Podcast: Digital Badges & Social Media
Patricia Diaz, Credly’s Demand Generation Marketing Manager, explains how she found a job through social media. Combining this with the idea of the portability and transparency of digital badges, Patricia reminds us why it is important to share what you’ve earned!
Listen to the full interview here:
Susan Manning: Welcome to the Credly Podcast where we touch base with our issuers, earners, and partners, and explore themes of interest in digital credentialing. I'm Susan Manning. Today I'm joined by my colleague Patricia Diaz. Patricia is the Demand Generation Marketing Manager. What that means is her job is to engage potential customers by way of blogging, publishing our podcasts, our webinars, and driving people to the product. Patricia is closely involved with the podcast that I produce. As we were talking about the aim of these podcasts, to inform and to inspire, we wanted to bring in more user stories of people who had earned badges, and I was teasing Patricia about the fact that she had not yet put her employee badge on LinkedIn, but it led to this really interesting story of how she found her job. First of all, I want to welcome you, Patricia.
Patricia: Thanks, Susan.
Susan Manning: So you came to Credly by way of LinkedIn. Tell us about your job search and what happened.
Patricia: So it's an interesting story. It came out of sort of a place of not caring that much what people thought, and putting my pride aside. In December of last year of 2017, I was laid off from the job that I was in previously. At the time, it was the middle of December. I had closed on my house two weeks prior to that. I was seven months pregnant, and it was two weeks before Christmas. It was not a great time to lose my job. It was stressful. It was scary. It was just not a great time. I'm new to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is where I moved from New York City about a year and a half ago, so I don't know anybody here. I didn't know how to network here. I was just overwhelmed, but I've been in digital marketing for about 12 years and I very much know the power of social media.
Patricia: I figured I have nothing to lose. I'm going to put post on LinkedIn, and see what happens. So I put a post on LinkedIn asking kind of jokingly for a Christmas miracle. If anybody has anything in marketing that could be done remotely or in Chattanooga, let me know. I was open to anything at this point, even freelance. I wanted to put some feelers out. It kind of went viral, actually. In about 24 hours, it had been viewed about 64,000 times. I do not have that many people in my network so it got shared a lot. It got commented on. It really was like the power of social media, and everybody rallying together to help me. It was just amazing. Complete strangers reaching out and saying, "I know of this opportunity and this opportunity."
Patricia: Long story short, my now boss found it. I have no idea how he found it. I don't even think he knows how he found it, but he commented on the post saying that he had opened up the job that I'm in now, the demand generation marketing role, and that I should apply. Obviously, you know how that turned out. I did. We had a really great interview. I met with the team several times, and I started on January 29th.
Susan Manning: That is amazing. Why did you say you had to put pride aside?
Patricia: It was kind of embarrassing to admit, but I had moved across the country for the role that I had been laid off in, and it was embarrassing at this point in my career to be laid off, and have to publicly admit that I was looking for work. I don't know. It was just I had never gone that route before. I never put it out there that I was looking for work. All my job searches had been pretty easy for me, and I've never had to actively look for work. I've always been either recommended for a role or roles had been created for me. I mean, it sounds kind of snobby to say, but I've never had to go out of my way to find a job. This is the first time that I really had to say, "Hey, I need help from my network. What's out there? How can you guys help me?"
Susan Manning: Yeah, but unfortunately I think your story is not singular. There are many good people who lose positions, and they do need to promote themselves. Yeah. We talk a lot in digital badging about upskilling or reskilling, and how a digital badge or a digital credential can help surface and communicate those skills better to potential employers. So how has your experience informed what you do now on the job?
Patricia: Yeah. So when I was job searching, I would have loved to have digital credentials on my LinkedIn profile. When I say I'm a digital marketing expert, that can mean 50 million things to 50 million people. It's completely different, but to get granular on what I'm actually good at, and have the digital credentials to back it up, and just be much more specific about what digital marketing entails from SEO, to PPC, to social media, email marketing, whatever it is. If I could have put the actual skill in a way that can communicate competency as opposed to my just saying, "Hey, I have a degree in marketing. I've been doing it for a really long time. Hire me." If I could have said, "I'm actually really good at these 10 things, this is why," and then I have the proof to communicate that, I think it would have been tremendously helpful in my job search.
Susan Manning: The magic is that you're not just saying you have those competencies when you have a digital credential. They've already been verified by somebody else. You've been vetted.
Patricia: Exactly.
Susan Manning: There's proof and that credential provides that proof.
Patricia: Right.
Susan Manning: Is it fair to say you're a little more sensitive now to our earners?
Patricia: I am much more sensitive to our earners, and I really understand being in this role. I really understand why people are so passionate about the ability to share their credentials because you can earn them all day, but if they're not visible to the outside world, it's really not as powerful. Making them sharable and obvious is significantly powerful, I think.
Susan Manning: Right. That is why in future podcasts I want to feature more stories of people who have been able to take their credentials, and really leverage the power of those through sharing through helping to close that, whether you call it a communications gap or a skills gap, but being able to articulate what you're capable of doing in such a fashion that is already verified. I hope that our listeners when they hear your story, and they hear that you did not have a digital credential, but you would have loved to have had that, I hope that they will reach out to us, and tell us of stories they know of earners who have really benefited from the credentials by way of sharing them, and promoting them.
Patricia: Yes. We would love to hear those stories, especially from a marketing perspective. It would be great to hear how a digital credential has changed somebody's life for the better.
Susan Manning: Great. So listeners, we're throwing it out to you. We hope you get back to us with more earner stories, and from a personal note, I'm just so glad that we found Patricia by way of LinkedIn.
Patricia: Thanks, Susan.
Susan Manning: Thank you, Patricia. Thank you, listeners, for joining us. If you'd like to suggest upcoming topics, feel free to write us at info@credly.com.