People build valuable skills through work, caregiving, parenting, military-connected experiences, community leadership, education, and everyday problem-solving. Yet those skills are often invisible to the employers and institutions that make decisions about hiring and advancement.
Education Design Lab’s new report, Making Skills Visible: Learner Stories and Insights on the Power of Skills Validation, explores what changes when people can identify, validate, and communicate the durable skills they have already developed through life and work.
The report draws on conversations with participants in XCredit, the Lab’s initiative using short, performance-based assessments to help opportunity seekers demonstrate durable skills and earn portable, interoperable credentials. Its central insight:
Skills validation does not create new abilities. It creates visibility around skills people are already building through life and work.
For New Majority Learners balancing work, caregiving, and non-linear education journeys, that visibility can be a bridge to confidence, recognition, and mobility.
Three learner stories
Felix, an immigrant professional and father of four pursuing a transition into cybersecurity, entered XCredit with technical expertise but wanted to strengthen his communication skills and confidence. The validation process became more than a credential: it gave him a framework to practice, reflect, and approach interviews as opportunities for growth.
“The more you put yourself in those uncomfortable situations where you have to speak, the more you are going to learn.”
Rose, a veteran spouse, caregiver, educator, and advocate, had years of experience navigating complex systems and supporting others under pressure. But translating those strengths into workforce language was difficult. Skills validation gave her a way to benchmark her growth and communicate the value of experience that traditional resumes often miss.
“Now I have somewhere where I can go and actually gauge it … maybe once a year … to see if I can measure progress against it. It’s my benchmarking.”
Tamara, a student parent and educator, found that validation helped her name the communication, adaptability, prioritization, and conflict-navigation skills she had built through parenting, teaching, and daily life.
“Having these kinds of questions really helped me understand myself more.”
Together, their stories show that validation can support reflection, professional identity, and a clearer connection between lived experience and future opportunity.
What the report finds
- The barrier is often visibility, not ability. Many people have significant workforce-relevant skills but lack the language and trusted evidence to communicate them.
- Reflection is part of the value. Validation can help learners identify strengths, see opportunities for growth, and build confidence before a job change or promotion occurs.
- Durable skills develop everywhere. Caregiving, military-connected experiences, community engagement, and career transitions all build valuable capabilities.
- Design determines access. Validation tools must be flexible, accessible, and human-centered if they are to work for people balancing work, family, disability, and other responsibilities.
- Visibility can support mobility. When learners can explain and demonstrate their skills, they are better positioned to navigate education, career transitions, and employment opportunities.
What stakeholders can do
- Employers: Look beyond degrees, job titles, and linear work histories. Clarify the durable skills you value, recognize evidence of them in practice, and help workers communicate what they can do.
- Higher education and workforce organizations: Integrate durable-skills reflection and validation into advising, career services, workforce programs, and learner-support experiences. Make the skills developed through courses and experiences explicit.
- Policymakers and ecosystem leaders: Support systems that recognize learning across work, caregiving, military-connected experiences, and nontraditional educational journeys—while ensuring that skills are validated in ways employers and institutions can trust.
Download the report
The opportunity is not simply to create more credentials. It is to build systems that recognize the full range of human capability already present in learners, workers, caregivers, and communities.
Download Making Skills Visible to explore the learner stories, emerging insights, and recommendations for creating validation systems that strengthen confidence, recognition, and economic mobility.
This report was written by Nishita Chheda, an education designer at Education Design Lab. The research included in this publication was made possible through the generous support of Walmart.
