen knowledge badges focusing on Amazon’s cloud, aka Amazon Web Services (AWS), as shown above.
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Now, keep in mind that this isn’t limited to “techie stuff”; my microcredentials are generally focused on technical topics because I have a long work career, but your needs may differ with a shorter (or nonexistent) work experience. One can demonstrate curiosity and a propensity to learn and with almost any microcredential, so feel free do a mix of technical stuff, general business stuff, and “I just thought this was interesting” stuff. The important thing is to demonstrate the ability and willingness to keep on learning and illustrate your breadth of knowledge as needed.
There are literally thousands of free microcredentials available, so I’m going to leave you with a half-dozen sources with which I’m familiar. If you’re interested in drilling down on a particular subject area, just search for “free badges subject-area” or “free certificate subject-area”; you’re almost certain to find something available in your chosen field.
UN CC:Learn — The UN Climate Change Learning Partnership (UN CC:Learn) “provides strategic advice and quality learning resources to help people, governments and businesses to understand, adapt, and build resilience to climate change.” The site offers 115 free courses covering climate change, the green economy, and circular economy; every course offers a certificate of completion.
IBM SkillsBuild — IBM offers badged courses for “High School Learners”, “College Learners”, and “Adult Learners”, so there’s no problem finding a course appropriate for your current level of knowledge. SkillsBuild offers courses on both the “technical side” and “business side”; the latter includes quite a few practical topics like “Job Application Essentials”, “Working In A Digital World: Professional Skills”, “Project Management Fundamentals”, and “Explorations Into Mindfulness.”
Cisco Networking Academy — You might expect Cisco’s education site to be heavy on data networking, but it also offers some really good general introductory courses, like “Computer Hardware Basics” and “Discovering Entrepreneurship.” If you want to get heavy into networking, Cisco offeres Packet Tracer, a free network simulator (Cisco devices only, of course) and several courses in its use. Cisco’s reputation in data networking means that having their badges for “Networking Fundamentals” and/or “Introduction to Cybersecurity” generates a lot of credibility for entry-level knowledge. (They also offer an EXCELLENT two-course “Python Essentials”, if you’re interested in learning to program with that language.)
AWS SkillBuilder — Amazon’s site is wholly dedicated to its cloud operation, Amazon Web Services. While there are courses that require a paid subscription, the free courses give really solid introductions to the various pieces of AWS — server instances, storage, networking, various microservices, Amazon-hosted services (like database and messaging services), and the like — as well as a few industry-specific AWS features for game design and media/entertainment work. Even if you aren’t interested in diving deep into AWS, I would suggest completion of the basic “Cloud Essentials” course; since AWS is the leading cloud provider, it never hurts to have that basic knowledge under one’s belt.
IBM Training — There are literally hundreds of courses available through IBM Training, many of which are available at no cost and issue digital credentials upon completion. The course offerings are heavily tilted toward IBM products and services.
The Open University — The Open University offers tons of brief one-shot classes that award badges; most of them can be completed in 24 study hours or fewer. The selection is quite broad, ranging from “Effective Communication in the Workplace” to “Legal Skills and Debates in Scotland”; almost everyone is likely to find something of interest here. Of course, they offer many longer courses as well, most of which offer certificates.
IBM Z Xplore — This site dives deep into IBM’s System Z (mainframes); while it offers badges, be advised that almost all of them require days/weeks of work. If, like me, you worked with IBM mainframes “back in the day”, this is a really good way to update and certify your knowledge.
For more, check out this article from Class Central: [2023] Massive List of Thousands of Free Certificates and Badges...
Good luck to us all!
