For marketers who walk the walk

You may have noticed that the IDM recently teamed up with digital quiz people, Smarterer, by compiling a couple of quizzes that test your marketing knowledge. One’s in social media, the other mobile. It’s a fun way to test yourself on what you know, and at the same time take on your colleagues in the race to the top of the leader board. There’s even a badge so you can show off your score on the social web! We fired a few questions at Smarterer CEO, Jennifer Fremont-Smith, to find out what they’re all about.

What is Smarterer?
Smarterer tests and scores people on their digital, social, and technical skills – everything from Excel and Powerpoint to Google Analytics and Salesforce to JQuery and Javascript – using crowdsourced test design and a scoring algorithm similar to the one developed to rank chess masters. Users take tests and get a badge that’s designed to be shared anywhere they express their professional identity (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging platforms, resumes, etc.) Our goal is to enable people to validate their skills and show the world what they know.

What are you trying to achieve with Smarterer?
We’re reinventing the skills section on the world’s resume. Professionals are rapidly accumulating digital and technical skills that make them effective in the workplace –but the primary way they communicate those skills to the world is on the skills section of their resume using vague, often exaggerated buzzwords that mean nothing to employers.  Smarterer is giving people a quantitative measure of their skills and fundamentally changing the way professionals are evaluated.

What made you excited about working with the IDM?
The IDM is the world’s leader in marketing training, training tens of thousands of marketers in the digital marketing skills they need to succeed. This deep expertise makes them a perfect partner to create tests on social media and mobile marketing – two of the most important new digital marketing skills. We also knew The IDM’s members would be great Smarterer users – a passionate community of talented marketers who would help create the best tests by adding great questions, and use their Smarterer scores to market themselves!

You have some very interesting investors, the likes of Hubspot’s Dahrmesh Shah and Google, what do you think attracted them to Smarterer?
I believe our investors saw that we are solving a very big, very interesting problem, and using data and analytics to do so in a brand new way. We’re finally giving professionals a simple, smart way to validate what they know and articulate that to the world. Proficiency in digital technologies is also critical for employers – they need to be able to find professionals who have the critical skills.  We solve this problem for employers by giving them tools to evaluate their candidates.

What can we expect to see from Smarterer in the future?
You’ll see professionals taking tests, getting scored, and using their Smarterer badges as a core part of their identity. Everywhere you look at a professional, whether it’s on a profile, a resume, a portfolio, a social networking site, you should be able to see their Smarterer scores and understand what skills they have.

Want to have a go for yourself? Both IDM quizzes are here. See how you do – and if you’re not happy where you rank, you can keep trying until you are. Warning: the questions will change – and get harder each time

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