Most of our parents (and you, if you’re a parent) will agree that getting a certificate is important.

People believe having a certificate, is having a safety net. You can always apply for jobs with it. You’ll never go hungry.

I agree that having a certificate is an advantage.

But there’s a danger:

People who study one thing, tend to stay in that thing forever.

Most accountants think they should do accounting and nothing else – till they retire. Some marketers think they should just do marketing – and nothing else.

That’s dangerous, because of how fast things change these days.

For example, if you do digital marketing, you’d know that 3rd party cookies will be gone soon. Google Analytics, the analytics platform is also changing. Thousands of businesses will be left not knowing how to migrate their analytics.

There would be 3 usual reactions to this:

• Do nothing and wait. (The worst thing to do.)
• Talk and complain about the market changes on Facebook groups.
• Find opportunities.

For one – with Google retiring Google Analytics Universal, you could quickly learn up Google Analytics 4, and then offer migration services to business that needs help.

We currently live in a knowledge-based economy.

Put simply, the more you learn, the more you earn. I hope you adopt a habit of continuous learning.

Certificates – sure they’re useful. But for some industries (like marketing), they are just a bad measure of competency. People want to know what you can do for them, not see a decorated piece of paper.

Reuben Ch’ng,
LEAD

P.S. Want to be a data-driven marketer? Learn the basics of doing data analytics with just Excel this Thursday.