HI Andy, For me digital credentials is one of the ways a person can demonstrate qualification in a nice and succinct way. I'll be honest I was only aware of the ATS process (machine's sifting through CV's / covering letters) because I'm doing a CMI course. I have been very lucky to stay in the same organisation for over 25 years so have never gone through this process or very few interviews.

I don't think that digital credentials on their own should be solely used for decision making but they might be in future and that is for particular recruitment processes to sort out, to ensure they are fair, inclusive and can attract the talent they need appropriately.

For me and others this is just a really simple way of showing and referencing my qualification or membership using a badge designed by the institute or awarding body on platforms like LinkedIn without scanning my cert and posting it or putting my cert number in an licence entry which could be copied in either instance.

I'm not sure if you have seen the Credly platform it is big and has a lot of firms/awarding bodies/institutes active on it. Yes it is driven by IT but it is diversifying as I have mentioned, see this link

The badges are more for short courses, qualifications or membership from what I have seen, I'm not even sure there are US universities who issue digital credentials for their degrees and I don't know of any in the UK so that might never happen, but all in all it is a sign of the times, they are being used more and more and I think the IET being as forward thinking and acting as they want to be, should really be at least offering it to people who want those digi badges as part of a wider choice of recognition.

Furthermore I think once people experience them and the way they can be showcased, they will really see the benefit like I have and use them in an appropriate and come to think of it proud way.

So now I'm eager to see how "IET strategy" consider this as part of a bottom up initiative.

All the best and great debate!

Hi Lee,

I've just had a quick look at the Credly platform, I don't think it's something I would personally use in recruitment. BUT, and I think this is crucial, I've always recruited at professional level, I can see that recruiting at skilled level (which I've been involved with in the past but never directly responsible for) it could well be useful. So similarly you may find recruiters have more interest in the IET having digital credentials for EngTech than IEng/CEng, and, conversely, having digital credentials for EngTech may increase its visibility and acceptance. Which would be good. 

Also, as well as recruitment think about companies demonstrating staff competence (apologies if that has been covered already, this new forum layout makes it really really hard to follow the thread of a discussion!), when I'm auditing companies for staff competence, if digital credentials can be nicely "packeted" up for the staff on a project it could be a good way of showing third party evidence of competence? But you may find that companies say it is too complicated to run this in addition to their existing competence management systems, it'll need a bit of market research.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy,

APM are using digital credentials for professional levels like ChPP and CMI are "looking" into digital credentials for all membership levels up to FCMI & CMgr so it can be used for professional levels but most badges as you say are at the skilled level.

Andy Millar said:

having digital credentials for EngTech may increase its visibility and acceptance. Which would be good

I think if they create one for EngTech and by they I mean EngC because it needs to be them really, then I think IEng and CEng will follow but starting here first would be a "great and inclusive" start, whereas for the IET it is more for membership grades or if they embark on Professional Qualifications similar to IChemE with their Professional Process Safety Engineer qualification.

Andy Millar said:

if digital credentials can be nicely "packeted" up for the staff on a project it could be a good way of showing third party evidence of competence?

For sure this could be used in a competency grouping or packeting exercise and the likes of Credly will offer API's as well as the Blockchain now so it wouldn't be difficult to pull this info into a CMS, the issue would be the available qualifications that attract digital credentials but the more that do it, like the IET, the more chance such a closed loop system has.

All the Best,

Lee    

Hi Lee,

I think you might be slightly missing the point that a couple of us have raised, back to your statement:

"For me and others this is just a really simple way of showing and referencing my qualification or membership"

Fine if you want to, but for recruiting at professional level don't be surprised if recruiters and, more importantly, recruiting managers, really aren't interested! We actually really are not greatly interested in your qualifications and membership, what we want to know is what work you've done recently and how you've gone about it (and there's no "right" answer to this, as a good company will be looking for a mixture of backgrounds and approaches). You would not believe how little time the typical recruiting manager spends reading the qualification and membership section of a CV for a graduate or experienced engineer...for someone with, say, over 10 years experience, it could be as little as none at all!

It's actually a really interesting issue, as it's a very fundamental difference between recruiting skilled and professional staff. For skilled staff you absolutely do need to know what training and qualifications (including work based) they have, to know they really have the skills they say they have. Hence I think this is an excellent idea there. For professional staff what you want to know is whether they can solve the next completely random problem you're going to throw at them (without landing the business in the bankruptcy or criminal courts), and the fun of recruiting professional staff is there's actually no formal qualification that demonstrates that! It's all about track record. Ok, CEng/IEng and CMgr hint at it, but actually they're all based on track record anyway - which is a major problem with their usefulness in recruiting, the recruiter has the same information as the PMI or CMI in front of them anyway, so is likely to make their own assessment.

So just be a bit careful, of course ChPP and CMI will be looking at it as it is their business to sell certifications (just as it is the IET's and all the other PMIs) - but there's the fundamental rule of selling that you don't want to expend time and effort trying to sell people things they don't want to buy - or even worse which they will later regret buying. Hence my advice that before getting too excited about looking at digital credentials for IEng/CEng that you check that recruiters are actually interested in using them. Otherwise there's a risk of offering something to IET members which then turns out to have no real value to those members, which wouldn't make the IET very popular.

Or in other words, that fundamental engineering advice (which I have to admit took me most of my career to learn  *): just make sure you're looking for the problem that needs solving FIRST, and then working out how you can use technology to solve the problem! Otherwise it can be hugely frustrating when you find that nobody wants your solution because there wasn't actually a problem... (Been there, done that, got the T shirt.)

Cheers,

Andy

* And I still sometimes forget at home when I find a bit of random engineering junk lying around (I have lots) and find myself thinking "I could make a xxx out of that!" and have to remind myself to check that I actually need an xxx 

Hi all

Thanks for the great discussion here - and also for raising it with us as a priority. My team have Digital Badges on our list to look into (particularly the feasibility via. one of the established platforms / methods) - but we will move it up the list due to the keen interest shown by the group here. 

All the best and thanks for the useful discussion, Simon

Simon Timmis

Head of Brand, Digital + Impact Marketing, The IET

 Simon  that is great news,

I'm really glad the IET seems to be at the forefront on this compared to the other PEI's and are taking into account member's views via this forum to move its priority.

Any help you need with beta testing or piloting or road-testing on social media, please reach out to this thread as I and others here will be more than happy to support that, showcasing the impact that digital credentials has in terms of enhanced visibility for the IET and to demonstrate the way verified credentials add value to one's profile as well as the confidentiality improvements that can be realised.

 Andy  sorry I have not responded sooner to your points I have been quite tided up recently and I want to respond to them in a structured way so bear with me I will get onto it soon..