Recruiting is an increasingly complex practice. There are multiple layers and complexities that candidates and employers go through before a hiring decision can be made. Throughout this process, candidates and recruiters alike invest a lot in the exchange of sensitive data.
We can say that job seekers must provide a plethora of personal information that is necessary to push their candidature throughout the recruitment process.
When passing this sensitive information over, job candidates trust that the potential employers handle this data with care. Recruiters further endorse that all of the provided information is accurate. Failure by either party to uphold their end of the bargain may result in major delays or issues that could potentially prevent the best fitment for an open role.
One of the major flaws in recruitment is the use of intermediaries – recruitment agencies – in communication. Candidates are competent enough to deal directly with the employer who is looking to hire them; they don’t need to communicate via a third party. It just adds a day or two to the hiring process.
On the other hand, companies calculate the amount of revenue they make per employee per year, so if the vacancy is not filled in the defined period of let’s say 45 days, it’s going to have a massive impact on the bottom line.
Blockchain is a digital record-keeping system which, in this case, will verify the information within a candidate’s CV, from workplace to education and training qualifications, to ensure its validity.
For recruiters, reading and looking through resumes is a long and arduous task. It involves a fair amount of verifying education, certifications, work experience, and applicant skills. Imagine now if those same resumes were in a blockchain.
Once information is entered into a blockchain, it cannot be edited. Users can only add information, and even then it must be approved by those with access to the chain.
When put in the context of recruitment, the path is clear. Once a person creates a blockchain resume, it cannot be altered. This gives recruiters a chance to verify a candidate’s credentials in a secure way. It also reduces the chances those credentials can be altered or faked. Put simply, it impairs the ability of a person to exaggerate or flat out lie on their resumes.
As estimated, since 2012, when 100% of blockchain funding originated from Seed and Angel investors, the market has rapidly matured. By 2017, the percent of Seed and Angel investors was cut in half, with significantly more Series B and C deals.
Over the past few years, funds started narrowing their focus, providing more money to fewer companies — meaning those companies are growing and therefore hiring. And it’s only going to keep growing. By 2024, the global blockchain tech market is predicted to reach $20B in revenue.
Indeed found that in January 2018, there was a massive spike in candidates searching for roles in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain.
Compared to the jobs posted at the time, there simply weren’t enough open roles to fill the job seekers’ inquiries. However, that’s likely going to change in the near future, as blockchain companies continue to mature and gain traction in a range of industries.
How Blockchain could Disrupt Recruitment?
Faster Referral and Background Checks: Work is no longer limited to a single location. Global travel, the gig economy, and the rise of the on-demand talent economy have totally changed the way we work and a candidate’s professional background is becoming increasingly tough to track and verify. But in the future of blockchain, this process can be completed in an instant. With blockchain technology, all our personal and professional information can be held on one simple application, including anything and everything from previous addresses, social security numbers, employment history, education certificates, compensation data, visa status, and more. Basically, if you ever filled in a form field with it, you can find it on the blockchain. As soon as the hiring authority receives secure verification of the candidate’s information submitted via blockchain (this happens in a blink of an eye), they can hire with the full confidence of knowing that 100% of the candidate’s info is true and accurate.
Extremely Fast Employee Contracting: Blockchain can also hold employment contracting info such as your electronic signature, payroll details, security access codes, performance reports, and even psychometrics. In theory, a candidate could be employed immediately and even get their contract and payroll number assigned in an instant. For recruiters who thrive on the paperwork aspects of the business, this could spell trouble. But for those who want to eliminate the admin burden and focus on things like employer branding and improving communication with candidates, blockchain technology can seriously free up your time so you can focus on some of the more creative, high-value activities.
The End of the Traditional CV: Is blockchain going to kill the CV? There are two things to consider here. First, recruiters spend a lot of time and money using job boards to find CV’s. But these CV’s can be old and outdated or even falsified. Let’s be honest, some are totally fake. It happens way more often than it should. Take, for instance, Scot Thomas, former CEO of Yahoo, who resigned shortly after being hired as he had lied on his CV about having a degree in computer science. Fraudulent education claims are an even bigger issue when companies operate across multiple locations worldwide. With a global workforce, many employees will have studied and worked in different countries, making it extremely difficult for recruiters to verify their qualifications, especially if it involves having to translate information. Second, candidates currently have zero control over their resumes and CV’s once they’re posted to centralized job boards. But with blockchain in the mix, candidates can have full control over their info via centralized resume databases. Got a fancy new training certificate to show off? Candidates will be able to instantly update their credentials via a blockchain-backed cryptographic profile, which gets automatically updated throughout their career.
