Forcing Candidates to Complete

The next series of posts focuses on the issue of candidates who pursue their certification for an inordinately long time. These candidates start the certification process and, unlike the disengaged candidates from previous posts, they stay engaged. However, they take a long time to get certified. Or, they stay just engaged enough to stay active but never put in the effort to finish the certification. The first topic I’ll explore is the question – should the candidate be forced to start over from the beginning?

The primary reason that most programs allow the candidate an infinite time to complete the requirements is a desire to keep the candidate happy. If a candidate starts the certification process and then goes a length of time with no further activity, it doesn’t really matter if you make them start over because they have already disengaged. For example, if they fail the exam and you see nothing else from them for 3 years, most likely they are no longer pursuing your certification so nothing you do to their record is of much importance. However, if they are remaining active (continuing to take exams for example), this type of policy can frustrate candidates and lead to complaints to your customer service team. This is why many programs do not have a deadline for a candidate to complete their certification.

In addition to customer satisfaction, as long as a candidate is actively engaged, most likely they are continuing to generate revenue for you. If you make them start over, it is possible that the candidate will disengage in frustration leading to the loss of that revenue.

Finally, usually the activities at the beginning of the certification cycle are most impactful in terms of your staff’s time. If a candidate is merely continuing to take exams, they probably are minimally impacting your customer service team. However, if the candidate starts over, they might need to recomplete an application and resubmit documentation – activities which generally require a good deal of review time from your staff.

In contrast, the main business driver for forcing a candidate to start over is to ensure that their experience is relevant at time of certification. If you have an application process where the candidate provided industry experience or background information, then a candidate who takes a long time to get certified might no longer be one who should get certified based on what has transpired with them since time of application approval. For example, many programs have applications where the candidate completes a personal affidavit where perhaps they attest that they haven’t been charged with a felony. If the candidate takes six years to attain their certification, is this affidavit still valid? Or, if your program requires two exams for certification and the candidates passes them five years apart, have they truly demonstrated mastery of material at the same time? In either case, you increase the chances of certifying a candidate who does not truly meet the requirements for certification. A related example to think about is if your program requires recertification. If your program requires a candidate has to demonstrate proficiency every 4 years to stay certified, does it make sense that a candidate would have longer than those 4 years in which to demonstrate initial competency?

Two supporting reasons for enforcing a start over policy are:

1) Some candidates need a push – its human nature to procrastinate and some people just need a deadline. They want the certification and you want both that revenue and the additional person in your certification pool. The start over policy just gives the candidate a target to aim at.

2) It’s helpful for your program monitoring to know your pool of active candidates that are still pursuing certification and who might respond to marketing. Ones who are not making progress toward certification could be moved to a “Start Over” status.

Next posting – Options for the start over rule.

Keeping Certified Candidates Engaged

Continuing the candidate engagement thread, its time for a discussion on how to keep certified candidates engaged. Again, as with candidates pursuing their first certification, the trick here is to motivate candidates to stay connected. A great method for this is to organize a set of tiered certifications that progressively challenges your candidates’ expertise—as a candidate’s knowledge and experience grows, so does the challenge that your program offers. Having an entry-level certification, a senior certification, and an advanced certification provides a certification path that mirrors a candidate’s career path.

Another option is to have ongoing requirements that force a candidate to stay engage. Recertification is the primary means to do this. Many clients require candidates to submit continuing education (CE) in order to maintain certification. In these cases, its important that you have a site that the candidate can report their CE immediately upon completion rather than forcing them to wait until the end when they have completed all of the CE credits and are about to recertify. This way, they have periodic engagement with you as they login and record their progress rather than the single submission at the end of the recertification cycle.

A final option to consider is engaging your certified candidates as judges of who is qualified for certification. There are a couple of strategies you can use to engage your candidate population this way—as judges or as mentors. As judges: consider introducing a practical requirement to you certification path. These work products must be evaluated and graded to ensure they meet the rubric of your program. Senior certified professionals are your subject matter experts and take pride in vetting the next generation of colleagues—many are enthusiastic to volunteer their time to this effort. As mentors: in many trades and professions, mentorship is integral to maintaining professional standards. In some, the relationship is valued highly enough to formalize in the certification and licensure process. The mentor would ensure young candidates are performing the right tasks in the industry while internalizing and practicing the behaviors that are essential to success, thus incubating a truly professional society. As Judge or Mentor, your candidates take on a material role in defining the tenor and quality of your future professionals and you build a culture of connected and engaged candidates.

What do you think?