#219 Is That Career Credential Right for Your Kid? How to Boost Outcomes Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins  00:45

There’s a new tool from the Burning Glass institute called the credential value index, and it’s analyzed more than 23,000 Yes, non degree credentials from over 2000 providers, 23,000 like that’s not even a menu. That’s a literal warehouse to choose from, right? It’s like walking into an Amazon warehouse. So this tool that’s so helpful, and we’re going to unpack it today, is designed to help high school students, college students, graduates of either even professionals, parents, 30s, 40s, 50s, years old identify high impact credentials that can actually advance careers. But I want to be really clear about something so that you stay with me. This is for everybody. There’s no age limit on this tool, and it’s not just for people without degrees or for those earning a degree. This is all about skill capital. Skill capital. See, here’s the issue, though, even this best data set, which I think this one’s pretty fantastic, I’ve been playing around with it for about a month now, it can be overwhelming if you don’t know how to use it and you don’t know what you’re aiming at. I’m Lisa Marker Robbins, and you’re listening to College and Career Clarity. If you’re raising a 15 to 25 year old and you really want to support them and moving forward with direction instead of pressure, you’re in the right place. So let’s keep going. Today. We’re going to show you how to use the CVI, so literally, credential, value, index.org, that’s where you go. But stay with me. Don’t go there yet. We’re going to look at how to use a CVI. And actually we’re going to talk about credentials more broadly, strategically, so that you’re sure if you pursue any of these, or if you’re even considering it, that you’re going to move the needle, not just collect something to put on a shelf. See credentials can be used. These are, these are called, like certificates certifications, workplace credentials, recognized. Workplace credentials, any of these acronyms for art, not acronyms, synonyms for each other. These can be used to test a field. They can be used to help an individual differentiate themselves from the competition that they’re up against in this tough to crack employment economy, right? It can support people who want to pivot if they jumped an opportunity before they knew what they actually wanted to aim for. And they’re like, I don’t want to go earn another degree, or earn a degree at all, right? I just want to get some credentials to go after what I now know fits. These can be layered on top of high school diplomas, college degrees and other credentials and actual workplace experience. Credentials are not about replacing degrees. That is not what this conversation is. They’re about signaling skills to employers. So let’s look at how the CBI works so that can actually help your journey, your clarity, your confidence as you move forward, and help create momentum. Okay, from a tactical perspective, when we go to the credential value index.org

