HR Open Standards Announces Official Release of the Trusted Career Profile (TCP)

HR Open Standards Announces Official Release of the Trusted Career Profile (TCP), a Universal Standard for Skills-Based Hiring and Career Mobility

HR Open Standards, in collaboration with the T3 Innovation Network and industry leaders, today announced the public release of the Trusted Career Profile (TCP)—a universal data standard designed to make skills-based hiring practical, scalable, and interoperable across the talent ecosystem.

Formerly known as the LER-Resume Standard, the Trusted Career Profile represents a major evolution in how experience is captured, verified, and used. TCP bridges the growing Learning and Employment Record (LER) ecosystem with the HR technologies employers rely on today, including applicant tracking systems (ATS) and talent management platforms.

The standard combines LERs and verifiable credentials—such as Open Badges and Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs), and self-attested information, each of which can include skills, employment history, narratives, and other career-relevant information, enabling individuals to create a comprehensive, portable, tamper-evident, verifiable record for a multitude of use cases. 

More Than a Resume

HR Open Standards recognized early that this data package extends far beyond a traditional resume. The Trusted Career Profile enables individuals to securely move their career data between platforms and services, supporting use cases such as career navigation, skills gap analysis, personalized learning recommendations, and eligibility determination across workforce and public systems.

In this model, interoperability is no longer just about vendor-to-vendor integrations—it’s about making career data reusable across life and career moments.

Meeting a Shift in Employer and Public-Sector Expectations

As skills-based hiring becomes operational, expectations are shifting. Increasingly, state and federal RFPs require an ecosystem approach—relying less and less on single platforms. The Trusted Career Profile lowers the barrier for employers to participate in these ecosystems without requiring them to become credentialing experts, positioning TCP as a foundational building block for what comes next in talent matching and mobility.

A New Standard for Verified Experience

The Trusted Career Profile enables individuals to capture and share the full scope of their experience in a structured, verifiable format—moving beyond the limitations of static resumes.

Key capabilities and benefits include:

• Comprehensive data capture: Supports rich, structured data for key career and education experiences and achievements such as work roles, progression history, competencies, certifications, badges, and training records.

• Seamless data integration: Designed to consume existing verifiable credential data streams, including Open Badges and the Comprehensive Learner Record Standard™, and enable successful ingestion by ATS and HR platforms.

• Enhanced discoverability: Enables employers to discover qualified individuals based on verified skills and experience—not just keywords.

• Skills-based matching: Supports advanced matching workflows, allowing employers to align job requirements to skills and receive candidates with calculated match scores, expanding talent pools and addressing labor shortages.

• Reimagining hiring workflows: Establishes the foundation for breaking the traditional application process—moving more quickly from skills verification to next steps like interview scheduling.

“This is an important step toward a more modern talent marketplace,” said Jason Tyszko, Senior Vice President at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “By making verified experience portable and interoperable, the Trusted Career Profile helps employers focus less on credentials as proxies and more on skills as signals—unlocking better matches for both businesses and workers.”

Supporters

The Trusted Career Profile is supported by leading funders and ecosystem partners, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Walmart, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and 1EdTech Consortium.

Availability

The Trusted Career Profile core release—including documentation and diagrams for three primary use cases—is now complete. The official release candidate (version 4.5) and supporting materials are available for download via the HR Open Standards website at www.hropenstandards.org/standards. Free membership is available, allowing any organization to access the standard at no cost.