The other night, my human resources association chapter event featured Sidneyeve Matrix (yes, that’s really her name). She is an assistant professor at Queen’s University. She teaches mass communications to 1000 students a year.
She filled our heads with all kinds of information about social media and how it’s really being used today.
One of the many cool concepts she talked about was badges. Firefox has started a campaign where organizations that educate can issue and users can earn badges to display on their online profiles. Today, we just have our degrees and diplomas up on the wall and people can only see them if they scroll way down to the bottom of a linked in profile.
Imagine if your google+ or Facebook page had 6 or 8 badges that reflected your knowledge and achievements. Cool, no?
Firefox has made available developer kits so that companies can make their own badges for people to earn. I am no developer but here is the list of badges that I think need to be developed for job seekers.
- Knows how to ace a behavioural interview including the trick question about how many tall people live in Chicago
- Has created several different versions on their resume – Word, PDF and Infographic
- Can go to a cocktail party and score a meeting
- Is still connected to people at every company where they have ever worked
- Can name and navigate six or more job boards
- Has a working relationship with two recruiters (by relationship, I mean they will return your call
So maybe the last one is a little personal but in my view, these are all badge worthy skills. Even if you can’t get a badge for them yet, work on them anyway. It’ll do you good.
Recruiter's Couch 