Lisa Marker Robbins  03:59

here’s what you can do for any credential. You don’t have to know the name of the credential. So right away, I have people say to me all the time like, how do I know what credential would be helpful? You don’t have to know what this tool. You can search by career. You can search by skill that you’re trying to build. You could search by the actual credential, if you know what you’re aiming for, or among the 2000 providers, say that you you know you want to pursue a credential from Google or from LinkedIn, you can go ahead and put the provider’s name and and then I’ll show you everything that they offer. Right? Once you decide how you’re going to what, how you’re going to search, right? You put it into their search engine, your results then are going to give you what I have found. I’ve not found anything that doesn’t offer multiple pages of different types of credentials, right? And so when we get these pages of credentials, you can then get in there and play around with it. I’ve done a lot of this lately. It’s going to demonstrate for you that, if you achieve this, if you earn this, if you receive this, the wage gain on average that people are experiencing from this. The Job Access lift, is it going to open a door to a new job, or is it going to give an advancement lift. You’re already in a job, but you want to go further, farther. You want to advance in your career. It’s also going to show you top jobs that are tied to this credential. So you might be aware of a credential, but go like, where’s this even used? You can go discover that it can show you the skills. It will show you the skills that are gained. It’s even going to give you a list of top employers who hire individuals who earn this credential. It’s also going to show you labor demand, and you can filter over on the left side menu, you can filter by are most people earning this with or without a bachelor’s degree. So lots of information, but this tool is not going to tell you what to do. It’s going it’s just going to give you information and data so you can make an informed decision on your own. It’s demonstrating to you what their research, and they do really great research at the Burning Glass Institute is going to tell you that with their research and their assessment of all of these across many, many employers, what tends to move the needle. Ultimately, it’s going to be up to you to be the person of who you show up at work, show up strong right now while burning less institutes, I would say their main objective when they were building this tool and doing the research was to tell you what’s going to give advancement. I’ve got something I want to introduce first. This tool can be used for validation. We talk here in College and Career Clarity a lot about we have to explore and validate in the real world before we pursue, before we invest time and money into getting credentialed, whether that involves college or some other type of training. So let’s go beyond the original use. This is almost like a doctor going off what is it off label? Is what they call it. It’s like a physician going off label with a medication to treat something else, right? So we’re going to go a little off label here. Dr Lisa is going to suggest that you actually use this in the validation piece with our particularly here, we’re aimed at 15 to 25 year olds that we’re supporting so you could earn a credential to test whether you’re actually going to enjoy the work, whether you’re going to be good at the work, whether you’re whether you like the skills that you earn and would use in A job. You can use it to build real schools. You can test whether you hit cognitive overload, right? Oh, gosh, I start to do this and it exhausts me, or it’s beyond my ability to reason or understand, right? You can discover whether this lights you up. Is something you want to keep doing you, kind of you start to pursue this and you get lost in doing it because it aligns with you. Does it energize you, or does it drain you? So while the Burning Glass Institute started out about employability and income, I’m going to go off label and say this is about using the tool to help create clarity, because a credential can give that clarity. It can open the door to clarity. Not just open the door to a job, and there’s the obvious other side of this. It also can create opportunity for advancement. So if you’re like, I don’t need to validate I already know the direction that I’m heading in. I might already have a degree, but I want to leg up in getting a job right or I’m earning a degree, and I want to stand out with real world experiences beyond my degree. This is another great use to figure out, like, what would I layer on top of the degree or the high school diploma? See, when you layer this on, you’ve got an opportunity to increase income, improve employability. We are talking all the time right now about how, and I have to do a lot of encouraging particularly the 20 somethings. It’s taking, on average, about six months to land a job. And what I see anecdotally, among the people that I’m talking to are the parents who have kids in this age group, those 20 somethings. Once they get clear and they start going after something, they get very discouraged that it takes more than a month, six weeks, eight weeks, we have to manage our expectations. Help our young people manage their expect. Recommendations, right? So while you’re doing the search, maybe you already have the credentials, but to improve perhaps your employability or your mobility, go ahead and consider earning a credential. This could help accelerate promotion. It’s just going to differentiate you, right? So sometimes these credentials are going to validate direction or not. Remember, even when we hit Ooh, that was draining, that’s still a win. We’re not Yes. Ultimately, we want to get to yes, but getting a no can be just as valuable as getting a yes. So we can use this to validate direction, and other times is going to accelerate our direction. Now some of you, as you’re listening to this, and before you go over there, use this, I want to put a warning label on this right. There can be a problem for some of you, because without a filter, this list of 23,000 credentials. I mean, many of you probably have heard me make fun of, like colleges that brag about 300 majors, or that, you know, you’ve heard me. If you’ve listened to the solo series we just finished on bad advice we give young people, go back and listen to it. If you haven’t, you know, I told the story about the Cheesecake Factory and how they brag about 250 menu options. That only serves to overwhelm so if that, if that, if 250 and 300 is overwhelming, 23,000

