Today, iDatafy announces SkillSync, a new feature to SmartResume that allows skill validation organizations of all kinds to make skills portable in verifiable form.
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:
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.
Here’s how to translate LER strengths into compelling, employer-facing narratives:
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.
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.
Today, iDatafy announces SkillSync, a new feature to SmartResume that allows skill validation organizations of all kinds to make skills portable in verifiable form.
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.
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.
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.