Ways Blockchain will Transform Recruitment
<img width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.cryptonewspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Blockchain-in-Recruitment-Sector1-1024x576.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-21736 lazyload" />
Image: Medium
Blockchain has given rise to a new business model that is built on technology, rather than reliance on people as intermediaries. This is exactly what makes blockchain a valuable tool for the recruitment industry.
Here are three ways blockchain could transform recruiting:
Credential Verification: According to HireRight’s 2018 employment screening benchmark report, 84 percent of employers caught applicants lying on their resumes. A blockchain-based credential verification system could help reduce the time spent on conducting background checks, reducing fraud, and build more trust in the recruitment ecosystem. As organizations strive for improved efficiencies in the recruitment process, ensuring a quick, reliable, and cost-effective screening process is essential. Blockchain could help recruitment teams strike a balance between speed and accuracy while helping contain costs. Colleges and universities could publish encrypted academic credentials to a blockchain which would enable candidates to view and share these with potential employers. In fact, MIT has developed a digital diploma pilot program, where students receive an encrypted certificate upon the completion of the course. Students can add and display their certificates on a mobile wallet application and share the file directly with potential employers.
Employment histories: Candidates don’t just lie about their qualifications; many also provide false employment histories to pad their resumes up. As most recruiters rely on reference checks to verify employment history, multiple phone calls and emails make it a long-drawn-out process. It is also challenging to track down references that are no longer with the company. Similar to academic credentials, blockchain can also help recruiters verify a candidate’s past roles across various organizations in detail. This record can be verified by each employer to prevent candidates from publishing false information. Once verified, the employment history cannot be altered, thus preventing candidates from manipulating their records.
Data Security: As the recruitment process becomes increasingly reliant on technology to drive higher efficiencies, the recruiters have access to a lot of sensitive candidate/employee data. With data-privacy regulations like GDPR coming into effect, it becomes critical for recruiters to store this data responsibly. The current practice of uploading and storing data on a cloud server makes it susceptible to hacking and data-tampering. Blockchain enhances data security by breaking all data into tiny chunks and distributing it across an entire network of computers. Each computer will have a complete copy of the data, therefore, preventing data loss in case one or two computers in the network goes down. Moreover, due to its decentralized nature, blockchain is virtually impossible to hack. The data is encrypted and cross-checked by the whole network. Every legitimate transaction needs multiple confirmations from different users (nodes) on the network.
Benefits
There are numerous benefits in enabling recruitment through blockchain:
Biometric ID verification will ensure the validity of candidates.
Standardized resumes will ensure the quality of CV content over its layout.
QR Codes on each candidate profile will record and track their continual professional development and load it straight into their profiles.
It ensures validated content which means the superior quality of candidates at reduced costs.
There will be a reduced referencing requirement which implies that the recruitment process and onboarding will be quicker and cheaper.
It will be GDPR-compliant. Whilst information on the Blockchain cannot be deleted, the platform will be able to retract candidate data. And thus the ‘right to be forgotten’ is applied.
It will ensure security. As it is on the blockchain, the information is secure and it cannot be altered. There is no single point where the system can fail or be compromised.
Blockchain will decentralize recruitment and remove intermediaries which, in the recruitment process, is typically the recruitment vendor.
Blockchain Recruitment Examples
Knowing who to hire is one great challenge. And, knowing where and how to attract and hire top talent is an entirely different game. To help you determine where to spend your time and energy, we are going to discuss eleven recruitment strategies that you can learn from.
Let’s find out!
Airfox works together in and outside of the office: Airfox is an agile fintech startup with a growing number of employees. The team at Airfox is a close-knit group of people who enjoy spending time and collaborating together both in and outside the office. To provide candidates a little bit of insight into their unique culture, they share team bonding events like this on one of their Twitter accounts.
Circle builds a talent community: Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments and commerce worldwide. If you don’t already have a process for building a talent community, you’re really missing out. On Circle’s career page, they encourage candidates to share their name, e-mail, and area of interest so that when a role opens up that they would be interested in, that candidate will be the first to know.