Lisa Marker Robbins  11:25

without a filter, can actually just put us in total shutdown. See if you haven’t, if you can’t filter beyond you can be anything down to a realistic set of Career Directions or options that actually fit in a line. This tool, even the shiny as it is, this shiny object, can serve to only further overwhelm someone who doesn’t have some measure of direction, because data without direction just creates more noise in the conversation, and it’s just going to further put an individual into fight, flight or freeze, instead of moving them forward with confidence. So my warning label is the filter comes first. We don’t want to see the credential, chase the credential and then hope that it leads somewhere that is throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. The better way to do this is to reverse engineer, build the self awareness, filter the career direction. You’re going to have a menu of options, but we’re going to filter from you can be anything. Go back and listen to that episode if you didn’t hear it, and I’ll put it in the show notes, like the world’s telling you you can be anything you can’t. That’s a lie, right? So let’s filter down to what’s actually possible, and then begin to use the CVI to use credentials strategically for validation and advancement. These credentials can be great accelerators, but I’ll tell you what they’re not. They’re not your filter, and they’re not your compass. So I’ve got seven questions that I want you to ask yourself before you begin to pursue any of them. So let’s say that you are like, Yep, we’ve got the filter. We have a we have a reduced menu of options about what fits and what we might want to pursue. So we’re in a good place to go. Use the CVI. So when you look at a credential, I’ve got seven questions to ask yourself, and I’m going to list these in the show notes as well. The first thing, and this is, this is great, not just to think about in your own head, because we can get stuck in overthinking, right? But to discuss with another person. We talk all the time in here about internal family conversations and external conversations with people about their jobs, right? So this list of seven questions could be great individually, inside the family unit and outside with professionals, either online or through informational interviews, or when you’re doing a job shadow, or you’re at your internship, or you’re at your job, or you’re at your volunteering. Question number one, what’s your goal? Like if you earn this, what are you hoping to gain from this? Are you earning this to test fit validate, or are you earning it to advance in a known direction? Okay, so are you validating a possible direction, or are you trying to advance into a known direction? You already got the GPS pen, and you put it in where you want to go. Next question, Will this credential build a skill that you actually want to use? Not just It looks good on paper or you see it listed on job postings online, but is this one that you actually want to use? It will bring you energy. It will light you up. Is it going to. Question number three, open a door or crack a door open, or is it just adding another line to your resume to look good? Is there actual demand for this skill in the field that you’re exploring or have already validated? See, CVI is going to be very useful here, because this is where you get into that data that I was saying. Like, does it give advancement? Does it open the door to employability? Who is actually hiring people that have this skill? I would also couple this we teach and launch Career Clarity about like, going and dissecting job postings. Use LinkedIn jobs. Indeed, if you’re in college, handshake, look at the job postings to see if this is getting listed. So will it be helpful here? Is this going to build a skill? Question number five, that would be transferable if you pivot later, right? You don’t have to get a yes to every single one of these questions, but these are the things that we need to be considering, right? What is it going to cost you in term of time, energy and money? Some of these are free. Some of them actually cost money. If they’ve got some higher value to it, you don’t, you’re usually going to have to pay something. But let me remind you, even when you pay no money, you are paying something in terms of time and energy, so be realistic about, can you be a finisher? There’s a lot of people that start these certifications and they don’t finish, right? Is this a time and place that you know your goals and you have time to invest in doing this. And finally, question number seven, remember, I’m going to put all of these over in the show notes. If this credential didn’t raise your income at all, if there was no monetary gain, is it still going to move you forward in some way? It could be that it moves you forward in confidence. It could be that it moves you forward in clarity. It could be that it’s going to move you forward to make you’re more employable. So ask yourself those seven questions after you’ve gone through and you’ve filtered and you’ve learned and you see some of the high value options that are in front of you, go ahead and run through these seven questions before you proceed. Is this opening a door, or is it just adding a line? That’s what you need to think about. Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re going like, oh gosh, Lisa, we don’t even know how to begin to filter the 23,000 options down to which credentials to even explore. Think you know what. That’s the work we do inside launch Career Clarity, we have supported over 4000 families in helping their young people identify their wiring so that they can filter options and validate fit before they make strategic moves where they’re investing time and money. Now next week, you’ve got to come back, because here’s the deal, I have a college president who’s coming on, and I can’t say who yet, because they have not made this big announcement they’re getting ready to make this month. But I have a college president coming on in this college. He’s supporting redesigning curriculum. They’re launching this out into the world, because the kids at this school begin by building real skills. From day one, they are flipping the traditional model on its head. So I hope you come back, because even if that college, if you’re college bound, or you have a college bound young person in your in your home, even if you’re if you’re going anywhere to college, right, this is going to help you think differently. And even if you’re not going to college or you’re already out, it’s going to get you thinking differently about how to better engineer this big project we’re on to launch kids out into the real world to have impact and be happy and build the lives that they deserve. Okay, if this lit you up, if this gave you some ideas, if you’re going to go try the credential value index at credential value index.org Go ahead and like it. Share it with a friend, because I know you know other people who are navigating this same journey.