There’s a problem in the hiring space, and it’s not a new one. The age-old battle of candidates inaccurately representing themselves on resumes is still among us.
In a recent survey, 71% of job seekers told SEEK — one of the world’s most popular job boards — that, at some point they stretched the truth on their resumes.
“The numbers were mind-boggling,” Ariel Hersh, Head of Strategy at the company said.
According to Ariel, that creates a serious information problem that affects both sides of the labor market — resulting in a lack of trust in not just the claims people make about their abilities but claims companies make about their standards.
The weaknesses of resumes don’t only lie in the likelihood that people can easily tweak them to embellish the truth or outright lie about their abilities and experience. It’s just as likely that people are underselling their true value and capabilities due to the limitations of this limited format.
“So, when we think about our platform, we think about how we can add trust,” Ariel said.
A priority that has led SEEK to launch a new startup within its Melbourne office that’s building a groundbreaking new way to do this.
And it just so happens to be powered by Vervoe.
Adding trust by validating claims
Certsy offers job candidates a way to validate claims they make about accreditations, certifications, and more.
From degrees to driver’s licenses, Certsy prompts users to upload relevant documents or evidence to its platform, and independently verifies those claims.
Once this certification is complete, the claims appear on the user’s SEEK profile accompanied by a purple “super tick”, helping them stand out in a feed of applicants and catch the eyes of hiring managers.
“We’ve got a range of credentials that you can verify, and our aim is to help people securely verify all the things that matter to them within the employment marketplace so that they can stand out,” Melanie Chea, Senior Product Manager at Certsy said.
Validating skills beyond degrees
More recently, Certsy have expanded to verifying skills, giving job seekers a way to validate practices they’ve mastered via a method that falls outside traditional qualifications like degrees or certificates.
It reflects a reality that has for so long gone unacknowledged — that workers pick up valuable skills on the job — and provides an objective way to validate those skills.
“We appreciate that skills aren’t necessarily obtained through more formal qualifications,” Melanie said.
“Instead, people attain skills on the job, [which is] a little difficult to prove…because they don’t have a piece of evidence to supply to hirers.”
That’s the gap Certy’s skills verification tries to fill by offering users a growing library of assessments they can take designed by SEEK.
“When someone takes a SEEK assessment, we stand by that claim and present it with the Certsy branding behind it to say that it’s been vetted and you can trust that claim,” Melanie said.
“We see a long-term trend of the language of labor markets shifting from just being job titles, to being more about the underlying skills that make up a person and what allows them to perform in a role.”
All of this is designed to empower candidates to put their best foot forward, bringing their competencies into the spotlight, while making the recruitment process more time and cost-efficient for hiring managers.
Powered by the Vervoe API
If you’ve hired recently, you’ve probably noticed a number of applicants have small purple ticks sprinkled through their profiles.
These Certsy “super-ticks” are evidence that the verification trend is catching on.
They make it easy for hiring managers to spot highly skilled candidates at a glance, while being able to trust the claims they’ve made.
Certsy has scaled up the skills verification aspect of its mission by utilizing Vervoe’s API.
Our robust, AI-powered skills assessments platform is the home and engine behind the entire library of SEEK assessments offered through Certsy.
“Really, you can think about it as the backbone of the assessments, where it’s using the capabilities within Vervoe to power and present those to customers,” Melanie explained.
“So when customers take a SEEK assessment, those questions are housed on Vervoe. And the way that we score questions and present them are all housed within the Vervoe platform.”
Vervoe’s AI-grading has allowed both SEEK and Certsy to automate the skills verification assessment process, and bridge the gap between what job seekers claim they can do, and what they can prove they can do.
“We spend a lot of time thinking and investing in AI and the different products and experiences to help make that happen,” Ariel Hersh told us.
“As you shift from just thinking about role titles to thinking about the more granular skills, you’re giving everyone more opportunity to demonstrate what they, as an individual, can do. And not just what their previous life experiences were, that could be impacted by their socioeconomic position or other injustices.”
Adding trust to claims makes hiring faster and more cost-efficient
It’s not only job seekers reaping the benefits from Certsy’s mission to normalize the various ways candidates seek knowledge and gain skills.
“The real benefit for hiring managers is really in that ability to shortlist people more confidently and efficiently,” Melanie explained.
Creating an intuitive way for job seekers to verify their claims before they’ve even applied for a role brings a process that would normally happen further down the recruitment process right to the beginning.
“Historically, hiring managers and companies would access more trusted information further down in the hiring process. At that stage, they’re thinking about making offers because of the cost and effort involved in vetting all the candidates,” Melanie said.
“What Certsy does is help to provide that information earlier so that we can help with those decisions. And [they] can really determine who is best placed to join [their] company before [they] make that time investment in meeting and interviewing people.”
Those simple purple ticks have the ability to speed up the hiring process, reduce the costs involved, and give hiring managers confidence that claims candidates make can be trusted — even if they don’t have formal qualifications.
“What we know is that many of the skills that matter are attained on the job, and people don’t necessarily have evidence they can present to prove that they have those skills,” Melanie said.
“Certsy can help people add that additional layer of trust.”
