HR and Education Tech Powerhouses Showcase Verifiable Career Credentials via Velocity Network™

Today, some of the biggest names in human resources and education technology, staffing, contingency workforce and employment screening announced a critical industry milestone, demonstrating their seamless integration to the blockchain-based Velocity Network, to innovate with diverse use cases through verifiable career credentials that accelerate learning, education and career pathways for students and workers. This marks the culmination of months of collaboration, following the public announcement of the Velocity Network Foundation launched in January of this year.

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Through live demonstrations, the Velocity Network now features the first multi-vendor scenarios showcasing the new world of work that leverages self-sovereign, verifiable digital career credentials. We call it the Velocity Experience Center.

The first three scenarios showcased are:

• The future of career pathways for education, training and employment, improving career entry and ongoing career advancement across roles, employers and certifications.
• The future of licensing and compliance management, enhancing lifelong professional learning, development, licensing and compliance.
• The future of global workforce mobility, simplifying national and international career mobility.

The Velocity Network is an open source, vendor-neutral platform governed by a collaborative, democratic, nonprofit foundation—the Velocity Network Foundation. It is through this ecosystem that industry leaders from across human resources and education technology are building a globally accessible, trustworthy Internet of Careers™.

The vendors demonstrating their seamless integration to the Velocity Network are members of the Velocity Network Foundation and most have moved beyond initial proofs-of-concept to active development work. They are interacting through their software and the Velocity Network to demonstrate how self-sovereign digital credentials transform experiences for students, the workforce, and for businesses. This group includes: Cisive, Cornerstone, Credential Engine, Economic Modeling (EMSI), HireRight, Korn Ferry, Oracle, Randstad, Relias, SAP SE, SumTotal Systems, and UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group).

“The Foundation has made a giant step forward,” said Dror Gurevich, CEO of the Velocity Network Foundation. “Today’s demonstration is a milestone that serves as a proof point of the industry’s ability to come together to tackle our industry’s biggest problems and build a new world of work that truly works for everyone. It works because it’s open, democratic and collaborative: titans of industry have come together to shape the future.”

Live demonstrations of these workforce scenar

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ios are now available for viewing to imagine the art of the possible. The participating vendors are supporting the creation of individual’s self-sovereign career credential digital wallet, representing thousands of schools and employers.

As an open source, standards-based infrastructure, the participants within the Velocity Network are actively issuing and exchanging verifiable career credentials, leveraging current and emerging standards and common schemas to ensure data interoperability across the labor market, including: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Open Badges, Learning and Employment Record (LER) Wrappers and Wallets, Credential Engine’s CTDL, and the Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR), all of which are common across the education market and the verifiable credentials space. Exchanged credentials currently span individual identity and contact information, employment history, training, industry and professional certifications, post-secondary and continuing education, licenses, and assessments. As a global credential exchange infrastructure for the industry, supported standards and credentials will continue to expand as prioritized by the governing board of the Foundation.

Member Organization and Third–party Quotes

“Our mission is to help employers and candidates reach their full potential,” explains Karen Fichuk, CEO at Randstad North America. “We have aspirations to touch the working lives of 500 million people by 2030. And we want to lead the world of work, given our position as the largest HR solutions firm. We are optimistic that the use of verifiable career credentials will accelerate our vision, and remove some of the friction that exists in the process today. It will certainly change the way that we do things but we want to be part of that versus impacted by it. That’s why we are so active with the Velocity Network Foundation.”

“As work and skills become much more dynamic, organizations need to shift away from a top-down approach and focus on the needs of individuals,” said Meg Bear, SVP, Products, Operations & Engineering, SAP SuccessFactors. “The Velocity Network is creating a way for individuals to own their credentials throughout their career journey. While this ownership helps verify completed courses, degrees and certifications to potential employers, it also gives more agency to the individual to continue learning and developing new skills by ensuring these credentials will be transferrable and trusted even if their job or employer change.”

