The Hiring Value of Digital Micro-Credentials. Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment in Germany

Micro-credentials such as online certificates or digital badges have been promoted as flexible tools to enhance employability, especially given the growing demand for continuing education and training. Yet, little is known about how employers value such credentials in hiring decisions and whether they function as complements or substitutes for other qualification signals. Drawing on signaling and human capital theory as well as the digital divide literature, this study examines the hiring value of digital and in-person micro-credentials relative to formal qualifications and work experience. The empirical analysis is based on a pre-registered discrete choice experiment conducted with 1,380 human resource professionals in Germany, who evaluated 12,048 applicant profiles across 24 occupations requiring higher education. Results based on conditional logit models show that digital micro-credentials do not increase hiring probabilities and are valued significantly less than equivalent certificates obtained through in-person courses. This difference is independent of recruiters’ prior experience with digital micro-credentials and largely driven by trust in the signal quality of the two credential formats. We also find that in-person micro-credentials issued by universities improve hiring chances compared to other providers. Furthermore, among applicants with weaker field-of-study matches, in-person micro-credentials can enhance employability, indicating a partially substitutional signaling function, while this is not the case for digital micro-credentials. These findings suggest that in strongly institutionalized labor markets such as Germany, employers continue to prioritize established (micro-)qualifications over emerging digital forms. At the same time, this is evidence against a digital divide in terms of outcomes.