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40 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2024 You need a good vendor-supplier management program. designed to assess whether a student learned what was taught in a course of study. Instead, certification exams are designed to validate and recognize a person's current competencies. Individuals with a given level of education and years of experience on the job will have had the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills measured by the exam. e role of the certification exam as a validation tool also explains why exam participants cannot see the questions they missed. e exam would quickly lo se its ability to accurately measure competency if the questions and answers were common knowledge. For example, consider the bar exam that attorneys must pass to be certified to practice law. How the candidate obtained the knowledge to pass the bar is not required for the exam. Likewise, completing a law degree at a university does not guarantee the candidate will pass the bar. Despite popular perception, certification exams are not created by random individuals intent on making the questions as difficult or trivial as possible. Developing relevant, reliable, and fair exam questions—questions that employers can rely on to confirm that an employee can actually perform given tasks— is a necessarily long and systematic process requiring dedicated subject matter experts and extensive statistical evaluation by experienced psychometricians (scientists who study the measurement of people's knowledge, skills, and abilities). 1 Certificate Programs A certificate program is synonymous with training. Upon successful completion of a training program designed to teach them new knowledge and skills, participants are awarded a certificate of achievement or completion. Most certificate training programs are open to a wide range of participants. However, in some cases, students may be asked to complete specific courses before taking more advanced courses in the same subject. Well-designed training programs use tests as both a learning and evaluation tool. Practice activities, knowledge checks, and quizzes allow students to assess their understanding and refine their skills, but only those students who attain the passing score on an assessment designed to verify learning are awarded a certificate. According to the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (ICE), assessment-based cert- ificate (ABC) programs are well suited to help employees acquire the specific skills required to do their jobs to industry-defined levels of pro- ficiency. 2 Of course, not all ABC programs are created equal, so it's important to consider only those offered by organizations like IPC that work closely with industry experts and learning specialists to develop and deliver real-world knowledge and skills in ways that ensure on-the-job applicability. Certification Programs (Validation) Employers invest in IPC certifications and associated guidelines to help ensure the quality, reliability, and consistency of the electronic products they produce. is attention to quality decreases rework and repair, promotes the development of standardized process controls that boost efficiency, and increases competitiveness in a challenging global market. Given the tight labor market, employers are also increasingly aware of certification's role in employee performance and retention. IPC-certified employees value the recognition of employers and colleagues as experts in their fields, and studies show that workplace recognition positively affects employee motivation, engagement, and longevity. For