When you attend or participate in almost any kind of individual sporting event, whether it’s a 5K race, a walk for charity, a triathlon, a bike tour, or a marathon, you will notice there is a significant amount of communication taking place among participants via the messages on their t-shirts. The reason for this is that races often provide specially designed race t-shirts to participants who finish. Wearing one of these special shirts is a way of letting others know that you have completed a challenging race that others may know from previous participation or by reputation. It’s not just t-shirts, either. There is also a great deal of this kind of communication — dare I say “advertising”? — among event participants via tattoos, medals, hats, and bumper stickers.
A race t-shirt is a kind of badge, and using badges to advertise experiences, skills, and credentials is a custom that goes back at least to the Middle Ages and probably earlier. At Communispond, we don’t always give out t-shirts, and we don’t particularly encourage you to get a tattoo to commemorate your completion of one of our programs, but we will provide you with a certificate you can display in your office.
Then again, a message on the wall of your office isn’t much of an advertisement, is it? It makes a nice conversation piece, but it doesn’t reach very many people.
That’s why we have entered into a partnership with Acclaim to provide a digital version of Communispond certifications. Acclaim is a digital badging platform that is backed by Pearson VUE, the world’s leading learning company. Certifications are now available for four of Communispond’s programs:
- Executive Presentation Skills®
- Persuasive Dialogue™
- Socratic Selling Skills®
- Socratic Selling Skills® for Salesforce.com® Users.
If you completed one of these programs to the satisfaction of your facilitator, you can share your certification online by displaying a digital badge. You can post your badge to your LinkedIn profile, email signature, company profile, or anywhere else you find it helpful to display your certification. The badge is backed by Pearson VUE, and it provides employers and peers with concrete evidence that you have earned your certification and that you have the skills it certifies.
The badge is a digital image uniquely linked to data hosted on the Acclaim platform. This link to verified data makes the badge more reliable, authentic, and secure than a simple image file, or even a traditional paper-based credential. It also eliminates the possibility of anyone claiming your credential and your associated identity.
And if you click on the skill tag of a badge you have earned, Acclaim will give you access to labor market insights — information pulled from active requisitions across the US. Based on your skills, you can see which employers are hiring, what job titles you might be qualified for, salary ranges for those jobs, and more.
Be sure to claim your badge if you completed any one of the four programs in the past, because you earned it! Just visit https://anotherbrilliantidea.com/certifications/ and fill out the form on that page to get started.