Skill Squirrel today announced their first release of verifiable credentials from one of their early business services subscribers, Biz Coach Services Inc. (Biz Coach), when Vern Vautour, Founder and Director of Biz Coach awarded digital certificates of recognition to over 100 Small Business Training course participants of Miziwe Biik Aboriginal Employment and Training in Toronto. The participants, who successfully completed the program were given verifiable digital credentials in recognition of their skills and demonstrated abilities in developing their small business plans in preparation to potentially become self-employed.

Vern is a Certified Management Consultant, and has been delivering career and small business training, coaching, and consulting to 1000s of clients since the mid-90s. Mr. Vautour, pointed out that “issuing digital credentials is a growing trend and covers a milestone, where career minded individuals can develop a portfolio of verifiable skills, competencies, abilities, and knowledge that can be saved and shared to help employers embrace skills-based hiring and career development agencies to provide verifiable proof of completion.”

According to Skill Squirrel Founder and President, Kathleen Webb, “Skill Squirrel is a digital twin of the career development industry, with its community building platform connecting career-minded individuals, career development and counselling agencies, as well as companies looking to enhance their employer brand.”

In fact, Ms. Webb added, “Skill Squirrel is like an automated marketing machine for certifications that help small to large scale business trainers and coaches build their brands online and connect with their clients in meaningful ways.” 

Biz Coach’s founder agrees and points out that “one such benefit of this online community is that employers, trainers and employment coaches can use the platform to promote training programs and events for career minded individuals, as well as issue verifiable digital credentials.”  “In addition,” Mr. Vautour added, “there is a huge potential to collaborate on projects and share information.  And, after collaborating with Skill Squirrel to produce online workshops, we can recommend them as a valued partner to help create online awareness for course creators.”  

Digital credentials for verifying skills are a growing trend and here to stay…

Traditional resumes summarize work and education, but digital credentials can demonstrate and verify learning and acquired skill building achievements over time which help employers to select more suitable candidates and give more individuals better formal qualifications resulting in more opportunities for employment.  A November 2022 survey on workers’ skills by Statistics Canada reported 44.5 percent of companies have difficulty finding candidates with necessary skills, while 56.1 percent report that employees often do not have adequate skills to do their job. 

“Skills-based micro-credentials is the new secret-sauce that employers, career developers and individuals are adopting to get the right people in the right places for enhanced career development,” Ms. Webb commented, “and Skill Squirrel is designed to meet that challenge” she summarized. 

Skill Squirrel is a web-based application that provides skills verification within trusted networks for skills-based hiring. It offers an easy way to issue non-academic Verifiable Credentials so everyone may have validated proof of their capabilities.

For more information check out Skill Squirrel at https://www.skillsquirrel.com or contact Skill Squirrel at support@skillsquirrel.com