DreamTeam helps candidates learn their history and mission: DreamTeam is the ultimate teambuilding and skill-growing platform that solves problems for hundreds of millions of gamers who want to find teammates, improve skills, manage teams, and earn money. The DreamTeam’s career page provides candidates with a wealth of information they need to better understand the business and determine early on if they have an interest in a career there. No matter where you click on their careers page, this video follows candidates from page to page to ensure they know the basics of what DreamTeam does before they start applying for a job.
FourKites shares the challenges and triumphs of tapping into a new, yet old, industry: FourKites covers all modes including ocean, rail, parcel, and over-the-road. The platform is optimized for mobile and equipped with market-leading end-to-end security. When you are a new technology, like blockchain, tapping into an old-school industry, there are a lot of unforeseen challenges that come with the process. FourKites is excited to share what it’s really like to work on their team, including both the challenging aspects and the new and exciting opportunities.
Gemini brags about their latest greatest hires: Gemini is a cryptocurrency exchange, where customers can buy, sell, and store digital assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Zcash in a regulated, secure, and compliant manner. When Gemini brought on the newest member of their client services team, they wrote a brief article on Medium. In the article, they connect the importance of building a world-class marketplace and client services team by hiring the right person. They continue to share their excitement in hiring this person with information about their background and expertise that landed them the job. At the end of the article, they call out the offices that are hiring and provide a clickable link for interested candidates to check out their current open roles.
ITExpertsIndya has a one-size-fits-all job application: ITExpertsIndya has been providing services like Custom web application development, offshore Software Development, E-commerce and CMS development, web design, and multimedia and (SEO) Internet marketing from the past 10 years. Instead of creating individual job descriptions for each of their open roles, ITExpertsIndya created this simple one-size-fits-all job application. Anyone who is interested in their company as an employer simply fills out their name, email, phone number, selects from seven different roles, and submits a resume. This is an interesting tactic that allows the company to determine if someone’s skills are right for the job, rather than candidates determining from a job description whether or not they are qualified for a job. This method may help people who are less likely to apply simply because they don’t meet 100% of the job application requirements.
<img width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.cryptonewspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Blockchain-in-Recruitment-Sector22-1024x576.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-21737 lazyload" />
Image: Digital HR Tech
Paxos prepares candidates for the hiring process: Paxos is modernizing finance by mobilizing assets and simplifying settlement. Paxos also owns and operates the first fully-regulated crypto asset exchange, itBit, which focuses on trading and custody of crypto assets for institutional investors. Applying for a new job can be quite intimidating. To help ease the nerves and prepare candidates for what to expect, Paxos lays out their entire hiring process step-by-step for anyone who lands on their careers page. This also helps decrease the number of questions recruiters receive about their hiring process.
PixelPlex repurposes job descriptions on social: PixelPlex is an award-winning custom software development company with a proven track record, a mix of broad technology expertise, innovative business culture, and over 100 talented developers. Founded in 2007, PixelPlex has designed and developed hundreds of successful projects for our clients all over the world. There are a number of different job boards online, but most wouldn’t think of Instagram as one of them. Pixelplex utilizes the platform to share each new open role with these cheeky photos of a Lego person, the job title and in the caption, they include the entire job description. While many social media platforms have a short character cap for posts, Instagram is unique in that it allows for longer-form written content, making it a great place to post a job description.
Spring Labs knows what candidates really care about: Spring Labs is redefining how data is exchanged for the new age of data sharing, security, and consumer privacy through decentralization. They allow institutions to share information directly among themselves to verify identities and reduce fraud – all while protecting consumer data. When Spring Labs closed their latest round of funding, they were sure to share it on LinkedIn. Not only that, but they mention how excited they are to expand their team — a hint-hint, nudge-nudge for candidates interested in the company as a future employer.
Think Future Technologies allows its employees to do the talking: Think Future Technologies (TFT) is a leading software development and testing company with their offices based in India, the US, and Israel. TFT values a group of innovative developers and tester who provide IT solutions for different kinds of organizations. In addition to their careers page, Think Future Technologies created a separate page called Employee Speak that shares testimonials and reasons why employees decided to grow their careers at the company. Considering employee testimonials are the second most important piece of content candidates look for, making a separate page dedicated to this information is a smart recruitment strategy.
Zayo recruits veterans: Zayo provides mission-critical bandwidth to the world’s most impactful companies, fueling the innovations that are transforming our society. Zayo’s 130,000-mile network in North America and Europe includes extensive metro connectivity to thousands of buildings and data centers. While all equal opportunity employers welcome Veterans to apply for open roles, Zayo sincerely calls them out on the company’s career page. They even have a page dedicated to Veterans, providing them with information on why they should apply to the company along with quotes from other Veterans who currently work there.
