About our digital badge
What is the Career Farm Digital Badge?
Following the publication of ‘Taking Charge of Your Career’ by Bloomsbury, co-author Jane Barrett developed the online career development course ‘Masters Maximiser’ for Master’s students. This course has been used by over 15,000 Master’s students since its launch in 2012 — now spanning over a decade of continuous use.
It is used by business schools and universities such as INSEAD, Cambridge Judge Business School, WHU/Kellogg, the University of Liverpool, the University of Leeds, the Open University, ESMT Berlin, SKEMA Business School and Sheffield Business School.
We have also developed a corporate career development version, ‘Career Maximiser’, used by organisations such as Amazon, Prudential, a NHS Trust, Yorkshire Cancer Research and Nissan.
As an employer, why is this useful to me?
Jane Barrett is a career changer herself — moving from chartered surveying into headhunting, where she recruited for start-ups and SMEs as well as blue-chip companies such as Dell, Barclays, UBS, Mars and Heinz, both in the UK and internationally.
She then moved in-house to recruit for PwC, from Master’s level up to Partner level, and found that candidates who had done some career thinking were better placed to understand whether a role and company were the right fit for them.
Specifically, she found that candidates who could confidently answer the following questions, with examples, performed more strongly at interview than those who had not given this any thought:
- What are your top strengths?
- What are your values?
- What are your interests and future trends?
- Which colleagues and managers bring out the best in you?
- What are your long-term plans?
Masters Maximiser helps students answer these questions through structured self-reflection.
Why is this useful for students?
Employers want to know that a candidate has thought about their career and identified their strengths, values, interests and preferences. This helps them assess whether the candidate will fit in, be productive and thrive in the role — and whether the role fits the candidate’s long-term plans, so they stay motivated to succeed.
Students don’t necessarily need to share their long-term plans at interview, but having a sense of how a role fits into their short- to medium-term career plans is something employers are likely to find reassuring.
As a student you have invested in doing a Masters qualification and so you want to get the most out of it from a career perspective. Having a list of your ‘criteria’ helps you narrow down your focus from all the different directions you could take. This means your networking is more meaningful as you have a better idea of what you need to find out to ensure this is a good career fit for you.
As an employer, what does this digital badge mean?
It means the student has completed all four modules of the course, so they have thought through their career direction in depth, and has received a personal career strategy plan setting out what they want to achieve.
The course is not ‘marked’, as there are no right or wrong answers, but at some business schools completing it is mandatory, so the badge also confirms that requirement has been fulfilled.
Each badge comes with its own unique ID and verification link, so you, as the employer can confirm it’s genuine.