Canadian HR Reporter is the national journal of human resource management. It features the latest workplace news, HR best practices, employment law commentary and tools and tips for employers to get the most out of their workforce.
Issue link: https://digital.hrreporter.com/i/1220817
N E W S 12 www.hrreporter.com Companies partner up to manage digital credentials As micro-credentials rise in popularity, several companies have partnered together to establish a blockchain management system to ease the verification process. While this could be a time-saving initiative for recruiters, trust in the technology is important, finds John Dujay common protocols across the internet today. It belongs to nobody. It's run by the members of the foundation, which eventually will be all players in the global labour market." The foundation claims organizations will be able to rely on "trusted, immutable and verified applicant, candidate, employee and student data, seamlessly and cost-effectively eliminating hiring risks, boosting productivity, improving employee and student experiences, and achieving regulatory compliance." Founding members include Aon's A s s e s s m e n t S o l u t i o n s , C i s i v e , Cornerstone, HireRight, Korn Ferry, National Student Clearinghouse, Randstad, SAP, SumTotal Systems, SHL, Ultimate Software, Unit4, Upwork, Velocity Career Labs and ZipRecruiter. Time-saving initiative for recruiters Digital credentialing systems will save plenty of time for HR departments and recruiters, once they are fully established, according to Mary Barroll, president of TalentEgg, an online job site for new graduates. "We're seeing the world of job "Individuals are connected with the issuers of credentials to claim their career credentials and those credential issuers — those would be employers, educational institutions — they're able to issue credentials, to revoke them, to indicate how long credentials are good for if they're permanent, and those credentials are signed and anchored to the blockchain network to make sure that they're verified and they're trusted," says Yvette Cameron, co-founder and ecosystem lead at Velocity Career Labs in Denver, Colo. The company was seeing a few startups coming out with proprietary plays for managing credentials, but it realized the only path forward was an industry play, she says. "We felt that the underlying data- sharing architecture on how we exchange information about ourselves is fundamentally broken," says Cameron. "[So] we targeted HCM (human capital management) technology vendors, staffing and recruiting agencies, development and assessment providers. Those who are driving student information systems are managing the credentials of students at all levels." The network's goal is to become "as ubiquitous as the internet; this is simply the internet of careers," she says. "Everybody is participating in the network. Everybody's adhering to the same protocols just as we have applications being so digital and the challenge of especially hiring large volumes of individuals — which we see frequently in campus recruitment — having the capacity to be able to have verifiable digital credentials that the candidate can rely on and take with them as part of their digital application is a real win-win both for the applicant, as well as obviously for the employer, who spends an exceeding amount of resources and time to do the sort of checks that are required to ensure that the applicant has accomplished what they say they have in their CV." But it might take some time to implement a platform due to technological considerations, she says. "The whole question is the capacity to be able to rely on the technology itself: Is it verifiable? Is it encrypted? What are the privacy considerations around it both for the candidate's perspective, but also from the employer's perspective? Is this digital credential something that could be tampered with or altered in some way?" The Velocity Network is privacy- compliant, says Cameron, and it will be "not storing any personal data on the blockchain. The only thing that "The underlying data-sharing architecture on how we exchange information about ourselves is fundamentally broken." Yvette Cameron, Velocity Career Labs LOOKING to create an "internet of careers," 15 companies have partnered together in a new initiative meant to establish digital-credential m a n a g e m e n t u s i n g b l o c k c h a i n technology. The Velocity Network Foundation, founded by Dror Gurevich, CEO of Velocity Career Labs, promises a platform for career credentials that can be shared with whomever an individual employee or student chooses. DIGITAL CREDENTIALS GROWING TREND 73% Employees who want to own work-related records and take them as they change jobs 738,428 Number of secondary, post-secondary credentials available in the U.S. 940 Number of students who received Canada's first-ever digital diplomas in 2019 Sources: Accenture, Credential Engine, McMaster University