Drop some vendor bling on your LinkedIn certifications list

June 20, 2014 at 3:22 pm | Posted in Vendor news | 3 Comments
Tags: linkedin, professional networking, top certifications

A while back I spotted the post Announcing a New Way to Add Microsoft Certifications to Your LinkedIn Profile in the Born To Learn blog.  The post promised that “after earning a certification, you’ll receive an email from Microsoft with a link that presents you with a profile update form with an automatically populated certification field, complete with the details of the certification you just completed. Simply click “Save,” and the certification will be added to your LinkedIn Profile.”

So what if your certifications are already listed in your LinkedIn profile?

I thought the idea was sound, but I didn’t see how it was relevant to me because I, like many other IT professionals, already listed my certifications in my LinkedIn profile. I pulled out my profile and started poking moodily at the buttons. Here’s what I started with:

Snapshot of my pre-existing MOS certification on LinkedIn

While I have no problem with the way this certification is listed, I wondered if there was a difference between the way it looked, and the way it would look as a newly added certification.

After poking some more, I discovered is that if I chose Edit, deleted the vendor’s name in the Certification Authority field (in this case, Microsoft), and then started to re-type it, a droplist appeared:

A slew of options were displayed! As you can see above, many of them aren’t relevant, meaning they’re not the Microsoft responsible for my certification credential. So I scanned the list and selected the appropriate Microsoft company name/logo and saved the changes. Then I moved on and did the same with my CompTIA certifications.

The result is twofold. First, official vendor logos decorated the formerly forlorn white space in the right-hand column. BLING! Second, each of those logos was clickable and took me to the vendor’s associated LinkedIn profile page.

Above is the newly-updated certification section of my profile, complete with (correct) company logos. Makes me look very credible indeed.

Looks sweet. Can I do this with all of my IT certs?

The more I poked around, the more vendors I found who seemed to be participating in, for lack of a better term, this  “enhanced LinkedIn logo program.” Using the most recent years of Global Knowledge’s Top-Paying Certifications lists as a reference, and discovered that I could use an affiliated logo with certifications from these vendors:

Cisco
Citrix
CompTIA
International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (note: you will find them listed as “EC-Council”)
ISACA
Linux Professionals Institute
Microsoft
Oracle
Project Management Institute
Scrum Alliance
Sun Microsystems
VMware

(Note: this list could have changed since this blog was posted.)

I was not able to find a corresponding vendor logo for a CISSP certification using either ISC(2) or International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium. However, this is still a worthwhile certification on anyone’s profile; you certainly shouldn’t omit this or any other professional qualifications simply because they don’t have a blingy logo in the LinkedIn ecosystem.

Bling, schming. Why bother with it?

Bling aside, I think the main benefit to this enhanced listing functionality is the credibility factor. When prospective recruiters and employers look at your profile, they may see a certification they aren’t familiar with. However, if the logo is present, they can simply click it and be directed to the vendor’s independent LinkedIn page, where they can see more information about the certification.

We would love to know if you’ve tried this new feature and your thoughts, so be sure to share your bling with us!