“We are involved in many initiatives focused on delivering self-sovereign credentials to individuals,” said Deborah Everhart, Chief Strategy Officer at Credential Engine. “The Velocity Network is a remarkably advanced ecosystem that puts learners and workers at the center, empowered by its framework for technology, compliance, and governance.  Working in conjunction with the Velocity Network Foundation, we have a clear path to enabling millions of employers, educational institutions and individuals to link to open data and the tools needed to use that data effectively in education and employment processes.”

“This important work opens up new possibilities for improving the talent experience,” said Heidi Spirgi, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Cornerstone OnDemand. “With the ability to deeply understand the individual and personalize their experience through blockchain credentials, we can reinvent the way we assess, plan for and develop talent to meet the growth needs of people and businesses.”

“At Oracle we see huge potential in the role of blockchain and careers. A verifiable credential ecosystem provides assurance at many levels, and the trust it creates will open up significant new opportunities for so many people and organizations,” said Nagaraj Nadendla, SVP of Product Development, Oracle. “From verifying career credentials and improving the recruiting process, to enhancing career mobility opportunities, the benefits are endless. We are excited to see the momentum that the Velocity Network Foundation has already made to-date and are looking forward to continuing our partnership with them moving forward.”

“This is a significant milestone in our combined mission, working in close collaboration with Velocity Network Foundation to the whole new world of work leveraging self-sovereign, verifiable digital career credentials,” said Debasis Dutta, Vice President and General Manager, Products at SumTotal Systems. “It’s incredibly exciting and validating to see the varied real world use cases of verifiable career credentials in action. 2020 has been monumental for the Internet of Careers movement. Not only has the global pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote work, it has also confirmed the need for skills development to establish a future-fit workforce. We look forward to working further with the Velocity Network to provide solutions that transform the experience for learners and the efficiency for organizations, by leveraging the trusted and verifiable credentials ecosystem.”

“Participation in the Velocity Experience Center has allowed Relias to take the first steps towards helping our learners keep a lifelong record of their training. Such a tool will make training more efficient for both learners and employers. We look forward to seeing the Velocity Network flourish so that healthcare workers can have their entire, verified work and education history available at their fingertips,” said Andrew Robinson, Vice President of Innovation & Corporate Development at Relias.

“Since its inception, Korn Ferry’s primary goal has been to help people and organizations succeed,” said Korn Ferry Institute President Jean-Marc Laouchez. “This innovative, forward-thinking, collaborative platform will change the way profiles and qualifications are verified, opening up opportunities more quickly and efficiently.”

“Cisive is proud to be a part of this collaborative project that will transform the way career credentials data is managed through innovation,” stated James Owens, President and CEO at Cisive. “We are excited to be part of this initiative that will enable self-sovereign digital career credentials to enhance talent screening processes in the new world of work.”

“Emsi is honored to join this group of innovative organizations in demonstrating a revolutionary, open-source digital wallet,” says Kelly Bailey, Global Skills Evangelist at Emsi. “Today, we take a huge step forward towards breaking down the triple E (employers, employees, and educators) ‘telephone game’ we have been playing for too long, and we move closer to more equitable hiring and learning processes.”

“It’s great to see so many industry leaders connecting their HCM and Ed Tech to the Velocity Network,” says Holger Mueller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. “When launched into their customer install base, this new functionality will enable tens of thousands of employers and schools to validate student, employee and candidates’ career history through a revolutionary blockchain network. This is real progress towards true digital transformation of the labor market, fixing the broken data layer underlying the global labor market and accelerating learning, education and career pathways for students and workers.”

“Verifiable education and job-related credential tracking has long been fraught, causing issues for employers and job-seekers alike,” said internationally renowned industry veteran Katherine Jones, Ph.D. “The work of the Velocity Network members to develop demonstrable standards-based technology for immutable credentialing, licensing, career history and educational transcripting is a major step forward. Trust in the validation provided through blockchain technology will alleviate credentialing fraud, allowing employers to make more informed and timely decisions, and save job-searchers from redundant and time-consuming requests for college transcript, credentials, and job employment verification.”