Hello shoppers and thank you for helping us new shoppers with your knowledge and support!

I have a question today about certification. I noticed that some companies say they favor or look for certification. Do you recommend I do this? In your experience do you think you are more successful being assigned shops?

Thanks so much!

I signed up for it when I first started shopping. I've never noticed it making a difference, but I really don't know. I think my membership has expired. I haven't filled in the number for several MSC's and still get shops for them... Perhaps it gave me an extra look when I was was applying for jobs as a newbie? This is another question for which a scheduler's response would be fantastic.

If you do a search om MSPA for the last 90 day, or longer, you will find a ton of responses to similar questions. The bottom line is this: beware because for a long time people who have gotten certified have not been able to get their certification numbers to be accepted by the systems that the MS companies use. So, you may be wasting your money. If I recall correctly, this has been a problem for 18-24 months or longer..

Thank you MFJohnston, your replies are always thoughtful and helpful! I think I'll see how it goes first.

Hello walesmaven. I didn't think to go to MSPA and will do that. In the meantime I've put the idea on hold. Thank you!

This is what I saw on the Sassie page about certifications.

Statement on MSPA Certifications from 2014 or later:

Our system directly accepts certification codes for the original MSPA Gold and Silver certifications dating up to 2014.

We currently do not directly accept certification codes for the newer MSPA certifications (2014 and later) but may accept them in the future depending on the volume of shoppers with these newer certifications and the number of companies that are actively using them.

If you have a newer certification, some companies may be manually accepting these codes using our TestCaster "Qualifications" system.

MFJ, there is a difference between MSPA membership (which expires) and certification (which does not expire).

To the OP: I have been MSPA gold certified since 2003. Back then they had workshops for gold certification, which was worthwhile in terms of learning and networking because many company reps attended. Nowadays, the workshops have nothing to do with certification and gold certification is obtained online, which is much less valuable, in my opinion. Back when I got my gold certification I do think it helped me get advantages such as first dibs on shops since some companies would send out blast emails ONLY to gold certified shoppers first, and after we took what we wanted the rest of the shops were released to non-certified shoppers. That doesn't happen much anymore. I don't think you need to worry about getting your certification, and as wales mentioned, some (Sassie) websites are having difficulty with recognizing the certification numbers and the MSCs have been working on trying to get the numbers entered manually for shoppers. Some of them take a very long time doing so, which makes me think that it isn't that important to them anymore. What is important is that you complete and submit your shops in a timely manner, try not to cancel and never just flake on a shop, pay attention to guidelines, and submit well-written shops.

Back in the day, MSPA certification meant you had learned basic skills necessary to complete shops. Nowadays, with every MSC able to post their own training and tests online, MSPA certification isn't as valuable. Even if you get it, which you pay for, you will still have to pass tests or qualifications from MSC's before you will get to apply for shops. Not all MSC's even require training.