Red Hat Certification is proud to announce a new way to display your Red Hat certifications: Red Hat Certification badges.

About Red Hat Certification badges

Red Hat Certification badges provide a way for Red Hat Certified Professionals (RHCPs) to share their certified status to the world through social media, the web and other digital means. The Red Hat certification badging program uses tools and standards developed by the Mozilla OpenBadges Project.

Red Hat has long offered logos for use in printed materials. These will continue to be available and should only be used for print. With the new badging program available, we would also discourage RHCPs from posting a copy of the electronic certificate for purposes other than print. Unfortunately, these are occasionally downloaded by unscrupulous individuals who then modify the certificate to appear as though it is issued to them.

The new badges are the appropriate way to display your certification in social media, on the web and in other digital settings. Each badge has a unique URL for verifying the badge. The badge includes your certification ID on the badge itself. Moreover, the certification ID, unique verification URL and other metadata are actually baked into the image as well. These measures provide more assurance that the badge holder is a legitimate RHCP.

 

Preliminary steps

In order to access a Red Hat Certification badge you must have earned at least one of the following credentials and the credential must be current:

  • Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
  • Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
  • Red Hat Certified JBoss Developer (RHCJD)
  • Red Hat Certified JBoss Administrator (RHCJA)
  • Red Hat Certified Virtualization Administrator (RHCVA)
  • Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA)
  • Updated February 2018 - We have renamed the Certificates of Expertise to variations of Red Hat Certified Specialist.  We are pleased to announce that all Red Hat certifications have badges for the people who earn them.

You will also need a redhat.com login that is mapped to your Red Hat certification ID.

If you do not already have a redhat.com login, please go to redhat.com and create one.  Please use the email address you provided when you took your certification exam or exams as your email contact.

Once you have a login, you can map your redhat.com user name to your Red Hat certification ID within your redhat.com profile:

  • Log into redhat.com then follow the Certifications link on the landing page.
  • Go to Certification Profile, then check your Certification List
  • If your certification is missing, go to Add a Certification
  • While you are at it, you might want to go to Privacy Settings and allowing people to find you in searches and/or contact you via your profile. [This step is a suggestion, not a requirement for badging.]

You should now be able to access your badge (or badges, if you hold more than one eligible certification.)

 Accessing your badges

Once you have taken the preliminary steps, you should be able to access badges for the certifications you hold from within your Red Hat certification profile.

  • Log into redhat.com and follow the Certifications link on the landing page.
  • You should see certifications you have earned in your Certification List. If you do not see one, you probably need to map it to your Certification ID using the procedure described earlier.
  • Each certification listed will display text next to the certification title that says Badge. Each eligible certification has its own link and badging page.
  • After following a Badge link, you have two options:
    • You can copy the badge's unique URL and post the URL in places where URLs get translated, such as social media and other applications that will translate the URL and display the badge (e.g., some SMS text applications on smart phones.)
    • You can download the badge as a PNG. The URL approach is preferred in situations where you can use a URL, but there are some situations in which you will need to use the file.

 

 

Displaying your badges in social media

The following is only a partial list of the possibilities.  Let us know if you come up with new ways to use our badges.

LinkedIn

As a social media network tied to the world of work, LinkedIn is a logical place to share your status as a Red Hat Certified Professional.

  • Log into LinkedIn and go to Profile→Edit Profile.
  • Search for Certifications in the page – it is a section of every LinkedIn profile.
  • Click on Add a certificate
  • Fill out the fields displayed as follows
    • Certification Name: Enter the full name of the certification, not the acronym, e.g., Red Hat Certified Architect, not RHCA.
    • Certification Authority: Enter Red Hat. The application may provide some suggestions as you type. Choose Red Hat and not one of our regional offices.
    • License Number:  Enter your certification ID.
    • Certification URL:  Enter your unique URL for this particular certification and badge
  • Unselect “This certificate does not expire.” Your badge is only valid while it is current.
  • Select the month and year in which you earned the certification using the month and year drop-down menus on the left, and the expiration date shown on the badge's URL in the right-hand drop-down menus.
  • If everything looks correct, click Save. You will now have a listing under the Certifications section. When clicked, it will take someone to your unique URL for that certification. (Note: you will need to exit the Edit Profile view to see this for yourself.)

 

Facebook

Let your family and friends know about your accomplishment by posting your badge to Facebook.

  • Log into Facebook
  • Paste your badge's unique URL into the What's on your mind? field and post. You might find that it does not update immediately but it will show up after Facebook does whatever it is doing at this step.

 

Twitter

Tweet your certification status to the world (or at least the Twitterverse.)

  • Log into Twitter
  • Paste your badge’s unique URL into the What’s happening? field and click Tweet.  As with Facebook, it might not render immediately.  If you refresh your page you should see the badge (and so should your many Twitter followers.)

 


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About the author

Randy Russell is the director of Certification and leads the team that develops and delivers Red Hat's certification programs and exams.  A long-time proponent of performance-based testing, he has served on the board and as president and chairman of the Performance Testing Council, as well as having presented on this subject and others at industry conferences such as the Association of Test Publishers, the European Association of Test Publishers, CeDMA and TSIA.  Prior to joining Red Hat, Russell was a system administrator and programmer at an environmental economics consulting firm.

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