Guidelines for ASQ and other Certifications on Business Cards

My employer has asked that I update my business cards to reflect my CQE certification. It seems as though maybe at one point I saw something about guidelines as to what you could put on your card but can't seem to find that information now.

What do others do? Do you put your certifications on your business cards or not? Do you just put letters or do you spell it out? I'm just kind of curious if there is industry standard practice around that sort of thing.

holly21 said:

My employer has asked that I update my business cards to reflect my CQE certification. It seems as though maybe at one point I saw something about guidelines as to what you could put on your card but can't seem to find that information now.

What do others do? Do you put your certifications on your business cards or not? Do you just put letters or do you spell it out? I'm just kind of curious if there is industry standard practice around that sort of thing.

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I put the letters for certifications immediately following my name. This is also acceptable for those with Masters schooling and beyond.

The protocol I've been exposed to is in that the letters were supposed to be one font size smaller than the name.

Disagreement emerged regarding listing more than one cert: should one list them from least to greatest, or otherwise?

One can choose to leave off certs. I don't list more than CQE and CQA, though I am also CQT and CMI.

FWIW:
I'm a long time member of ASQ and I still need a cheat sheet to sort out the alphabet soup of designations. Once that's done, I'm very aware of the Body of Knowledge behind each designation.

This is a forum of Quality practitioners, many of them long-time professionals, and yet I would bet even money less than 5 out of 10 Covers randomly chosen could adequately describe ALL the certifications and summarize the BOK of each just from the initials.

If Quality pros have such a poor record, can you imagine what non-pros would do?

My vote is to spell it out in a line below the name:
"American Society for Quality Certified Quality Engineer (CQE)"

I would only use the most pertinent designation for the job description.
(CQM or CQE or Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE) for a Quality Manager, but not "CQT" or "CQIT" even if they are earned and current.)

Wes Bucey
GCSoBS
(Guiness Certified Sitter on Bar Stools)
[just in case someone misinterpreted the "BS"]

I'm not sure of your industry, but initials do follow the name. I am not sure about changing font size. something like Fred Globe, MSN, CCRN, FACC. In the right arena it gives you a measure of credibility.

Back before I let them expire, I had all three of my certs (CQE, CQA, CQM) on my business card. Where they went and how big they were depended on the overall layout of the card, how big the fonts used were, etc. The order I used for listing them was usually the order I received them in!

With three certs, I always thought it looked best on a second line below the name, especially after ASQ asked us to refer to the CQM as CQ Manager or some such. When I just had the CQE I put it after my name on the same line.

One actual guideline I'm aware of is that ASQ asks you to identify your cert as an ASQ cert - one way to do it is how Wes suggested above. I used to just add (ASQ) after the three certs:

CQE, CQM, CQA (ASQ)