70% of Employers Now Use Skills-Based Hiring — How Digital Badges Help Your Graduates Stand Out

Here is a number every programme leader, careers director, and senior educator should have pinned to their wall: 70% of employers now use skills-based hiring for entry-level roles. That is up from 65% just a year earlier, according to NACE's Job Outlook 2026 survey. And among those employers, 71% apply this approach at least half the time.

The message is clear. Employers are no longer asking "Where did you study?" as their first question. They are asking "What can you do?" And if your institution is not helping graduates answer that question with verifiable, portable evidence of their competencies, you are sending them into a job market that has fundamentally changed — without the tools they need to succeed.

The GPA is fading. Skills are taking its place.

The NACE data reveals a striking trend that goes beyond headline percentages. The stages where skills-based hiring is most commonly applied are interviewing (87% of employers) and screening (65%). That second figure is especially significant, because screening is where candidates are filtered in or out before a human being even looks at their application.

And here is the most telling shift of all: in 2019, 73% of employers screened candidates by GPA. In 2026, that figure has dropped to just 42%. In less than a decade, GPA has gone from near-universal screening tool to a minority practice.

What has replaced it? Demonstrated competency. Employers want evidence that a candidate can do the job — not just that they attended lectures about how to do it. Yet fewer than 40% of graduating seniors are even familiar with the term "skills-based hiring," according to NACE's companion Student Survey. There is a dangerous gap between how employers are evaluating candidates and how students understand the process.

This is where institutions have both a responsibility and an opportunity.

Employers want digital credentials. They are just not seeing them.

If the shift towards skills-based hiring were happening in isolation, institutions might reasonably take a wait-and-see approach. But it is not happening in isolation. Employer demand for verifiable digital credentials is already here — and it is outstripping supply.

Accredible's 2025 State of Credentialing report, which surveyed over 500 HR and talent leaders, found that 91% of employers actively look for digital credentials when reviewing candidates. 86% said they would be more likely to interview someone who holds a digital credential proving a key skill. And 63% have already hired a candidate at least partly because of a digital credential.

But here is the critical gap: only 46% of employers regularly see digital credentials in applications.

Read that again. Nearly nine in ten employers are looking for digital credentials. Fewer than half are finding them. That is not a demand problem — it is a supply and visibility problem.

And it is one that HEIs and training providers are uniquely positioned to solve.

What digital badges actually do in a hiring process

To understand why badges matter in this context, it helps to think about what happens when a recruiter screens an application in a skills-based hiring process.

They are not looking for a transcript. They are looking for quick, trustworthy signals that a candidate possesses specific competencies relevant to the role. A digital badge — built on the Open Badges standard — provides exactly that.

When an employer encounters an Open Badge on a LinkedIn profile, CV, or application, they can click on it and immediately see who issued the credential, what criteria the learner met, what evidence was submitted, and when the badge was awarded. There is no phone call to a registrar's office. No waiting for a reference. No guessing about what "achieved a pass in Module 4" actually means in practical terms.

This matters enormously in a screening context, where recruiters may spend seconds on each application. A verifiable badge that says "Demonstrates proficiency in clinical reasoning" or "Completed 200 hours of supervised veterinary practice" communicates more — and communicates faster — than a line on a transcript ever could.

For graduates entering an uncertain job market — NACE reports employers are projecting just a 1.6% increase in hiring for the Class of 2026 — every competitive advantage counts.

The problem is not just skills. It is trust.

The demand for verifiable credentials is not simply about convenience. It is about trust. Accredible's research found that 84% of HR and talent leaders have suspected or encountered misrepresented skills and experience on CVs.

In a world where anyone can claim proficiency in anything, employers need a mechanism to separate genuine competence from self-reported aspiration. Static PDF certificates do not solve this problem — they are trivially easy to fabricate and time-consuming to verify. Digital badges, particularly those issued to open standards, offer cryptographic verification that can be checked instantly and cannot be forged.

For institutions, this is also a reputational issue. Every badge you issue carries your name and your credibility. A well-designed badge programme does not just serve your graduates — it reinforces your institution's standing as a trusted authority on competence in your discipline.

What this means for your institution

Design badges around employer needs, not just curriculum structure

The most effective badge programmes are designed backwards from the labour market. Rather than simply badging each module or unit of study, ask: what competencies are employers in our sectors actually screening for? What language do they use in job descriptions? What skills gaps are they reporting?

Badges that align with recognisable, in-demand skills — and that use terminology employers understand — are the ones that get noticed in screening. A badge titled "Data Analysis for Healthcare Decision-Making" tells an employer far more than "Successfully completed HLTH3042."

Help graduates share their badges effectively

The 46% visibility gap identified by Accredible is not just about institutions failing to issue credentials — it is about learners failing to share them. Many graduates earn digital badges and never add them to their LinkedIn profiles, digital portfolios, or job applications.

Institutions need to build badge-sharing into the learner journey. This means integrating badge issuance with careers services, running workshops on digital professional identity, and making it as easy as possible for graduates to display their credentials where employers will see them. The visibility loop matters: shared badges lead to profile views, which lead to opportunities, which reinforce the value of earning more badges.

Make badges part of your careers and employability narrative

Digital badges should not live in a silo, managed by a learning technology team and disconnected from your institution's employability strategy. They belong at the heart of it. Careers advisors should understand what badges are available, how they map to industry roles, and how to coach students in presenting them.

Consider this: NACE found that employers say the top way students can demonstrate skills is to share examples and situations where they used those skills to solve problems. A badge that links to evidence — a portfolio piece, a clinical case study, a project outcome — does exactly that, in a verifiable and shareable format.

Do not wait for "perfect" — start with what matters most

Institutions sometimes stall on digital credentialling because they want to badge their entire curriculum before launching. This is unnecessary and counterproductive. Start with your highest-impact programmes — the ones where employability is most critical, where employer relationships are strongest, or where competency frameworks are already well-defined.

Healthcare, veterinary, nursing, engineering, and education programmes are natural starting points. These disciplines already think in terms of competencies and clinical placements, making the translation to digital badges relatively straightforward.

The window is closing

The shift to skills-based hiring is not a future trend — it is the current reality. More than half of employers have now removed degree requirements for at least some roles. GPA screening has nearly halved in six years. Employers are actively looking for digital credentials and struggling to find them.

Institutions that move now will give their graduates a genuine competitive edge in a tightening job market. They will strengthen their employer partnerships. They will build a credentialling infrastructure that positions them for a future where badges, micro-credentials, and Learning Employment Records are the norm, not the exception.

Institutions that wait will find themselves explaining to prospective students — and to employers — why their graduates still arrive with nothing but a paper transcript in a digital world.

The data is not ambiguous. The question is no longer whether digital badges matter. It is whether your graduates will have them when it counts.

Interested in how digital badges can strengthen your graduates' employability? Get in touch to explore how Open Badges can fit into your institution's careers and credentialling strategy.