Why add skills to your credentials?

Skills tags are short labels on a credential that say what the recipient can do, such as "Risk assessment", "Excavator operation" or "Customer onboarding". They take a few minutes to add, and they make every badge and certificate you issue more useful.

What skills tags are

A credential's title says what someone completed. Its skills say what they can now do. "Introduction to Groundworks" tells an employer the name of a course. "Setting out", "Trench support" and "Reading site drawings" tell them why it matters.

Skills are part of the credential's verifiable data, not just its design. They follow the Open Badges standard, so they travel with the credential wherever it is shared, and anyone checking it sees them alongside who issued it and when.

Why they matter

Employers look for skills, not course names

Recruiters and hiring managers search and filter by skills. A course title only makes sense to people who already know your organisation. A clear list of skills makes the achievement understandable to anyone, in any sector or country.

Recipients can say what they earned

When recipients add a credential to their LinkedIn profile or CV, the skills give them the words to describe it. People are more likely to share a credential when they can see how it helps their career, so skills support your claim and share rates too.

Software can read them

Job boards, talent platforms, learning records and AI tools increasingly read credential data directly. Because skills tags are structured data, these systems can match your recipients to roles and opportunities without anyone reading the small print.

They show the value of your programme

Skills turn a list of courses into a clear picture of what your learners can do. That helps when you explain your programme to funders, partners, employers and prospective learners, and it makes gaps and overlaps in your catalogue easy to spot.

They make credentials easier to recognise

When other organisations can see exactly which skills a credential covers, it is easier for them to accept it for entry to a course, for credit towards a qualification or as evidence of continuing professional development.

How to choose good skills

• Only include what you assess. Every skill should be something the recipient had to show to earn the credential. This is what makes the credential trustworthy.

• Be specific. "Manual handling" is more useful than "Health and safety". "Pivot tables" is more useful than "Excel".

• Use the words employers use. Look at job adverts in your sector and borrow their wording, so your skills match what people search for.

• Aim for three to eight skills. Fewer can undersell the achievement. More starts to look like a course outline.

• Keep the wording consistent. Use the same name for the same skill across all your credentials, so a recipient's skills build up into a clear picture as they earn more.

• Follow a framework if your sector has one. Frameworks such as ESCO, SFIA or your national occupational standards give you recognised names for skills, which makes your credentials easier to compare and accept.

An example

For a badge called "Introduction to Groundworks and Construction Skills", good skills might be:

• Setting out

• Trench support

• Reading site drawings

• Manual handling

• Site safety inspections

Each one is specific, assessed during the course and written the way a site manager would search for it.

Adding skills to a credential

Add skills when you set up a credential in Certify, alongside its name, description and criteria. If you are unsure where to find them, ask us in the chat.

See also What are digital badges used for? and What's the difference between a microcredential and a digital badge?.