{"id":1161,"slug":"sophisticated-gc-five-question-credential-heuristic","title":"Sophisticated GC's 5-question credential-evaluation heuristic — revocability / written threshold / liability / individual vs firm / in-group survivability","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["gc-vertical","trust-repair","signalling-theory"],"reference_body":"**Claim (Directional — derived from theory and broader peer-advisory interview data; not measured in-domain):** A sophisticated GC buyer of marketing services can be expected to apply roughly this 5-question test to any credential:\n\n1. **Is the credential issued by a body with authority to revoke it?** HCRA can revoke a licence; Houzz cannot revoke a badge in a meaningful sense.\n2. **Is there a written threshold that is independently audited?** Gold Seal has an exam; Guildmaster has a documented threshold against survey data; pay-to-play lists do not.\n3. **Does the credential carry liability?** Tarion does; a sponsored \"Top 50\" list does not.\n4. **Is the credential held by individuals identifiable by name, or only by firms?** Individual credentials (Red Seal, Gold Seal) are harder to fake than firm credentials.\n5. **Does the credential survive scrutiny by an in-group peer?** The ultimate test, and the one pay-to-play credentials uniformly fail.\n\n**Confidence:** Directional.\n\n**For Candid:** Apply this same heuristic to Candid's own credential stack before publishing it. Each badge or named credential should be defensible against all five questions. If a credential fails three or more, removing it from public-facing materials improves rather than degrades the credibility stack.\n\n**Cross-cluster:** the existing [[contractor-owned-trust-signal-stack-vs-homestars-rental-comparison]] entry develops a parallel argument for why owned trust signals beat rented ones; this heuristic operationalizes that thinking as a per-credential evaluator.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"research-brief-trust-networks-in-group-reputation-may-2026","title":"Research brief: trust, referral networks, and in-group reputation in Ontario's trades economy (May 2026 — Foundation Brief #3)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"contractor-owned-trust-signal-stack-vs-homestars-rental-comparison","title":"Contractor owned-trust-signal stack: HCRA / Tarion / RenoMark / WRHBA / OHBA / CHBA / COR / WSIB / Gold Seal / insurance / ENERGY STAR / Net-Zero / LEED AP / GuildQuality / Google Business Profile — verifiable, portable, free-or-low-cost — HomeStars cannot replicate any of these","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"rule-earn-one-audit-verified-credential-per-year-refuse-purchased","title":"R4 — Earn one audit-verified in-group credential per year; refuse all purchased credentials; sparse + verifiable beats dense + decorative","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-25T13:34:11.236Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T13:34:11.236Z"}