Key Takeaways:
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AI-generated applications are adding to the noise employers already face. Digital credentials can add trusted, verifiable signals about what someone knows and can do; information that can help employers distinguish meaningful evidence from self-reported claims.
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Employers shouldn’t have to become credential experts or adopt another platform. Interoperability can bring trusted credentials and skills data into existing hiring and talent systems, where it can support better decisions.
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Issuing more digital credentials isn’t enough. Their real value comes when people can use them to access opportunities, and employers can use them to recognize capabilities beyond traditional proxies like degrees, job titles, and previous employers.
For years, the digital credentials community has focused on how to recognize learning, make records portable, and give learners greater control over their information.
Now the question is: What happens when that information reaches the employer?
That was the focus of a recent 1EdTech conversation, “What Do Employers Need from Digital Credentials and LERs?” The discussion highlighted a growing reality: the next chapter of digital credentials is less about how many we issue and more about whether employers can actually use the information they contain.
Employers need better signals
Employers have always relied on imperfect signals such as resumes, degrees, job titles, previous employers, and personal networks to understand what candidates can do. Generative AI is making that challenge harder by making it easier to produce large numbers of polished, similar applications.
The result is more noise and growing questions about identity, fraud, and trust.
“We are seeing a lot more reporting about employers getting bogged down with AI-generated junk,” said Haley Glover, Senior Director for Upskill America at the Aspen Institute. “Employers are getting all the way through the hiring process to find out the employee wasn’t the person they thought they were.”
That challenge creates an opportunity for digital credentials. As traditional application materials become easier to generate, trustworthy evidence of what someone actually knows and can do becomes more valuable.
But the value isn't the credential itself. It's the information inside it.
Employers may want to know what skill someone has demonstrated, who validated it, who issued the credential, and whether evidence supports the claim. What matters most can also change throughout the hiring process: recruiters screening candidates need different information than hiring managers making final decisions.
“Something I’ve heard many times is, ‘Why should we include evidence if employers don’t have time to look at it? I’ve heard they only have six seconds to review a resume,” said Rob Coyle, Digital Credentials Program Manager for 1EdTech. “There are nuances there. It’s the recruiting organizations that say they only have five to six seconds to make a decision, but it's a different scenario once the hiring managers have a smaller candidate pool to review. The fact that there is evidence might be an important trust signal for the recruiter to pass on to someone who has time to look at it.”
The goal should be to make the right information available at the right time.
We need to move from issuing to using
The ecosystem has become very good at issuing digital credentials. The bigger challenge is making them useful when learners pursue their next education or employment opportunity.
That means credentials need to move into the systems employers already use, not require employers to become credential experts or adopt another platform.
Instead of asking a recruiter to inspect hundreds of badges, the system could surface verified skills and evidence alongside the other information employers use to identify candidates worth considering.
“Employers are getting inundated with information from what looks like a valid candidate, but it may not be a true representation of that person’s credentials,” said Jim Ireland, Executive Director of HR Open Standards Consortium. “We’re trying to give employers a new tool that allows them to verify information, get data into their legacy systems without having to retool everything, and still give them a trusted profile of the learner or employee.”
That's where interoperability becomes critical: allowing credential and career information to move between systems in standardized, usable forms.
Employers need a business case
Employers won't adopt digital credentials simply because interoperability is a good idea. They need evidence that it improves something they care about.
Can trusted credentials reduce verification costs? Shorten time to hire? Help fill difficult vacancies? Improve retention or internal mobility? Help employers discover qualified candidates they might otherwise overlook?
If digital credentials can deliver those outcomes, they create value for both sides of the labor market: individuals gain better ways to communicate what they can do, while employers gain better information for making decisions.
“Employers aren't asking for digital credentials. They're asking for better ways to identify who can do the work, reduce risk and make better hiring decisions,” said Ian Davidson, Founder and CEO of Signol Labs and moderator of the panel. When you show them how trusted, interoperable data can help them do those things, they become interested. But they're also appropriately skeptical. We have to prove that this information actually improves the decisions they're trying to make.”
The next era is about use
Better information could also help employers rely less on proxies such as degrees, job titles, previous employers, and personal networks. But more data alone will not automatically produce better or more equitable decisions. The ecosystem still needs to consider what information is represented, how skills are validated, how AI and algorithms use that information, and whether people from different pathways have opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities.
“If we’re only recognizing skills from higher education or direct, visible skills, then we only give people who have access to those opportunities that validity,” said Glover. “We want to help employers see value beyond these proxies so that we all can be valued and recognized for what we can do, regardless of where we learned how to do it.”
If the first era of digital credentials was about recognition and issuance, the next is about consumption and outcomes.
Success won't ultimately be measured by how many credentials we issue. It will be measured by whether people can actually use them to move through education and work, and whether employers can make better decisions because they exist.
Watch the full conversation here.