Jobs for the Future (JFF) has launched a regional pilot program with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to test the adoption of digital credentials as a type of Learner and Employment Records (LER). The project aims to build, test, and assess LER adoption for job readiness, unlocking pathways for IRC clients facing employment barriers and creating a more transparent, efficient hiring process for both workers and employers.   

The Need

Over 200,000 immigrants and refugees served annually by the IRC come from various backgrounds and experiences, including differing levels of English proficiency and educational attainment. Thirty-four percent of those clients come to the U.S. having completed above secondary education. Across this broad array of backgrounds, each individual brings a wealth of knowledge and skills that are not always considered in the U.S. workforce context. A traditional resume, for example, may not capture an individual’s informal work experience, and a foreign credential or degree may not be officially recognized.  

JFF and IRC believe that new, innovative tools like LERs can help connect the dots by more comprehensively communicating knowledge and skills. LER technology becomes a vital tool for a more inclusive economy, opening employment opportunities for qualified jobseekers while simultaneously helping employers match those jobseekers to employment vacancies.  

Can LER technology be used to reduce barriers for immigrant and refugee populations, who have been and continue to be locked out of opportunity and improve access to meaningful employment?  This is the question JFF and IRC seek to understand from this pilot initiative across two IRC sites: Tucson, Arizona, and Des Moines, Iowa. IRC clients who complete a robust IRC-designed job readiness program will be issued a digital, verifiable credential they can share directly with employers via a digital wallet. This enables individuals to articulate their skills, competencies, and experience within the learn-to-work ecosystem, facilitating a smoother recruitment process for both jobseekers and employers looking for diverse talent pools.  

This project differs from other field initiatives in several exciting ways, including:  

• Assessing whether LERs can solve a human problem (versus a technological one) by evaluating human behavior change  
• Designing with and centering immigrants and refugees, populations that face enormous barriers towards accessing and obtaining quality jobs   
• Engaging a Community Based Organization (CBO), which has been underrepresented across other field pilots, many of which have centered academic or other large institutions  

CBOs like IRC play a critical role in the community it works with. If used successfully, LERs can reduce barriers and improve access to employment while solving operational efficiency for CBOs and employers. JFF and IRC anticipate transformative learnings and impactful outcomes that will inform future work to build upon the skills-first movement.  

What’s a Learning and Employment Record (LER)?

LERs are a central pillar of the broader skills-first movement, supporting learners and workers to capture and communicate earned knowledge, skills, and experience through verifiable records, no matter where it was obtained. It’s a modern tool that equalizes career opportunities by giving value to lived experiences—skills earned from degrees, work experiences, independent learning, and life experience—and considers these skills a basis to pursue opportunities and career pathways.   

How might LER technology safely bring this skills-first vision to life? Like a smartphone wallet holds an airplane ticket, these containers store digital credentials verifying a learning or working experience and, therefore, data about their knowledge and skills. This is a new approach that gives control of their records, credentials, and diplomas to the workers and learners instead of the institutions that provide them, as it has historically been done. Each individual has ownership of their data that can be shared with others, as needed.  

Excitingly, LERs can house additional data that help jobseekers present themselves to better meet the demands of modern workforces, such as employment authorization documents, academic transcripts, language proficiency, and more. Such efforts help orient IRC clients and employers to a new digital credential that signals work readiness and complements skills-first initiatives.  

Adoption of LER Technology Presents Opportunities and Anticipated Challenges

Integration of LERs into the hiring process presents compelling opportunities for all those involved in this process:  

• Immigrant and refugee jobseekers would have the ability to take ownership of their digital credentials and leverage them to better represent their knowledge and skills to employers  
• IRC direct service providers supporting jobseekers would have a more effective tool that streamlines and digitizes their work supporting jobseekers in the job placement process  
• Employers hiring jobseekers would have access to more granular and specific jobseeker skills, allowing them to more effectively match applicants to available jobs that meet their evolving hiring needs    

Of course, success requires buy-in from all stakeholders who can recognize its demonstrated value. Potential barriers to adoption may include immigrants and refugee jobseekers’ digital literacy levels and designing the LER for jobseekers with various levels of English proficiency (one of the biggest challenges to employment for this population). Additionally, we can only transition to skills-based hiring and equitable employment if employers are aware of the credentials in an LER and know how to integrate them into their existing hiring systems.  

Conditions for Success

For digital credentials and LERs to be an effective tool for immigrant and refugee populations, key design elements for funders, CBOs, technologists, and system leaders should be considered to meet folks where they’re at. These include:

• Language translation to support various levels of English proficiency, allowing workers and learners to use the technology confidently    
• Simple and straightforward user experience to accommodate various digital literacy levels   
• Mobile and desktop functionality to increase accessibility for newcomers, whether they own a smartphone, visit a library, or access another community resource   
• Data security and privacy to protect sensitive information related to immigration status, work authorization, and visa details   

In addition to these important guardrails, direct service providers and CBOs who serve immigrant and refugee learners should receive training and supportive resources for how to support program participants in leveraging these tools. This will ensure all participants can take advantage of all digital credentials have to offer.   

Join Us!

LERs remain an innovative and emerging technology in workforce development. Collectively, JFF and IRC teams look forward to the insights, reflections, and lessons learned from embarking on this work together. With IRC serving as an early adopter, surfaced learnings will help us define programming for organizations interested in using or issuing LERs and transform the application and hiring process for both jobseekers and employers. In partnership with IRC, JFF commits to sharing proven strategies and practices to apply toward future LER demonstrations across the learn-to-work ecosystem, designed specifically with and for immigrant and refugee learners and workers.   

Please join us on our learning journey! If you’re an employer and interested in seeing how this technology can be used in your work, or partnering with IRC, please connect with Paige and her team by signing up for updates at https://www.jff.org/subscribe/. 

About International Rescue Committee
The International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) mission is to help people who have been affected by conflict and disaster regain control of their lives, survive, and recover including through the economic opportunity programs that help diverse communities develop the knowledge, skills, and assets they need to thrive in the US economy.

About Jobs for the Future: 
Jobs for the Future (JFF) drives transformation of the U.S. education and workforce systems to achieve equitable economic advancement for all. www.jff.org