OVI is an AI-native applicant tracking system (ATS) at ovi-me.com. You chat with AI agents Sora and Milo to source candidates, screen CVs, and run AI voice interviews in one workflow.

How do I sign in to OVI?

Sign in to OVI at https://ovi-me.com/auth with your work email or Google account. New teams can start a free trial from the homepage.

OVI AI refers to OVI's hiring agents — Milo for CV screening and Sora for sourcing — built into the AI-native ATS so recruiting teams chat to hire instead of clicking through traditional ATS screens.

OVI is the AI-native ATS where you chat to hire. Two AI agents — Sora for sourcing and Milo for screening — find candidates, score every CV, and run AI interviews, all controlled from a single chat.

What does "chat to hire" mean?

Chat to hire is OVI's AI-native hiring workflow: instead of clicking through a traditional ATS, you describe what you need in chat and OVI's AI agents source candidates, screen applicants, run AI interviews, and send outreach for you.

What is an AI-native ATS?

An AI-native ATS is an applicant tracking system built around AI agents rather than forms and pipelines. OVI's AI chat ATS lets recruiters source, screen, interview, and follow up through conversation — the agents do the work and surface only the candidates worth meeting.

Who are Sora and Milo?

Sora is OVI's AI sourcing agent — she scans LinkedIn, the open web, and your ATS history to find best-fit candidates and reach out in your name. Milo is OVI's AI screening agent — he scores every applicant against your rubric and surfaces a ranked shortlist.

How do OVI's AI interviews work?

OVI runs async AI interviews for every shortlisted candidate and returns scores, transcripts, and recordings — so your team only meets the people worth meeting.

Verified by Algorithm: How Enterprise AI Is Replacing Degree Screens with Digital Credential Infrastructure in 2026

By Tim Kreling, Co-Founder, OVI

Published 2026-10-01

When 70% of employers say they now use skills-based hiring and 53% have eliminated degree requirements entirely, the question is no longer whether credentials matter more than diplomas — it is whether the verification infrastructure can keep pace with the shift.

The answer in 2026 is increasingly yes, thanks to an emerging stack of AI-powered credential platforms — Credly, Workday Skills Cloud, IBM SkillsBuild, and others — that let enterprises verify micro-credentials in real time and map them to open roles with precision that paper transcripts never offered.

The Verification Layer: From Badges to API Calls

At the centre of this shift sits Credly, whose digital-credentialing platform now powers badge issuance and real-time employer verification for programmes spanning IBM, Salesforce, and hundreds of universities. Its API lets applicant tracking systems confirm a candidate's credential status, expiry date, and issuing authority in seconds — collapsing a process that once required manual transcript requests into a single authenticated call.

IBM's SkillsBuild programme illustrates the scale. With a target of two million free AI learners by 2026 and more than 80% of participants reporting improved professional confidence, IBM issues digital badges through Credly that employers can verify programmatically. The badges encode specific competencies — prompt engineering, data fundamentals, cybersecurity basics — rather than broad subject areas, giving hiring teams granular signal on what a candidate can actually do.

Enterprise Adoption: Workday, Google, and the Fortune 500

Workday Skills Cloud, now used by roughly 30% of Fortune 500 companies, takes verification a step further. Its AI-driven skills ontology continuously maps credentials, job history, and learning records to a unified taxonomy, enabling enterprises to match internal and external candidates to roles by demonstrated capability rather than pedigree. Organisations using the platform report a 26% higher internal hire rate and a 5% reduction in voluntary turnover — outcomes that make the business case self-evident.

Google's Career Certificate programme has reached another milestone: more than one million graduates as of early 2026, feeding into a 150-plus employer consortium that includes Deloitte, Ford, Target, and Walmart. Google reports that 75% of graduates see positive career outcomes within six months, with hire rates varying by track — 56% for IT Support, 52% for UX Design, and 49% for Data Analytics. These are not vanity completion stats; they are employment-linked metrics verified through consortium employer data.

The Credential Inflation Problem

Scale creates its own risks. As micro-credentials proliferate, two threats loom:

Fraud and injection attacks. Verification-layer injection attacks — attempts to spoof or tamper with credential metadata — have risen 40% year-over-year. Deepfakes now account for one in five biometric fraud attempts in identity-verification workflows, pressuring credentialing platforms to harden their authentication stacks.

Taxonomy fragmentation. IBM badges, Google certificates, Salesforce Trailhead credentials, and Workday's ontology each use different competency frameworks. Without interoperability, an employer running Workday cannot seamlessly ingest an IBM badge or a Google certificate without manual mapping — a friction cost that scales with headcount.

Credential inflation. The Salesforce ecosystem illustrates the tension. IDC projects more than nine million Salesforce ecosystem jobs by 2026, driving massive demand for Trailhead certifications. But employers are pushing back against credential-only candidates who lack real-organisation experience, signalling that credentials without demonstrated application risk becoming the new "degree on paper."

The Enabling Tools

Four platforms anchor the enterprise credential-verification stack in 2026:

Credly — the dominant badge-issuing and verification platform. Its API enables ATS-integrated, real-time credential checks across thousands of issuers.
Workday Skills Cloud — AI-powered skills ontology used by ~30% of the Fortune 500 to match candidates by competency, driving measurable improvements in internal mobility and retention.
IBM SkillsBuild — a free-to-learner programme targeting two million AI learners by 2026, issuing verifiable Credly badges that encode specific technical competencies.
Accenture LearnVantage — backed by a $1 billion investment launched in 2024, with the 2025 acquisition of Ascendient Learning adding instructor-led training and industry-recognised certification pathways to the platform.

What HR Leaders Should Do Now

Audit your ATS integration. If your applicant tracking system cannot ingest digital credentials via API (Credly, Workday), you are still screening on keywords — not verified skills.
Define a credential-acceptance policy. Decide which micro-credentials your organisation recognises as degree-equivalent for specific roles, and publish the list externally.
Budget for verification security. With injection attacks rising 40% annually, credential verification is now a fraud-prevention function, not just a sourcing convenience.

What are digital credentials in hiring?

Digital credentials are verified, machine-readable badges or certificates issued by platforms like Credly, IBM SkillsBuild, or Google Career Certificates. Unlike paper diplomas, they can be authenticated in real time via API, encoding specific competencies an employer can match to job requirements.

How do companies verify digital credentials?

Most enterprise credential platforms offer API-based verification. Credly's API, for example, lets an ATS confirm a badge's validity, issuing authority, and expiry date in seconds. Workday Skills Cloud maps credentials to its AI-driven skills ontology automatically.

Are micro-credentials replacing degrees?

For a growing number of roles, yes. Fifty-three percent of employers have eliminated degree requirements, and programmes like Google Career Certificates — with over one million graduates and a 150-plus employer consortium — demonstrate that structured micro-credentials can substitute for four-year degrees in specific fields.

What risks come with credential-based hiring?

The main risks are fraud (verification-layer injection attacks are up 40% year-over-year), credential inflation (credentials without practical experience losing value), and taxonomy fragmentation (different platforms using incompatible competency frameworks).

Which companies use AI-powered credential verification?

Roughly 30% of Fortune 500 companies use Workday Skills Cloud. IBM issues verifiable badges through Credly for its SkillsBuild programme. Google operates a 150-plus employer consortium for its Career Certificates. Accenture invested $1 billion in its LearnVantage platform.