Meet Thanos.

I’m Thanos. My role is to support match-making between migrant workers and small enterprises. I am conscious that migrants often find short-term jobs, also I would like to turn this as an opportunity for increasing their recognition leading to higher re-employment rate.

What should Thanos consider?

What's the objective?

  • Boost re-employment after short-term jobs by leveraging recognition

Who will have access?

  • Whose recognition would employers trust?
  • Consider which features are required by employers in order to trust credentials enough to at least partly base their employing decisions on it.
  • Peer recognition should probably be limited and clearly identifiable, recognition by employers’ peers (i.e. other owners of similar activities) should be also clearly identifiable.

Who will be able to claim recognition?

  • Can learners bring digital evidence of their skills?
  • Recognition may be started by learners claiming their skills and providing evidence for that.
  • Encourage employers to endorse claimed skill they agree with and evidence they know or trust.

What will be recognised?

  • Design a progressive engagement path for trainers and employers.
  • Trainers can start up the activity and should support by identifying relevant skills and providing recognition models.
  • At first employers can endorse recognition provided by trainers, possibly adding their own evidence or comments.
  • At a later stage, employers can issue their own recognition pieces leveraging the provided models.

Thanos' Path

Starting out

  • Provide a set of credentials with clear descriptions and criteria.
  • Trainers can issue credentials or endorse them.
  • Employers can read and verify credentials, seeing the profiles for the issuer and for endorsers.
  • Employers can endorse credentials.

consolidating

  • Employers can issue credentials adding their own statement or evidence.
  • Allow learners to add evidence to credentials, even after they are issued.

Extending

  • Learners can self-issue (claim) credentials.
  • Employers can endorse self-issued credentials and add evidence.
  • Peers can also endorse credentials.

Technology checklist

  • Portable, verifiable Digital Credentials including evidence: Open Badges, Bit of Trust, W3C Verifiable Credentials
  • An issuing platform allowing multiple issuers for the same credential (or copying a credential)
  • Verifiable issuer profile and context
  • Endorsement
  • Credential reader and verifier

What do they think?

I am happy to be able to have something to show when a short-term job ends, something I can  submit with future applications.
I see a potential turning point in making it easy for employers to express recognition. I also know that it is necessary to activate and facilitate the process by supporting the digital skills of learners and workers. 
I don’t mind giving recognition, as long as it’s straightforward. I would also gladly consider peer recognition if it’s trustable and straightforward.