Your CV Isn’t Enough: Abu Dhabi Launches Digital Skills Card

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

It's the Morning Drive. Abu Dhabi has launched the Gulf region's first digital skills card. It allows employers to verify professional skills and qualifications through a QR code and blockchain technology. So as hiring becomes more skills focused and AI reshapes the workplace, are CV and course certificates still enough to prove what someone can actually do? There's the question.

Stéphanie Reniers is the co-founder and group CEO of Gentis, which is a global talent partner and recruitment agency based here in the UAE. But it's nice to have you here. Good to meet you.

Stéphanie Reniers (0:40)

Nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_1 (0:41)

From where you sit, Stéphanie, you've led the expansion of Gentis across the Middle East and Africa from here. I know that.

What does Abu Dhabi's new digital skills card change about the way that employers will verify skills? And also expectations and qualifications?

Stéphanie Reniers (1:02)

I think that one major thing that comes back is trust. You know, you have, when you have resumes, when you have like, when you receive hundreds of resumes, you need to make like a real difference between fake degrees for fake certificates.

And this is sometimes very difficult to find, especially in the UAE, when, where everyone comes from all around the world. You don't always know where people had degrees, how they were trained, how they were skilled. So this is a huge change in recruitment and also for hiring.

SPEAKER_1 (1:43)

Okay. So it's a great kind of local step, isn't it? But how easily does the whole blockchain credential travel if you move abroad or if you work remotely for, remotely for a multinational, for example?

Stéphanie Reniers (1:58)

And I think that's what we're going to see also during the coming years. From my perspective, at the moment, what you need is to have a clear resume and a clear, let's say, skills card, where you would have a list of all the certificates, all the trainings, and where people could easily see where you had your degree, if you have a real degree, if you have a real training, and that could be all around the world.

SPEAKER_1 (2:27)

So it's a digital card, a skills card, it makes, it's portable, it goes across institutions and borders in theory. It's a bit like a work passport, isn't it? It's kind of like a CV passport type thing, ish.

Stéphanie Reniers (2:40)

It is, it is, but you have to make the difference between a CV, because a CV tells you a whole story. It's not only about degrees, it's also about your experience, your hobbies, your languages. So it's a full difference. So CV tells a story. It's like a trailer from a movie, you know, while the skills card is only about your skills.

SPEAKER_1 (3:03)

I'm sorry, you've lost me for a moment there, because I'm trying to think of my career as a trailer for a movie. What kind of movie it would be?

Stéphanie Reniers (3:10)

Well, I'd like to know which one it is then.

SPEAKER_1 (3:12)

It's a horror movie, really, if I'm honest, but hopefully yours is better. But that's interesting, actually, because in theory, it should make the whole progression easier, because one of the things with the CV, I always find, is making the dates match. But you can't fake it, can you? That's the point. This is a very real representation digitally, as long as it's recognized of your career.

Stéphanie Reniers (3:38)

Yeah, and that's the whole difference, let's say, is that with the degrees, with the skills cards, you will have the trainings, the official certifications verified, but it still make the recruiter's life pretty difficult to understand about the dates, about your experience. So this is where the different lies. You have a difference between the skills, degree certifications and your actual experience in real life, let's say.

SPEAKER_1 (4:06)

Yeah, okay.

You're also, aside from Gentis, you're the co-founder of an AI hiring platform, which is called Wiggli. I've got to commend you on that name, because that's a great name. But when hiring relies on automated sort of digital badges, how do platforms like yours stop algorithms from reinforcing biases or missing great candidates who maybe didn't take like a traditional career path or their background is, I don't know, unconventional?

Stéphanie Reniers (4:41)

And I would say even gender, because we had a very concrete case with, so it was a company specialized in engineering, and so we've taken all the employees, all right? We checked all the degrees they had, the typical profile they would hire, and it ended up with an AI agent actually having bias on gender, because in that company, they had 95% of males.