All the information you will need is in the Trusted Skills reviewer guidebook. You can download this by clicking HERE. If you have any additional questions, please send us an email at support@trustedskills.org

No. There’s no teaching involved. Those assessing the skills of candidates will be certified professionals in the field that is being certified. This is what we call it professional certifying professionals.

If you’re interested in becoming a certified reviewer, the first step is to assess the certification criteria for the four Trusted Skills Certifications being piloted in 2022. If you believe you’re qualified, please contact us at support@TrustedSkills.org. We will follow-up with additional details.

It is important that our Trusted Skill reviewers are compensated for contributing their expertise to their community. For each completed review during the pilot phase, expert reviewers will be compensated $300.

Each skill is anchored to rigorous certification criteria developed by professionals in each area. In addition, the assessment is based on multiple forms of evidence. For all levels, the submission of an ePortfolio is required. For level 2 certification, an advanced skills case study is required. Last, a skill is confirmed by a Trusted Skills reviewer with expertise in a specific area.

A core principle is that Trusted Skills Certification is only as legitimate as the process and people who verify them. For this reason, an important goal of this prototype phase is evaluating a variety of mechanisms to ensure rigour. Each Trusted Skills reviewer will undergo a rigorous evidence-based assessment to prove they have the currency and ability to assess specific skills.

The project is a joint initiative of Calgary Arts Development Authority and Calgary Economic Development. During the prototype, we will evaluate the optimal structure and resources needed for a potential scaling of Trusted Skills professional certification.

Trusted Skills professional certification helps all employers; however, we expect it to have the greatest impact on Calgary-based small-medium enterprises. Since small-medium employers often recruit from the local labour market, they could explicitly seek candidates with a specific certification. In contrast, large national or multinational corporations recruit from a global labour market. Therefore, we expect it will be rare that large-scale employers will specifically embed Trusted Skills professional certification into their recruitment process.

The job market is highly competitive, and most employers receive hundreds or thousands of applications for each job. The job seeker aims to make this decision easier for employers and remove the risk. Having Trusted Skills professional certification helps manage this risk by certifying in advance that the job seeker has the skills the employer seeks.

Skill demand is dynamic and ever-changing, making speed and agility essential. By narrowing the scope to metropolitan Calgary, we also narrow the number of stakeholders involved, increasing efficiency while ensuring economies of scale. Keeping the scope at a city-level focuses the program’s benefits on Calgary-based small-medium enterprises, which represent 99% of all employers in the city. Research shows that small-medium employers depend heavily on recruiting from their local geographic labour market, primarily because of the high cost of moving a new employee. In contrast, large organizations have the ability and resources to recruit from a larger labour market.

The assigned certified Trusted Skills reviewer will use the certification criteria to assign a candidate one of four potential levels:

Level 0: No evidence of basic skill level

Level 1: Evidence of basic skill

Level 2: Evidence of advanced skill

Level 3: Evidence of expert skill

The current economic model expects a fee to be paid by the candidate for every certification. This fee is solely for cost recovery.

For the prototype, Calgary Arts Development Authority will fully fund the certification fee. The goal of this model is to balance rigour and accessibility. If the rigour of the Trusted Skills professional certification process is compromised, the Trusted Skills certification will have no value to employers. However, if the process is so costly that Calgarians pursuing Trusted Skills professional certification face a financial barrier, it also defeats the goal of greater inclusivity in the labour market.

When a candidate submits evidence, they will note the team members who contributed to the project. If they did the work solo, they could leave this section blank. But if they worked as a team, they must share the names or handles of co-contributors. Failure to do so results in a disqualification.

In skill areas where there are no rigorous forms of skill certification, employers de-risk hiring through informal methods (e.g., checking references). These methods are shown to systematically disadvantage candidates in marginalized communities. Trusted Skills professional certification is designed to objectively assess the level of an individual’s skills and reduce the current dependency on informal methods.

Trusted Skills Certification is designed to complement all forms of skill development, including certified skill development. Decoupling recognizes that there are infinite routes to developing a skill. Most skills involve the intersection of certified, non-certified, and informal skill development experiences. Decoupling unlocks and recognizes the importance of this intersection in modern skill development. An example is how studying liberal arts could help develop high-demand skills, such as problem-solving and communications. Similarly, sports and recreation can play a significant role in developing skills associated with leadership and collaboration. Trusted Skills Certification offers a path for individuals who possess these skills to have them rigorously assessed and certified regardless of their background.

Each certification has three defined levels: basic, advanced, and expert. Each level includes detailed certification criteria that define the evidence needed to prove the associated level of skill. To receive a “basic” certification in an area, a candidate must demonstrate a minimum “basic” level in each of the skills.

The specific evidence will vary by certification. However, all Trusted Skills Certifications require a candidate to supply evidence that they can do what they say they can do. Often this evidence is in the form of earlier work completed. Whether this evidence was the output of paid employment or volunteer experience is irrelevant to the assessment process, which singularly considers the output.

This project is being funded by Calgary Arts Development Authority (CADA), with the support of Calgary Economic Development and the Calgary Marketing Association. CADA is leading the development of Calgary’s creative economy strategy. A pillar of this strategy is the critical need to accelerate the development of Calgary’s creative skills. We are evaluating whether decoupling can unlock and recognize the existing capacity in the system by providing creative skill developers with a certification path.

Following the prototype phase, the project team will review its success compared to the defined questions. Concurrent to the prototype, we will review paths to potential expansion and scaling of Trusted Skills certification to other professional fields. Based on this, the project team will evaluate the next steps.