Showcase Your Expertise: How Digital Badges Will Shape Your Profile

I make meatballs so delicious they’ll bring tears to your eyes, but only people who come to my house for dinner know that about me. What if I want others to know? I can post photos to social media, but that really doesn’t demonstrate the depth of my expertise.

As a CPA, you face a similar dilemma when it comes to assessing and showcasing your expertise. Of course, your need to do so is far more important and the stakes significantly higher than my need to publicize my culinary skills.

As you progress in your career, employers and clients alike expect you to continuously build your competence and stay ahead of the learning curve on regulations, standards and other changes. But how do you prove it?

AICPA digital badges can help. These graphical representations of significant achievements are linked to online descriptions that are fast becoming the standard for recognizing and publicizing your professional development.

Our first digital badges will be awarded this spring to those who earn one of the AICPA’s single audit, employee benefit plans audit or not-for-profit certificates or complete the CGMA Financial Performance Management Program.

Here are four things you should know about digital badges:

Digital badges are much more visible than paper certificates you’ve traditionally received.

Paper certificates confine your achievements to a wall or desk drawer. Digital badges are free to roam, providing unlimited opportunity for you to publicize your expertise to employers, colleagues, hiring managers and clients.

You can post and share digital badges through email signatures, social media, your firm’s website, proposals and more. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have fully embraced digital badges, teaming with badge providers to make it easy to add digital badges to your social networks and profile.

Digital badges are verifiable.

Embedded in each digital badge is a URL that takes users to a website which validates and explains your certificate, enabling anyone to quickly and easily verify your competence, as well as the credibility of the credentialing organization.

Digital badges are portable and move with you.

Digital badges allow you to take control of showcasing your skills and expertise in ways that suit your needs.

Badges you earn through AICPA can live with those from other organizations in one place and go anywhere you go.

You can curate your badges and display them any way you like. Choose which badges to keep private and which to show, customizing your display as you would a resume for different audiences and purposes.

Your digital “backpack” of badges may likely become the centerpiece of your professional profile over the course of your career.

Employers value industry-validated credentials.

Employers increasingly seek workers with specific industry-recognized skills, experience and credentials.

Digital badges enable you to build a visible portfolio of respected, validated certificates and credentials that show employers and clients – current and future – that you possess the latest industry knowledge, specialties and skills and share a commitment to quality work.

You’ve worked hard to develop your knowledge, expertise and competencies. AICPA digital badges will help you make the most of what you’ve learned and earned, showcasing your knowledge and skills more easily and broadly with your network and beyond.

As for me, if you come to dinner, I’ll make you some homemade pasta and meatballs.

Learn more about the AICPA’s new single audit and employee benefit plans audit certificate programs, offering the AICPA’s first digital badges.

Clar Rosso, Vice President, Member Learning and Competency, American Institute of CPAs.