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In Skills We Trust?
March 5, 2025
At a Glance
Institutional trust is in decline, and consumers are wary of new products in an age of disinformation. For an early-stage effort like the skills-first movement to gain widespread adoption, authenticity, clarity, and strong communication will be key. We share five opportunities to build trust.
Declining trust in American institutions is at a “historically low” level, according to a Gallup survey from 2024. Today’s learners and workers demand stronger, more credible proof before placing their faith in new ideas.
Against this backdrop, efforts to promote career advancement and mobility based on skills rather than traditional credentials are gaining traction—but they remain a relatively unproven approach, one that both excites and unnerves those seeking stability in an uncertain world. And no matter how innovative, the skills-first world still needs to be adapted to work within the legacy systems, like education and employment, that are increasingly untrusted.
While the field buzzes with enthusiasm for the potential of skills-first solutions, excitement alone doesn’t translate into trust. Valuing an idea is one thing; believing in its ability to work is another. And right now, people remain unconvinced. According to research from Jobs for the Future (JFF), key consumer groups, such as students, jobseekers, educators, employers, and policymakers, still have unanswered questions: Can these approaches be effectively adapted to local contexts? Are they cost-effective? Do they protect privacy and avoid exploitation?
So, what lessons does the decline in trust in legacy systems hold for the skills-first movement? Take higher education, where consumers point to the misalignment of college with the economy, and the burden of excessive costs and student debt. These criticisms are widely held, but even so, research reveals that many learners and employers still see value in degrees and maintain favorable views of most colleges and universities, especially community colleges. While as a whole the system of higher education may be mistrusted, institutions that are better able to demonstrate their value resist this trend. The lesson is clear: the skills movement must prove its economic value by focusing on the things consumers want most: low costs, job opportunities, and wealth generation. This means demonstrating long-term career impact while avoiding cost inflation and overly close ties to expensive and underperforming college programs.
The erosion of trust in corporate America offers another key parallel for the skills ecosystem. Historically, trust in corporations has reflected overall economic health: when wealth is broadly shared, trust increases; when it is concentrated at the top, mistrust deepens. And for companies themselves products and services are most trusted when they have a clear positive impact on the company’s bottom line. For the skills movement, both lessons are important to heed: trust relies on unequivocal evidence that skills-first companies are more efficient and more profitable than traditional companies, but not at the expense of workers. This means transparency in outcomes, enabling comparisons across products, and ensuring that the benefits of a skills-first agenda extend beyond those already advantaged by degree-based systems. To build trust, skills solutions must prioritize broadly accessible economic outcomes and avoid association with exploitative or exclusive practices.
With this context in mind, JFF interviewed 40 practitioners, business leaders, technology entrepreneurs, academic experts, and policymakers to better understand the dynamics of trust within the skills marketplace. The findings from these interviews are summarized below.
Five opportunities to drive trust in the skills-first ecosystem.
Opportunity 1: Recognize that today’s workers and learners are different
The rise in systemic distrust isn’t just a symptom of broken systems; it reflects a shift in how people build trust. Today’s consumers have access to a vast array of information sources, often tailored to their interests and worldviews. So too has the volume and sophistication of marketing grown, including “fake” reviews and other trust-undermining practices, leading consumers to cut through the noise, and seek out authentic perspectives to inform their decision-making.
To adapt, the skills-first ecosystem must evolve alongside these changing expectations. Our interviews identified four strategies for doing so:
- Prioritize Personalization: Skills-first products should be tailored to the unique needs, interests, and knowledge of users while addressing their concerns about effectiveness, data privacy, and cost. Marketing should align with how users gather trusted information.
- Address Consumer Concerns Head-On: For workers, this includes protecting data privacy, avoiding hidden costs, and improving functionality. For employers, it means delivering a clear return on investment with seamless, turnkey solutions.
- Align to Careers and Economic Outcomes: Emphasize connections to jobs, career growth, and earning potential rather than generic training programs or learning for learning’s sake.
- Back Stories With Data: Build trust with compelling narratives supported by concrete evidence. Data alone is insufficient, and exaggerated claims without substance only erode confidence.
Opportunity 2: Language matters
One of the clearest insights from organizations studying skills-first perceptions is that the language surrounding these offerings often confuses workers and learners. The hyper-technical terminology of Learning and Employment Records (LERs) and the jargon used within the skills-first ecosystem are rarely understood outside of industry circles. For employers, vague marketing language that over-promises without evidence compounds the problem. In an era of information overload, people expect clear, accessible, and relatable language that speaks directly to their needs.
To bridge the language gap, our interviewees suggested four key strategies:
- Simplify and Explain: Acknowledge that the skills-first movement lacks a unified vernacular and lexicon. Simplify terminology where possible, and when it’s not, take the time to socialize and clearly explain the terms. Help people see how skills-first concepts relate to their real lives, and ideas they already understand.
- Ditch the Jargon and Buzzwords: Avoid overused industry phrases and acronyms, especially when making ambitious claims about what skills-first approaches can achieve. Transparency builds trust; jargon does the opposite.
- Test Language With Consumers: Continuously test messaging to ensure it resonates with a wide range of audiences, including those for whom English is not a first language and people facing systemic barriers to advancement. Adapt language as needed to make it accessible and relevant.
- Use Learning-Centered Metrics: Move away from confusing terms like “seat-time,” “credit-hour,” or “credit accumulation” when describing learning. Such phrases can alienate and mislead non-academic audiences.
