The Benefits of Alternative Credentials
With the national unemployment rate continuing to drop, now to below 4%, business leaders across the U.S. continue to vocalize their frustration at talent shortages. The essential question, however, is whether those talent shortages are real —i.e. applicants actually lack sufficient experience— or imagined. Perhaps there are just less applicants whose qualifications align with what hirers have traditionally found important. Indeed, some companies have already started considering that possibility and have adjusted their candidate screening criteria to include applicants with alternative credentials as opposed to strictly traditional backgrounds.
Which isn’t to say that alternative credentials are necessarily replacing traditional levels of experience. In an article for HR Magazine titled “How Alternative Credentials Can Help You Find Employees: Focus on skills, not degrees, to increase your talent pool,” HR Generalist Kathryn Tyler assures us that for most positions, “executives, supervisors and HR professionals still place a higher value on work experience and traditional college degrees than on alternative credentials.” But there’s renewed value being imbued into internships, apprenticeships, independent trainings, boot camps, certification programs, and other kinds of professional development outside the standard employment structure.
Whether or not your background includes any of these alternative credentials, it behooves us all to be aware of this new tendency and to leverage these changing norms into better preparation when we apply for our next position.
It seems that there are two main reasons for the growing prevalence of alternative credentials in the job market. The first is that traditional career paths are becoming less common. Tyler writes that “Since 2019, college enrollment overall has dropped 5 percent, with the number of newly enrolled freshmen down 9 percent.” Thus, if hiring managers seek candidates with very specific experience, there’s simply going to be less such candidates in the marketplace, and they will be increasingly sought-after. Hiring managers will need to adjust, either now or later (assuming the trend continues). The second reason is that, somewhat incongruently, “The percentage of the population 25 years and older holding at least a bachelor’s degree has increased by about five percentage points across the 15 years…in 2015-2019, the percentage reached 32.1%,” according to Forbes. If more candidates have Bachelor’s Degrees, then such degrees may no longer confer heightened importance unto those who have them. Alternative credentials are therefore not just important for those with nontraditional backgrounds, but can provide extra oomph for those seeking a leg-up over other qualified candidates.
Besides opening up an increased candidate pool, hirers that consider alternative credentials will increase candidate diversity and the variety of skill knowledge at their company. “Veterans, military spouses, young adults who bypassed college, caregivers re-entering the workforce and career switchers” will more easily enter the employment mix alongside four-year college graduates (Tyler). Companies that follow this path will find themselves replete with applicants who may bring new communication styles, life experiences, and problem-solving strategies to individual teams and projects. Additionally, Tyler informs us that, once hired, “Credentialed employees are viewed as better performers by a majority of 500 U.S. executives and 1,200 supervisors surveyed by SHRM.” Such an understanding will only expand.
As applicants, it’s important to understand how we can use this newfound pivot towards alternative credentials to our advantage. If we ourselves come from less traditional backgrounds, that answer may be clear. But for all of us, this shift implies a renewed importance on presenting sterling application materials. Alternative credentials provide new ammunition we can use in our resumés, cover letters, and interviews, to build the narratives around our employment history.
If, say, we have crafted a resumé to emphasize our leadership abilities, self-starting nature, and desire to learn, then alternative credentials —like independent trainings or skill-based boot camps— will further emphasize those qualities. The goal of a job application remains unchanged: Persuade a hiring manager why you are the right applicant for a given position. Alternative credentials simply provide more people from more backgrounds more freedom in how they tell their stories, providing more materials to draw from.
Pursuing such alternative credentials now, before the entire market recognizes their worth, may prove an advantage in the marketplace the next time you go looking for a new job. And if we decide that alternative credentials are unnecessary, we must do so with the understanding that other applicants will surely be using them to bolster their own candidacies.
At Ideal Interview, we recommend including and highlighting any professional/industry certifications, series certificates, licenses, programs, boot camps, and trainings in your resumé.
Such a task isn’t always easy, especially if we’ve already stretched our resumé to its maximum possible size or if we’re unsure how an alternative credential has emphasized our positive qualities. If you’re having difficulties tailoring application materials around your alternative credentials, contact me, Nancy, on LinkedIn or at www.idealinterviewco.com/contact.