Powering Smarter Hiring Decisions with Verifiable Credentials
Imagine you’re a recruiter tasked with hiring a new employee for a critical role. You find the perfect candidate on paper – impressive achievements, Ivy League education, and a long list of technical certifications. But something doesn’t quite add up. It’s a scenario that plays out far too often in the world of talent acquisition, where 70% of individuals have admitted to lying on a job application and the truth is seldom easy to discern.
In recruiting, the ability to trust and verify a job candidate’s qualifications can take a lot of the guesswork out of making the right hiring decisions, helping ensure that placements possess the right skills, knowledge, and certifications to succeed on the job.
Yet historically, background checks don’t come into the picture until the end of the talent search. They also rely on time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone manual processes. Meanwhile, the rising popularity of AI-generated cover letters and the now estimated $7B fake diploma industry have flooded the applicant pool with unqualified candidates. In industries like healthcare, this can have potentially life-threatening results.
At Gen, we believe in empowering everyone with the tools to navigate the digital world safely, privately, and confidently – which includes the ability to decipher fact from fiction. It’s why we’ve teamed up with Accenture to bring digital trust to HR and talent acquisition. Together, we’re proud to announce a new pilot program designed to enable HR teams to verify key candidate information in seconds – while minimizing the data they collect and empowering candidates with digital ‘credentials’ they can use elsewhere.
The pilot features the Midy wallet, by Gen, and Accenture’s Verifiable Credentials Portal, which has been integrated into Accenture’s Workday instance, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform they use to streamline the recruiting process. Upon invitation, participants undergo identity verification via Midy, obtaining a digital credential of their college degree from the National Student Clearinghouse along with a digital credential of their government-issued identity document. These verifiable credentials can then be shared with Accenture to populate their Workday profile with verifiable data attesting to their identity and education.
Employers benefit from streamlined vetting processes, while verified candidates enhance their prospects in competitive job markets.
Additionally, the pilot has been designed around the requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which sets the rules around sharing of information that may be used to help an individual demonstrate if they qualify for obtaining credit, insurance, or employment. In adhering to these requirements, Midy collects consent from the user before any education data is shared and provides a notification back to the issuing authority (National Student Clearinghouse), without identifying the exact information that was shared. These efforts are designed to promote legal and ethical background checks, protecting both individuals and employers in the process.
The magic of this solution lies in the reusable nature of these digital credentials. Individuals hold these credentials (in this case, a government ID card and a diploma) in their Midy wallet, and they can share this data with any integrated party to instantly prove any information held within these documents. This means that the next time they’re asked to verify their name, age, or education, they can do so in a few quick taps – without having to re-scan their government ID or re-do their education verification. Verify once, use anywhere.
This pilot with Accenture is the first of several use cases we’re evaluating in the area of education and professional credentials. We’ve also recently integrated Midy with Credivera, a leading exchange for workplace credentialing, to provide our partners with instant access to a wide array of verifiable credentials, including right-to-work checks, licenses, occupational health certifications, and organizational identity credentials.
It’s also just the first step in our longer journey with Accenture to unlock the full potential of digital wallets. We’re exploring how this initiative can benefit employers worldwide, and how the same technology can power use cases across industries like travel, finance, insurance, and healthcare. Together, we aim to create a future where verifiable, privacy-preserving, and user-permissioned data exchange is the standard, empowering individuals and businesses alike.
