Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
Did you know that you can just, like, straight up lie on your LinkedIn profile? Horrifying I know. You can claim to have worked for whatever company you want, in whatever position you’d like, and there is nothing, NOTHING that verifies it.
Aside from fear of being caught, there are no controls in place to validate claims made in your educational or employment history. Of course, any recruiter or HR department worth their salt would verify your claims. Unfortunately many recruiters and hiring managers are on a low sodium diet.
Microsoft is trying to remedy this shortcoming by rolling out their Verified ID tool for employers and employees alike. Verified ID is part of the Microsoft Entra group of products- a vast and unknowable swath of loosely related identity things. Verified ID uses decentralized identity as its operational model, allowing companies to cryptographically sign digital credentials for their employees. The signed credentials are kept by the employee and can be added to their LinkedIn profile, where it will appear with a blue checkmark.
And the best part? Unlike the blue mark of the Twitter beast, this service appears to be entirely free of charge for LinkedIn users. If you want to know more about Decentralized Identities, check out episode 26 of Chaos Lever where I went into exhaustive detail. At least, I was exhausted at the end.