Hiring Has Never Been Just About Degrees
In today’s evolving labor market, HR professionals increasingly understand that a person’s skills, not just degrees or job titles, are what truly determine job readiness. The SHRM Foundation’s Skills-First Future initiative highlights this shift toward skills-based hiring by prioritizing practical assessments, real-world experience, and emerging credentials like micro-credentials and badges. Yet traditional hiring tools often fall short in capturing and comparing these diverse qualifications, making it harder for employers to make informed talent decisions. A skills-first approach requires modern tools and structured data to bring clarity and consistency to the hiring process.
Credential Engine supports this ongoing transformation by offering the infrastructure and open standards necessary to make credentials and skills data visible, comparable, and actionable. Through the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL), an open data language, and the Credential Registry, a data repository, Credential Engine helps employers, HR systems, and learning providers describe and link credentials and skills in a consistent way. CTDL enables HR professionals to improve hiring, internal mobility, and workforce development. As this shift gains momentum, high-quality, interoperable data is essential to ensure that hiring decisions reflect the full range of a candidate’s capabilities.
Why Skills-Based Hiring Needs Better Data
Skills-based hiring is not a new concept, but doing it well, consistently, and at scale is increasingly complex. HR teams must evaluate candidates from a variety of educational and career backgrounds, often using systems that rely on inconsistent or vague credential information. To truly support skills-based hiring, HR professionals need:
- Broader Talent Visibility: Identify real-world capabilities from non-traditional pathways, not just formal education.
- Better Job Fit and Hiring Accuracy: Focus on the specific competencies required for success, not just credentials as proxies.
- Support for Internal Mobility: Unlock growth by understanding the skills employees already have.
- Shared Understanding: Describe skills, credentials, and learning outcomes consistently across platforms.
This is where Credential Engine’s tools can make a measurable impact.
How CTDL and the Credential Registry Support HR Success
The CTDL is an open, structured data format that describes credentials and the competencies they reflect, as defined by credentialing organizations, employers, and other trusted sources. CTDL provides the framework that HR platforms, education and training providers, and credential issuers need to share and integrate information consistently and effectively.
The Credential Registry uses CTDL to make credential and skills data publicly accessible in a structured, human- and machine-readable format. This empowers HR professionals and their systems to access, interpret, and act on skills-aligned data across the talent lifecycle.
With CTDL and the Credential Registry, HR teams can:
- Access Structured, Comparable Data: See credentials and the skills they represent in standardized formats.
- Connect Systems and Break Down Silos: Align job descriptions, learning platforms, and credentials using shared data standards.
- Focus on Relevant Skills and Competencies: Move beyond title-matching to skills-matching—across both external candidates and internal talent.
- Gain Real-Time Insights: Use open data to inform hiring decisions, workforce development, and strategic planning.
Together, CTDL and the Credential Registry help HR teams build a skills-first foundation for hiring, upskilling, and internal mobility—rooted in clarity, transparency, and connection.
Get Involved: Help Build a Connected, Skills-Based Hiring Ecosystem
HR professionals aren’t just users of skills data, they’re contributors to it. By clearly defining and sharing the competencies embedded in job roles, internal training, and credential programs, HR teams help build a stronger, more connected workforce ecosystem.
When job descriptions, credentials, and skills are described using CTDL and the Credential Registry, they become part of a public, interoperable data system that supports:
- Fair and Transparent Hiring Practices: Candidates and employers benefit from aligned expectations and clearly described job requirements.
- AI Tools That Add Value: With structured data, AI-powered talent tools can deliver meaningful insights that support opportunity.
- Better Matching and Career Mobility: Skill-based descriptions help connect people to jobs, learning pathways, and advancement opportunities.
HR Professionals Benefit and Contribute
- Recognize digital credentials that include clearly defined, structured skills data
- Describe job roles using competencies, not just job titles or degree requirements.
- Publish job descriptions, not job postings, to the Credential Registry to connect them with credential data.
- Accept and Issue digital, verifiable credentials for internal training and development using CTDL.
- Use Registry data to inform hiring, upskilling, and workforce planning.
- Collaborate with credential providers and training organizations to ensure aligned skills data.
Every contribution helps build a stronger talent system where people and employers can find the best fit based on what truly matters.
Contact Credential Engine
We’d love to hear from you! Email us at info@credentialengine.org and a team member will respond promptly.
Resources
- Publishing Jobs Data With CTDL
- Credential Finder: Explore CTDL-Published Data
- Credential Registry
- Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL)
- Learning and Employment Records (LERs)
- Role of Issuer Identity Registries: Building Trust in a Digital World: Scalable Solutions for Verifiable Credential Ecosystems