Blockchain Technology and the Hiring Process
More than a Financial Tool
A significant part of the hiring process is verifying the information that a candidate provides. Mostly, this is done by checking references and, maybe, educational credentials; blockchain may provide another option.
A resume verification system could have employers develop sophisticated employee profiles, essentially an HR ledger, which could verify performance, work history, and a host of other data that would be helpful in determining whether or not a candidate was a good fit for the company.
Such a system could cut out a significant portion of the time it takes to find, meet, and assess a candidate for an open position, which is a boon for a company’s bottom line.
Hunting Good Will
The weakness in the distributed resume lies in lower-level employees who don’t necessarily have a job history that may demonstrate their value to an organization. However, blockchain could be used to provide verifiable information on a candidate’s educational history and qualifications that would reduce the risk of fraud while eliminating the need for applicants to provide official transcripts.
Skill Search
Beyond the benefits to HR, blockchain is poised to transform the way business is done in a number of areas. Any area dedicated to transactional administration, for example, accounting, supply chain management, legal, could face significant disruption as the technology spreads.
Shifts would necessitate a massive change in the structure of a business, as well as its staffing requirements. Functions within a company that was dedicated to verification, administrative documentation and coordination of those functions, would be unnecessary. This would necessarily transform the structure of many businesses, which the HR function would naturally lead. Blockchain has the potential to reduce transactional costs not only in financial terms but in terms of productivity as well.
Companies using Blockchain to Transform Human Resources (HR)
Reward: Reward is a peer-to-peer platform designed to boost employee productivity and cooperation using the blockchain. Companies purchase reward tokens that are distributed to employees based on customizable milestones and incentive programs. Employees also reward each other, the idea being that this will increase collaboration and quality of work, rather than boost the competitive mentalities that emerge in traditional workplaces.
Truebase: Truebase is a digital community for those with jobs and seeking new opportunities. Their True protocol was designed for developers to build decentralized apps to help others discover new business opportunities. The Truebase team is focused on improving the referral process. By letting job posts from external platforms be posted and shared with reward parameters in place, they hope that lower-cost referrals will establish Truebase as a preferred site for recruiters and quality candidates alike.
Aura: Aura is a digital recruiting platform that united crypto talent, consultants, and companies. The interface includes several novel features including data analysis, AI, professional profiles known as Aura Crystals, and smart Aura Contracts for instantaneous payouts. In addition, Aura Coins enable more features for better search and hiring. With these options, Aura wants to create a recruiting ecosystem that will directly benefit the crypto space.
Eminently: Eminently is a blockchain-based referral platform designed for recruiters, businesspeople, and headhunters. The platform automatically compensates those who refer to candidates who successfully get the job. Those who make referrals will also receive a monthly commission as long as their candidate is still actively working. Eminently seeks to provide a higher quality referral network by imbuing it with financial incentives.
HireMatch: HireMatch is a decentralized employee recruitment platform that is working to establish itself as an industry mainstay by partnering with Recruiter.com. With their HIRE cryptocurrency underpinning the marketplace, HireMatch seeks to reduce the friction and costs associated with third-party intermediaries in the employee recruitment process.
<img width="1024" height="455" src="https://www.cryptonewspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Blockchain-in-Recruitment-Sector222-1024x455.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-21738 lazyload" />
Image: Prime Feed
Peoplewave: By bringing employees and managers closer together with their blockchain-enabled management platform, Peoplewave aims to provide a comprehensive solution to the problems that prevent smooth management. Peoplewave hopes to build a culture of developing employees instead of focusing on talent acquisition and compliance. Data-driven employee appraisal methods, employee-centered onboarding systems, and a transparent HR dashboard are a few central features of the platform.
Etch: Etch is all about making sure that employees are promptly paid when work is complete — no delays between finishing work and payday. Smart contracts track your work progress and payout incrementally as the work is being completed. This ensures that no finished work goes uncompensated. The funds can be withdrawn or spent using the Etch payroll card, with the entire process reducing administrative costs.
ChronoBank: ChronoBank is a blockchain-powered HR solution seeking to upend the way companies recruit, hire, and manage employees. Chronobank is also working to provide payment solutions to help bring full-service blockchain abilities to the HR industry.
PeaCounts: PeaCounts is a blockchain payroll solution aimed at automating the payroll management process. Using AI to verify productivity measures and work milestones, PeaCounts pays people with their PEA token using smart contract technology. PeaCounts has encouraged others to build services on top of its blockchain protocol.
