Sophisticated GC's 5-question credential-evaluation heuristic — revocability / written threshold / liability / individual vs firm / in-group survivability

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Does the credential carry liability? Tarion does; a sponsored "Top 50" list does not.
4. 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.
5. Does the credential survive scrutiny by an in-group peer? The ultimate test, and the one pay-to-play credentials uniformly fail.

Confidence: Directional.

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.

Cross-cluster: the existing 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 entry develops a parallel argument for why owned trust signals beat rented ones; this heuristic operationalizes that thinking as a per-credential evaluator.