You Ask, I Answer: Increasing the Chances of Being Hired with Certifications?

In today's episode, Harrison asks, I was wondering if you would be able to spare some time to give me some helpful tips on ways I can increase my employability in finding a job as a graduate. I am currently on university break and have spent my free time acquiring Google Analytics certifications. I was curious as to what else you would recommend in addition to this. So first, congratulations. Getting uh Google Analytics and Google ad certifications are important.

Employability is all about demonstrating uh what hiring managers want. And hiring managers want two very fundamental things. They want less risk, more reward, right? The same thing everybody wants. Specifically, a hiring manager wants an employee that's not good because of headaches, right?

Uh, an employee's not going to waste their time, an employee that can, as the cliche goes, hit the ground running. That's so that's on the the risk mitigation side. And then on the on the the reward side, hiring managers want employees that are gonna help them look better, right? Whether somebody verbalizes it or not, fundamentally, a m a hiring manager wants someone who's gonna make the manager look like a rock star, right? They're gonna deliver results, they're gonna hit their numbers, they're gonna do all the things that uh that their bosses expect of them.

That's just human nature. And again, they may they may not outright say in such a a selfish or self-centered way, but that's what they want. So you as a potential employee need to be able to demonstrate to hiring managers that you are lower risk and that you are higher reward. Right? You are a low risk, high value, higher.

So certifications are good for a couple reasons. One, they are a risk reduction feature, right? If you've got a few different industry certifications, uh you can demonstrate by your your academic track record that yes, you know something, you're not an idiot, you're not like every other kid who comes out of school, because uh honestly every single kid who graduates has the exact same diploma, right? There's no GPA on there, uh, there's no uh really interesting insights as to that person, it's just a hey, you got the thing, congratulations. And that as a as a hiring manager, you look at and like if that was all you saw, then you have no basis on which to judge who to hire.

So certifications, uh, Google Analytics, Google Ads, HubSpot's inbound academy, IBM's cognitive class. Generally speaking, when it comes to marketing, um, get certifications from well-known corporate brands because as much as I think certain courses like on Udacity and Udemy and Coursera and stuff are okay, they lack the the brand credibility with a hiring manager because not every hiring manager has heard of or knows of or has taken an Udacity course, and frankly, some of those platforms like Udacity, the courses are a mixed bag, some are really great, some are not as great. But when you hand a certification to a hiring manager, if it has a logo of a company that they know, they'll be much more positive, either consciously or subconsciously. But when you hand that sheet of paper over that you know has a uh a Google logo on it or an IBM logo on it, like oh, I've heard of those companies. You must know what you're doing.

Right? So it it's risk mitigation. Here's the other part. How do you demonstrate reward? How do you demonstrate that you're going to uh deliver results?

Certifications can't do that. For that, you need a portfolio of work. And I know a lot of people in marketing tend to think like, oh, only the creative people have portfolios. Well, no, that's that's completely untrue. Um, everybody in marketing should have a portfolio now.

And it can be a blog of your writing and examples of work that you've done. It can be case studies that you've written up of work that you've done. Um, it can be testimonials from clients that you've had of work that you've done. Anybody's saying, Wait, I'm a university student. How you how am I supposed to have clients?

That's what you volunteer for. You volunteer at a small, you know, local nonprofit and do something like fix their Google analytics or help them get an email newsletter started, or uh run their Instagram channel, or whatever it is that you can do that demonstrates that you can get results. Your LinkedIn profile should be a long, large repository of results of things that you've done. If you are on, for example, the data science side, you'd better have a GitHub repository and an example project that you've you've built from scratch with your own code. Um if you are on the analytical side, you better have a tableau public profile with some examples of work that you've done.

Like here's uh a unique analysis of a company's website traffic, you know, showing I don't know, pick a pick a uh a technical indicator, some kind like moving average uh divergence indicator. Slap that on somebody's web analytics to say, hey here's something I can do that I have done I have clearly have done that is different than what you're gonna see out of all the other candidates um so portfolios of work are really really important for being able to demonstrate that you not only can do the thing but you have done the thing a candidate that has a good portfolio of work is inherently more interesting than somebody who just says they can do the thing because I have uh in my oh god it's been 20 years in this career um in my 20 years of of working with and hiring people and such uh there have been a lot of people who in the room talk a great talk and then a month or two months into the job you realize they never actually did any work they always had a subordinate uh doing the work they don't actually know anything and those are those are not pleasant experiences so if you can demonstrate that you have done the work and that specifically you have done the work uh you will you will demonstrate that that employability like this person knows what they're doing even better if you do happen to have like a paying customer uh even if it is like a you know your your your local pizza shop or whatever but somebody who puts val assigns value to what you do, that's that's pretty powerful, right? So when you go to interview, you can say, Yeah, my side hustle is I help promote this little uh noodle shop, right? When I was in uh in university here in the in the states, um, I had a customer that was a local Vietnamese noodle shop, and you know, they we bartered. Um, I got to eat there twice a week for free.

And I did uh their their web page uh because it wasn't even a site, it was just a page back in the old old days, and helped them with the graphic design of their menus. And so it was a paying customer, and but being able to demonstrate in early interviews for jobs, yep, I and not only do the thing, but I've done the thing, and I have had somebody compensate me for it in some way, is a powerful testimonial. Give some thought too. If you oh, if you don't already have a side hustle of some kind, uh give some thought to having something like that, maybe you know, explore the landscape of things like algorithmic trading, uh something interesting that demonstrates that you are constantly learning that once you have that certificate in hand from your university that like you're not done, because no one's ever done, but being able to say, Yeah, I'm always learning, I've got these interests, I want to learn how to do this, and I want my career and my interests to eventually align. So that's those are the suggestions I'd make.

One, keep getting those certifications and get them for well-known brands, two build that portfolio of work, and three, uh consider having some kind of side hustle that allows you to keep growing, keep learning, and being able to demonstrate to your community. Uh, one other thing is a bit of housekeeping. If you haven't already, go through and audit your various public social channels, fix any information that you don't want a hiring manager to see to be friends only or to be private or just delete it if it's if it's incriminating. Um and just tune things up. Do things do an audit.

Look at your personal presence online and ask yourself how could this be misinterpreted? And clean up all that stuff, because that's an easy way to get knocked out of consideration and not even know it. So just do that cleaning. Uh great question. As always, please leave comments in the comments box below.

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