With over 90% of organizations set to be impacted by IT skills shortages in 2026, the question facing both certification providers and IT professionals is how to bridge the gap fast enough.
Leading our enterprise-grade certification product and with a long history in EdTech, Learnosity CPO, Neil McGough, sat down to give us his take on what’s needed in 2026 to make a real impact on this ever-compounding challenge.
How do you see the role of IT certifications evolving in 2026, especially as AI becomes more integral to product development?
I don’t think IT certifications will change in any immediate or obvious way, though I think the types of IT skills that we assess will dramatically change in some areas, with AI literacy and Agentic AI code orchestration being major emerging areas. In particular, I think the gold-rush towards “AI will do it all” distracts from the very real fact that, right now, you still ultimately need a strong, skilled developer to be able to guide AI most effectively. We’re still a long way from a world where modern programming language output is as obfuscated from the developer as assembly code is now.
Overall, I think a lot of providers will struggle to keep up with the rate of change in their products and in developer products and IDEs in the market, as AI tooling becomes the approach. That will take some time to settle down but provides a massive opportunity for AI, as part of ‘back-of-house’ functionality, to create high-quality assessments significantly faster, or by working from pre-existing content to reduce the SME bottleneck.
Each year we hear about the IT skills gap challenge, will 2026 be any different and what can certification programs do to truly make a difference?
I feel hopeful that the intrinsic shifts in IT skills, products in the market, and what we need from software developers will force some more rapid change in the industry than what has appeared to date.
A large part of this is addressing the undeniable need to get more upskilling in place, in more digestible formats, and in a more seamless fashion. All this needs to be achieved, of course, without also watering down the veracity of your certifications or making widespread cheating easier.
These challenges are not easy to solve, but they do force a real need for quick thinking and innovation in how we deliver certifications to better fit the individual, organizational, and market needs.
Deliver skills-first IT certifications
Do you think lab-based and ‘hands-on’ assessment is still going to be the gold standard for IT credentialing in 2026?
Overall, there is definitely an appetite for more authentic performance assessments. The issue, of course, is that delivering lab-style assessments (including the infrastructure underpinning them) at scale and cost-effectively isn’t at all easy. And that’s not touching on the overall huge task of maintaining the course catalog and verifying its efficacy. And all that aside, not everything is suited to be tested in a lab.
All that said, the real push needs to be towards more multi-model certification programs, ones that move away from purely fixed-form MCQ tests alone to include a wider mix of valid, complex, and higher-level assessment formats delivered via digestible micro-credentials. More complex but skill-based formats might be presentation-style video questions scored using AI for soft skills related to products, or more open-ended responses, which again can be scored using AI to test understanding at a higher level.
The key thing here is that there isn’t a golden ticket. The trick to certification success will be in blended approaches, bolstered by AI, that focus on validity and keeping certifications bite-sized and easy to update — which is essential with such a changeable industry.
For those looking to update their IT skills, and those building IT certification programs in 2026, what’s your advice?
For those looking to update their IT skills — get started now! And start in areas where you can get hands-on, practical experience with the tools on a day-to-day basis, not just book learning for future use. That way, it’s something that can stay embedded in your day-to-day routine, and really stick, adding incremental value to your career in the years to come.
For those building IT certification programmes in 2026 — look for a vendor you can trust to be a real partner and challenger. And understand that while chasing the “shiny” can seem great, any long-lasting program is going to need a mix of tried-and-tested and new ways of assessment to be self-sustaining and of high-quality for years to come.
As CPO of a certification product that’s underpinning industry-leading programs, what fundamental product capabilities do you feel make Questionmark Certification a standout option?
I think the recent integration of Learnosity’s AI scoring and feedback capabilities into Questionmark Certification — and where we’re going next — is a real game changer. It allows us to bring those complex ‘higher-level’ thinking assessments into our products at scale with short-answer AI scoring. It also enables us to power the next generation of test-prep solutions alongside certification programmes with high-quality formative feedback to bring that test-taker up to the level they need to be.
In short, our products are built on what has long been an effective, secure, and trustworthy platform for certification programs, and this allows us to change HOW we assess at multiple levels.