People on LinkedIn are now posting badges like crazy. Any micro 1h online course will offer its participants a completion badge.
So I’m seeing things like “Congratulate this person for his/her new badge: How to say ‘hi’ to people in the morning”
No, I’m not exaggerating. I’m seeing this at that level of granularity.
It seems to me that badges are the bait of the week for people wanting to tell their contacts they are actively reading new stuff on the screen — yes, because it’s not about “knowledge” or even “competence” being built. No one would believe those 1h courses could go beyond the informative level.
And what strikes me the most — even more than the badge craze itself — is to see experienced people with whom I have worked in the past and could attest their knowledge/competence in “how to say ‘hi’ to people in the morning” some 10 years ago, taking an online course on the same topic just for the badge’s sake.
The other day I say another person ranting about this course directly on the course creator’s timeline — a.k.a. throwing shit on the fan — to the fact it didn’t have an “intuitive” way to post the badge on social media.
So maybe the solution would be a quick 15 minute course on how to manage your badges. Of course, the final project would be to post the actual badge from the course you have just taken.
On the other side of the road I see HR people complaining that they have too many CVs to look at. Most of them not exactly related to the position per se. And now candidates’ expectations are to have HR looking at their CVs + badges? Please tell me it isn’t.
Some badges are clickable, meaning that they want to kidnap someone’s attention for some time. Some would take you to a webpage with additional details while others, and here is the kick in the productivity nuts, would require you to create an account into their service just to allow that 2 second peek at the badge details.
Please, spare me.
If I really need the person in the team, I don’t mind going through an 8 page CV with photos, charts and a dedicated page just for golden badges.
Please, keep the BS courses out.
If you have been managing dev teams for the past 10 years, don’t show me a badge of a 2h course on “how to manage motivated dev teams” with a badge you completed last week.
Why? Because it would disturbing to me to even imagine you deciding to take that course because you felt you needed it after 10 years doing just that on a daily basis.
That would spoil your job application with us.
If after 10 years practicing XYZ you take a XYZ course on your lunch break, what would that mean?
Where do you stand at the XYZ competency spectrum?
It is getting increasingly confusing to find out what people really know or do.
So let’s do this, tell me what you don’t know and what you cannot do on your job. I’ll assume you won’t have any badges covering that area.
We’ll take things from there.