Marketing Skills Alliance is an initiative for transparent assessment of marketing competencies. The same standard for a junior and an expert with 15 years of experience — based on research, not on interview impressions.
Experience, budget, and team size say almost nothing about the actual level. These are the exact same signals that marketing hiring relies on — and exactly why it so often fails.
The market is equally mistaken about other things almost everyone believes in. Let's check?
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Explanation...
We are creating a standard that helps distinguish knowledge from charisma, loud cases, and random experience — so that marketing decisions are made with confidence, not by guesswork.
supporters backed the manifesto
questions in the knowledge base
standard levels
faster business hiring
We are gathering the open position of the community: specialists, managers, HR, educators — everyone who agrees that competency assessment in marketing should be transparent and verifiable. This is not a test or a subscription — just one click to state your position.
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Hiring in marketing often relies on self-presentation rather than verifiable knowledge. Confident speech and mastery of terminology are easily mistaken for competence — distinguishing one from the other without independent assessment is nearly impossible.
Experienced professionals systematically lose out to confidently sounding newcomers — not because they are worse, but because the market has no way to measure the difference between them other than the impression from the interview.
In the current job market, a young specialist without experience but with a deep understanding of modern marketing is often filtered out at the resume stage — simply because there is no verifiable experience line. And many years of experience often means working in a narrow function without understanding the market as a whole, rather than higher qualifications.
The business pays for this in both cases: once by paying a salary to someone who learns at its expense, while the market remains closed to those already ready to deliver results. The second time through re-hiring when an unprepared specialist leaves with a built portfolio. And over time, through disappointment in the marketing function itself, which as a result does not rise above presentations and souvenirs.
As long as the business does not see a measurable link between marketing and revenue, budgets are cut first, and a marketer's salary is consistently lower than a salesperson's — even though both directly bring in clients and drive sales. This washes strong specialists out of the profession and leaves the weak, which again confirms the business's thesis that "marketing doesn't work" — although the reason is not in marketing, but in the fact that the market had nothing to measure what actually works in it.
Substitution of concepts, where trendy acronyms hide a lack of real qualifications.
Different generations and schools of marketing use different conceptual frameworks, which paralyzes communication with the business.
Focus on likes, views, and traffic without connection to the company's financial results.
Imposing expensive promotion channels on the business for the sake of their own commissions, rather than the client's real profit.
The ease with which an incompetent specialist moves to the next company after squandering budgets at the previous one.
Academic programs lag behind the market by years, and most online courses teach tools without an understanding of basic economic principles.
A situation where the CEO or business owner judges marketing based on personal preferences rather than measurable indicators.
"Marketing should follow the example of finance and economics — accumulate evidence, verify cause-and-effect relationships. Professionals must constantly obtain certifications."Read the full interview →
Junior is assessed by a test, Middle by independent problem-solving, and Senior by expert verification of real cases. Each stage is stricter than the previous one, and each adds points to the same 0 to 100 scale. You can only move to the next stage by reaching the minimum threshold at the previous one — a level cannot be bought if it is not proven.
A 30-question test, free of charge. A basic check of understanding marketing concepts. Threshold to move forward: 20 correct answers out of 30.
Our questions and cases are built on research and methodologies from leading global centers of marketing knowledge — from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and IPA to WARC and System1. The database is updated quarterly along with new data on marketing effectiveness.
The rating is built on the voluntary certification of marketers. Participating is your chance to showcase your expertise to employers, compare your level with peers, and find like-minded professionals in the DAO community.
For the transparency standard to take root at all market levels, we do more than just one test. We are building a holistic infrastructure for specialists, businesses, and the academic community.
Tools for career growth, independent assessment, and learning.
Solutions for team assessment, cost reduction, and hiring.
Forming a transparent professional landscape.
All tools serve one idea: marketing must be measurable, and qualifications must be verifiable.
Tech Startup Alpha
Investment Efficiency Growth
Conducting an independent audit of the entire marketing team revealed hidden gaps in market analysis and experimentation. A personalized learning plan based on Ehrenberg-Bass methodologies was formed. As a result, the team stopped wasting ad budgets on hypotheses with a low probability of payback.
Megastore E-com
Time to Fill Vacancy
The company made passing Level 1 and 2 tests from Marketing Skills Alliance mandatory in its recruitment funnel. This allowed them to completely abandon lengthy interviews based on assessing charisma and self-presentation. Now, hiring decisions are made based on verified objective results.
CloudFlow SaaS
Funnel Conversion Growth
Product marketers underwent Level 2 assessment, which revealed a critical deficit in cohort analysis and unit economics calculation skills. The team closed these gaps with a development plan prepared by MSA experts, which instantly reflected in the quality of the optimization A/B tests conducted.
"Detailed competency analysis helped me understand my weak spots and build a development plan. Within three months, I closed key gaps in product marketing and was able to justify a marketing budget increase to the board of directors."
"I use the open rating to evaluate candidates during hiring. The Marketing Skills Alliance certificate has become an important objective indicator of professional level. This saves us hundreds of hours of useless charisma-based interviews."
"The free test gave a basic understanding of my level, and the premium report revealed all the details of my blind spots. Personal recommendations for studying Ehrenberg-Bass literature incredibly helped in my career growth."
We work with companies that want to hire and grow their team based on a verified level, not just interview impressions. And with universities and educational programs that want their graduates to enter the market with a confirmed, not just declared, level.
Objective assessment of applicants, marketing department audits, access to a closed database of verified Middle and Senior level specialists.
Integration of the independent assessment standard into curricula, defense of thesis projects before MSA experts, issuance of joint diplomas.