Should I put my Lean or Six Sigma certification from my former employer on my resume?
This is a common question I receive, and it came up last week in a training class.
Does my internal company Lean or Six Sigma certification stay with me after I leave my job?
Let’s say you work for company A, and they have an internal Green Belt certification program that you complete.
You decide to leave company A.
Do you put your Green Belt certification on your resume?
Yes!
You met the requirements for that certification.
However, when you apply to jobs outside of company A, they won’t know what those requirements entailed.
Therefore, you will be asked to explain the following:
✅ topics covered in the training and how many hours
✅ whether you took an exam or not
✅ what software program you learned (Minitab, JMP, SigmaXL, etc)
✅ whether you had to complete a real-life project or if you completed a mock/simulated project or neither
The same goes for a Black Belt or Lean certification.
When I worked in the corporate Lean Six Sigma group, we often had to ask more details about the certification requirements we saw on resumes.
Sometimes the certifications were more challenging to achieve than external and well-recognized certifications.
Sometimes they were much easier to achieve and we were not as impressed.
But the most important question was whether the candidate had applied what they learned to real-life projects and solved actual problems, and could discuss a few successful projects with us.
The certification was just a way to get a foot in the door for an interview.
The real-life experience is what determined whether we hired them or not.
Not sure about your situation? Contact me about your certification and I’ll give you my thoughts.
