Why Employers Don’t Care About Badges - And What They Actually Want
4 Min Read

Let’s settle something:
Employers aren’t asking for badges.
They’re not asking for Learning and Employment Records.

And they never will.

Not because these things aren’t valuable — but because we’re talking to them in our language, not theirs. If we want employers to adopt LER-powered solutions, we have to frame the conversation around the problems they actually face every day.

The Real Employer Pain Points

Here’s what’s keeping hiring teams up at night right now:

  1. AI vs. AI
    Hiring teams are told to use AI to cut costs — while job seekers use AI resume builders to trick those same systems. The result: zero verifiable candidate data and costly, drawn-out vetting processes.
  2. Shallow Talent Pools
    Employers mostly see people who apply to their jobs or who they can find online. They’re missing qualified talent who don’t match traditional proxies like degrees or specific job titles.
  3. Application Overload
    AI job agents can blast out thousands of applications in minutes. Recruiters are drowning in volume, with little way to separate the real fits from the noise.
  4. Fraud Risk
    Generative AI is powering both resume creation and interviews. Recruiters report that state actors and individuals are submitting entirely fabricated or deepfake-enhanced applications—some even passing coding assessments before being exposed.
  5. Skills-Based Hiring Without Skills Data
    Employers are being pushed toward skills-based hiring, but most job seekers don’t know how to clearly identify or document their skills.

Why This Matters for the LER Community

All these challenges converge on one foundational issue: Employers lack reliable, portable, verifiable data. That’s where LERs shine—but only if we frame them as solutions to these problems, not as academic artifacts.

How to Speak Employer Language—Without Saying “LER”

Here’s how to translate LER strengths into compelling, employer-facing narratives:

  • Portability
    Candidates carry verifiable skills, qualifications, and training wherever they go—enabling consistent, standardized data across systems.
  • Verification
    Employers can trust the candidate data, reducing time-to-hire, lowering the cost of vetting, and shrinking the risk of fraud.
  • Discovery
    Enriched, valid candidate data enables proactive talent discovery—even among those not applying directly.
  • Equity
    Employers can look beyond traditional proxies like degrees or job titles, tapping into qualified talent they'd otherwise miss.
  • Security
    Verifiable data deters fraud—supporting the return of trusted, in-person-level confidence even in digital hiring.

The Role of SmartResume

At SmartResume, we’ve become the largest consumer of verifiable credential data in the hiring ecosystem — but the format we use is one employers already understand: the resume. We translate LER-powered data into something that plugs directly into their existing workflows, making adoption natural instead of forced.

That’s the blueprint. If we want widespread employer adoption, the LER community has to stop leading with our terminology and start leading with their problems — and the verifiable data that solves them.

Because employers don’t want badges. They want better hiring decisions. And that’s what we can give them.

Closing: A Call to the LER Community

If we want real employer adoption, the LER community must pivot—swap terminology for solutions, frameworks for real-world challenges. Because employers don’t want badges. They want better hiring decisions. And verifiable data provides that bridge.

Newsletter
Sign up to receive periodic updates from SmartResume on product developments and the digital credential ecosystem overall.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

To view our privacy policy, click here

Recommended Reading

Skills-Based Hiring Just Changed Forever
4 Min Read

Today, iDatafy announces SkillSync, a new feature to SmartResume that allows skill validation organizations of all kinds to make skills portable in verifiable form.

2024 SmartReport LER Ecosystem Map
9 Min Read

This SmartReport consists of two infographics that show the way data flows through the Learning and Employment Record Ecosystem. It outlines the organizations and companies that are involved in the issuance, sharing, and consumption of specific verifiable credential data standards in the United States in 2024. The report also consists of a thorough explanation of the methodology used to create these infographics, ecosystem trends, definitions, and the thirty-eight generous contributors whose expertise was leveraged to assemble this information.

Predicting Three New LER Trends That Will Emerge in 2025
4 Min Read

This post extends the 2025 LER Ecosystem SmartReport and our Top LER Trends of 2025 blog post. We interviewed thirty-six experts from the LER ecosystem to understand trends across the ecosystem. Here we predict three that are poised to be included in next year’s report.

The Top LER Trends of 2025
8 Min Read

Our LER Ecosystem SmartReport is an exhaustive examination of the current state and growth of an emerging ecosystem. We are now in the third year of collecting this information which allows us to identify how the ecosystem is evolving.