NYNJA: NYNJA calls itself a “virtual operating system powering the future of work.” The company believes that its vOS platform will unite the world’s gig economy under one roof. With a network of dApps built into the vOS platform, NYNJA will securely facilitate hiring and management processes like onboarding and on-demand workforce oversight. Then communicating and collaborating with that workforce, and ultimately compensating them for their efforts.
YINC: YINC is short for “You’re IN Control,” and it enhances the way that contractors are sought out and hired. By making a store of verified data and information accessible to both contractors and employers, YINC hopes to provide trustworthy ratings and financial histories that will let both parties make informed hiring decisions. Their YINC utility token will tracks transactions, reviews, and interactions on the platform.
Talao: Talao is a blockchain-based platform specializing in the acquisition and retention of freelance talent. The platform lets freelance candidates fill out a certified resume, verifying their skills and credentials using the blockchain. Prospective employees can join specific talent pools and apply for “missions” — Talao’s term for gigs — all on one site. Offering a verified pool of talent and taking no commission for it, Talao endeavors to attract a high-quality base of freelance superstars, and a corresponding group of worthwhile employers.
The Bounties Network: The Bounties Network is an organization working to empower humans to incentivize and self-organize, from freelancing to grassroots social action and everything in between. It’s not a traditional approach to HR, but their smart contracts can organize tasks and contract work like research, content translation, and video production. The Bounties Network aims to help users create projects, collaborate, and get paid for doing great work of any kind.
ASPIRE: ASPIRE is a cloud-based employee recruitment program built on the blockchain. It provides services that include candidate sourcing, qualification assessment, background checks, onboarding, and training. Its algorithms are designed to ignore factors like gender and race in order to pair qualified candidates with ideal employers in a cheaper and more automatic way.
Zinc: A blockchain recruitment platform with its headquarters in London, Zinc provides authenticated, transparent proof of a person’s qualifications and career experience, helping employers disqualify frauds and exaggerators to make more informed hiring decisions. Zinc offers an interesting glimpse into the future of HR with simplified reference-sharing, anonymous hiring, and built-in aptitude and attitude reports.
StartMonday: StartMonday is an applicant tracking platform tailored specifically to the retail and hospitality industries. Candidates using StartMonday are invited to apply with a 15-second video and a resume. The platform also provides a framework for organizing and tracking candidates in a way that is creative, visually appealing, and easy to share amongst hiring managers. Because it’s all built on the blockchain, StartMonday is also secure and anonymous.
TrustLogics: TrustLogics’ goal is to root out the usual suspects that increase the cost of hiring: phony resumes, incomplete information, not enough verifiable data, and so on. They’re using the blockchain to do it, which brings transparency to the employee recruiting processes. Job-seekers can get their credentials verified, and employers will know they are drawing from a legitimate candidate base for better matches in the hiring process.
BHIRED: BHIRED is a recruiting platform that professes to take advantage of the benefits that blockchain technology affords; namely, transparency, trust, and accountability. Its hiring and recruiting platform help users to be more aware of who is accessing their data, and to sell their employment-related information to interested parties.
Indorse: Indorse leverages the blockchain to solve two persistent problems in HR: the lack of trust in skill verification, and users giving up their data for little or nothing in return. They solve the first problem by employing decentralized consensus, in which anonymous users judge objective examples of a user’s skill (AI methods are also used). To solve the second issue, Indorse rewards users with IND tokens for interacting with the platform and sharing their information. They get something of value for interacting with advertisers and other users.
Caerus Connections: Caerus Connections is a blockchain hiring platform designed to increase the veracity of employment history and help employees display their passions more effectively. Applicants list their motivations in a way that the platform makes searchable. Because everything happens on the blockchain, there’s more data integrity confidentiality, which is central to the hiring process.
Appii: Appii is putting employee background checks and resume verification on a secure blockchain. Their goal is to help speed up the background check process tagging the blockchain’s distributed ledger capabilities to make sure that employees have accomplished what they claim to.
Conclusion
Most blockchain applications for recruitment are still in the theoretical stage, however, it’s potential cannot be ignored. Blockchain is certainly more than just Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, and it will a central role in the hiring process to help organizations get the talent they are looking for.
Thus, blockchain is bound to transform the recruitment with added advantages of efficiency, quality and low costs.
Cover Image: Change Recruitment Group
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