Opportunity 3: Get specific, get validated
A truly skills-based world should rely on a shared, interconnected language to describe and validate skills—one that everyone can use and trust. Today, however, non-standard terminology across systems leaves most skills unassessed and self-reported. Where validation does exist, it is often dismissed by people who haven’t already adopted the same approach or who aren’t willing or able to crosswalk it into their own skills architecture. This lack of validation creates significant trust gaps for jobseekers and employers, who struggle to determine whether skills-first products and practices meet their needs.
To tackle the challenges of specificity and validation, our interviewees recommended four key solutions:
- Reduce Reliance on Self-Reported Skills Data: Self-reported skills are often inaccurate, inconsistently applied, and difficult to articulate. For example, if a jobseeker were asked to list all their relevant skills, they might overlook or mislabel important ones or exclude skills they incorrectly thought might hurt their chances. Systems should prioritize objective assessments over subjective claims.
- Make Validation Central to Learning: Treat validation as a natural counterpart to teaching and learning. One interviewee compared it to driving, where education happens in driving school, but trust comes from earning a license. This approach doesn’t require formal licensing or regulation but emphasizes that validation and learning are two sides of the same coin.
- Standardize Skills Across Industries: Build industry-specific standards for defining, cross-referencing, and assessing skills by collaborating across the private sector, academia, and government. Tie these efforts to meaningful incentives that encourage widespread adoption and use, including eliminating barriers to adoption.
- Unbundle Courses to Focus on Skills: Shift the focus from course content to skill development. By identifying skill clusters that span disciplines and courses, institutions can enable stronger skills-based signaling in transcripts and resumes. This approach breaks down traditional academic silos and enhances alignment with workforce needs.
Opportunity 4: Embrace market forces
Currently, there is limited data or impact-driven storytelling to demonstrate the value of skills-first efforts. As a result, the financial incentives to take risks and invest in skills-first solutions are unclear, stifling innovation and deterring mid-to-late-stage users, the group most critical to establishing widespread adoption. This underdeveloped market leaves potential users skeptical about whether skills-first initiatives are “worth it” in financial terms.
Jump-starting the skills-first marketplace is essential to building trust. Based on our interviews, four strategies emerged:
- Establish Shared and Transparent Metrics: Markets thrive on comparison, which requires standardized, widely shared data on cost and impact. Skills-first providers must commit to transparency, defining what separates “good” products from “bad” ones. This clarity not only builds competitive advantage but also creates a compelling business case for how skills-first solutions can drive profitability or save money, while penalizing bad actors.
- Focus on Value: Prioritize delivering low costs, measurable financial returns, and clear job readiness. Highlighting these outcomes can help overcome consumer skepticism and distance skills-first efforts from less trusted systems.
- Start in High-Demand Fields: Avoid overly broad rollouts, which risk diluting efficacy and muddying the message. Instead, target high-demand sectors where employer interest and job opportunities are strong. This reduces perceived risks for jobseekers and employers, making it easier to build confidence in skills-first approaches.
- Evolve Quality Assurance Systems: Quality assurance mechanisms, such as accreditation, should act as market forces to drive trust. To do this, they need to move beyond traditional compliance roles and adopt a consumer-responsive, market-driven mindset. Competitive, dynamic assurance systems can provide the trust signals consumers and employers need to engage with skills-first solutions.
Opportunity 5: Learning is a critical part of the process
Early-stage innovations often prioritize technical capabilities over usability, leaving end users to navigate products without adequate support. This “figure it out as you go” approach may seem natural for innovators, who rely on field experimentation to refine their offerings. However, it can alienate users who lack prior experience, instructional resources, or clear guidance. In the skills-first ecosystem, this has led to significant distrust simply because products are overly complex or reductionist. Interviewees highlighted that jobseekers and employers frequently find products too generic, poorly explained, and heavily manual, with subpar user experiences that undermine confidence in their efficacy.
To build trust, the skills-first community must adopt a customer-centric mindset that prioritizes teaching and learning as essential components of the process. Our interviews identified four key actions to achieve this:
- Engage End Users for Feedback: Actively involve students, jobseekers, hiring managers, and workers in the design process on a real-time basis. Gather iterative feedback to understand their expectations and refine product features accordingly. Prioritize user experience design to improve product quality, customer satisfaction, and trust in the brand.
- Listen to Skeptics and Critics: Engage directly with skeptics, whose concerns can be influential and detrimental if left unaddressed. Responding to their feedback can uncover blind spots and help improve both trust and the product itself.
- Contextualize Tools to Roles and Industries: Tailor tools and practices to specific roles within a company and to the unique needs of target industries. Recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach will fall short and create confusion among users with varied requirements.
- Invest in Human-Led Guidance: Automated tutorials are rarely sufficient, particularly during early adoption phases. Provide hands-on instruction and human support to help users see the practical applications of innovations. Personal guidance is often the most effective way to foster trust and encourage successful implementation.
Building trust in the skills-first ecosystem is not an insurmountable challenge, but it requires intentionality and collaboration. By recognizing the evolving needs of workers and learners, simplifying language, standardizing validation, embracing market forces, and prioritizing user-centered learning, the movement can transform skepticism into confidence. Trust isn’t just a byproduct of success; it’s a prerequisite. To truly unlock the potential of a skills-first future, stakeholders must commit to transparency, inclusivity, and delivering tangible results that resonate with the people they aim to serve.
This initiative is a part of the Project to Catalyze Skills-First Practices. JFF supports transformational efforts to champion skills-first practices, reshaping how workers, employers, and educational institutions communicate and assess skills, experience, and knowledge. The Project to Catalyze Skills-First Practices, funded by Walmart, seeks to redefine and enhance the way an array of actors—including employers, policymakers, learning and education providers, philanthropy, and workforce development leaders—interpret and utilize information about a worker’s skills and experiences.
