When I started learning Clay, there was no bootcamp and no mentor. Just me, a $75 laptop and a lot of nights after the shop. A guy from Pakistan with a psychology degree and no network, trying to work out how anyone would ever take him seriously.
If you're in that position now, you might have been counting on a Clay certificate to be your way in. Clay University has paused new certifications while it rebuilds the program. Existing certificates still count and the course library is still free, but if you were planning to get certified this month to land your first GTM role, that door is closed for now.
Here's the good news: a certificate was never what got people hired. I've won 10 roles in 7 countries, and none of them were won on a credential. They were won on proof.
Here's what clients actually want to see, and how you can prove every one of those things today.
What a certificate actually proved
Let's be honest about what a Clay certificate showed. It showed you completed the course and passed the assessment. That's real effort and it's worth something.
But it never answered the questions a client or hiring manager actually has:
- Can you build a working list for my market?
- What happens when the data is dirty or an API breaks?
- Will my emails land in the inbox?
- Can you explain what went wrong when a campaign goes quiet?
Most GTM engineer job posts mention Clay. Very few require a certificate. What they test, often live on a screen share, is whether you can build and explain. So build and explain.
Five ways to prove your skills that beat a certificate
1. One real campaign with real numbers
This is the most powerful proof there is. Nothing else comes close.
Build one complete outbound system for a real business: the list, the inboxes, the copy, the sending, the replies. Then write down what happened in numbers:
| What to record | Example |
|---|---|
| Emails sent | 1,200 |
| Delivered | 1,180 |
| Replies | 22 |
| Positive replies | 9 |
| Meetings booked | 4 |
Four meetings from a campaign you built yourself is worth more than any certificate, because it proves you can do the job, not just pass a test about it.
If you need a business to practice on, ask a local software house, a friend's agency, or a small company you admire. Offer to build it for free or nearly free. You're not working for money yet. You're working for proof.
2. Screenshots from real dashboards
Claims are cheap. Screenshots aren't.
On my work page, every case study sits next to the unedited dashboard it came from. That's on purpose. When a client sees a real Instantly or Smartlead screen with real numbers, the conversation changes.
Blur client names. Keep the numbers.
3. A two-minute Loom of a Clay table you built
Record your screen and walk through one Clay table:
- What the table is for
- What each column does and why it's in that order
- Where it costs credits and how you kept that low
- One thing that broke and how you fixed it
Two minutes, no editing, your real voice. This shows something a certificate never could: that you understand why, not just how.
The credit point matters more than people realise. I recently built a scoring system where free columns kill bad rows before the expensive columns run. The same 10,000 credits lasted three months instead of nine days. Explaining something like that on a Loom tells a hiring manager you think about their budget, which almost no candidate does.
4. Writing in public about what broke
The single most respected thing you can show is a failure you understood.
Post on LinkedIn about a campaign that didn't work and what you learned. One of my most-engaged posts ever was about 5,000 emails, 17 replies and zero interested. I'd launched right into the US summer holidays and the out-of-office replies told me so.
Nobody hires the person who's never broken anything. They hire the person who knows what to check first when something breaks.
5. A small portfolio page
Pull it together in one place: your campaign, your screenshots, your Loom, your posts. It can be a simple Notion page. You don't need a website on day one.
I wrote a full guide to building a GTM engineer portfolio that gets replies, using my own as the example.
Should you still use Clay's course library?
Yes. It's free and it's good. Use it to learn the tool.
Just don't mistake completing it for being ready. The course teaches you the buttons. Building a real system teaches you the job. Do both, but give the building most of your time.
If you already have a certificate
Keep it on your profile. It's still valid and it still shows commitment.
But lead with your results, not the badge. Put your best number at the top of your CV and your LinkedIn, and the certificate underneath. A hiring manager reading 200 applications will see the number first.
The truth about credentials in this field
GTM engineering is so new that there's no standard credential, and honestly, I think that's good news for people like us.
In older fields, the people with the right degrees and the right networks win. In this one, the people who can show a working system win. That's a fair fight, and it's one you can win from anywhere, including Pakistan.
I didn't have a certificate when I started. I had a $75 laptop and a lot of nights. What got me hired was proof, built one campaign at a time.
You can start building yours today.
Not sure how to prove your skills yet?
If you've learned Clay but don't know how to turn that into proof clients will trust, or you're not sure what to build first, message me on WhatsApp.
Tell me what you've built so far, even if it's small. I'll help you work out what proof you already have and what to build next.