What if Everyone in the Labour Force was Pre-verified and Ready to Start Work?

The radical question we asked ourselves seven years ago.

Did you know verified credentials are already widely available on SEEK?

• 1 in 3 applicants on SEEK Australia¹ contain verified information on their profile
• Over 2.5 million people have verified over 4.5 million credentials in Australia and New Zealand²
• Diverse range of verified credentials are available including licences & registrations, higher education, and digital identity.

This exciting progress in shifting hiring norms towards the use of verified information is thanks to a 7-year collaboration between SEEK’s leading employment marketplace and our inhouse verified credential passport Certsy.

The trust challenge that led us here

Navigating the trust maze in hiring is no easy feat. 71% of job seekers admit to embellishing their claims to stand out, a reality we confronted firsthand during a recruitment project for a ride-share company. The shocker? After answering the basic question — Do you have a valid driver’s license? — one in three shortlisted job seekers couldn’t produce it. That’s 30% of applicants who sailed through initial screenings and interviews but didn’t meet the fundamental job requirement. Getting sufficient confidence for hiring decisions collectively costs billions, from exhaustive screenings to background checks. The insight we took from this project, trust matters — a lot.

Could we shift trusted information earlier in the hiring process?

Seven years ago, we set ourselves a radical challenge: how could we make trust front & centre from the get-go? Neither employers nor job seekers could make this shift happen by themselves, but as the operator of the leading employment marketplace, we realized SEEK was uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. That’s when Certsy emerged — an inhouse start-up, designed to verify every claim on a CV and share the information upfront with employers on SEEK.

Designing for scale and impact

Our journey to design the most trusted and useful credential passport in APAC revolved around the user. We landed on some core principles that shaped our product design and strategy, these included:

• Free: making it available to everyone in the workforce
• Optional: creating opportunities to stand out without excluding anyone from applying for jobs
• Re-Usable: verify once and re-use in future job applications on SEEK (and elsewhere)
• Secure: purpose-built for high security, including deleting sensitive documents after verifying
• Private: putting users in control of what they share with who.

Success anchored on job seekers’ willingness to verify and share

The critical question underpinning all this was: would job seekers be willing to verify when they applied for a job? Remember, the norm up until then was that verifications typically only happened at the time of a job offer.

We started by experimenting with verifying one of the most common screening questions on job ads: do you have the right to work in Australia? Job seekers were invited to verify their work rights for free after applying for relevant jobs. The result? Strong conversion rates, a desire to verify other credentials, and good understanding of how it could help them stand out to employers. This gave us encouragement that uptake and value would increase as we expanded our verifiable credential range.

Is verifying with Certsy helping job seekers stand out?

Fast forward 6 years, with 4.5M verifications shared on SEEK², and the answer is, yes. Job seekers are reaping the benefits of verifying credentials and sharing on their SEEK Profile. Those with 3+ credentials are now on average 25% more likely to be shortlisted by an employer³.

80% of employers indicate that access to pre-verified job seekers is a helpful⁴ feature within their recruitment process.

The next steps in our ambitious journey

Exciting things lie ahead as we pave the way for greater impact! In the coming year, we’re broadening our range of verified credentials while expanding into APAC. Plus, we’re enhancing how job seekers can use their Certsy passport in more situations and where possible re-use what you’ve already verified. Our Certsy Workplace compliance platform is gaining traction among organisations, streamlining secure onboarding for candidates. Additionally, we’re exploring collaborations with partners to extend our Digital Identity verification to other use cases that are impactful and important to users.

We’re embracing the challenge to put verified and trusted information at the heart of how people find jobs and employers find talent

Find out more — go to certsy.com

¹Certsy/SEEK analysis, based on Australian data between Dec 2021 to Feb 2023
²Certsy verified credentials, oct 2023
³Certsy/SEEK analysis, based on Australian data, the 6-month average between Dec 2022 to May 2023
⁴Certsy/SEEK Employer survey between Jun 2019 to Jan 2023

Big thanks to Xavier Russo for significant input and guidance on this article and leading Certsy’s rapid growth and impact!