Blockchain in the Gig Economy: Interesting Ways Blockchain Technology will disrupt the Hiring Process Ispolink Follow Apr 24 · 4 min read

Cutting-edge technologies are revolutionizing the labor market as we speak. And this is a good thing since the gig economy requires recruiters to source talents faster and more effectively than ever. Machine learning, AI, and big data are already influencing the job market.

Blockchain technology offers incomparable benefits regarding trust and speed. In this article, we are going to discuss the challenges facing the job market and how blockchain will solve them.

Challenges facing the job market

Talent supply issues

A closer look at the recruitment and hiring process reveals blurred visibility of information about job seekers and ineffective job matching.

Cost of labor

In the current labor industry, employers end up paying 15–30% of contract expenses to recruitment agencies. Needless to say, this is costing companies a lot of money.

On the other part, contractors, vendors, and freelancers sometimes have to wait for extended periods before receiving their payments. The issue of delayed payments not only frustrates these parties but also affects the visibility of the business. For instance, in the UK, more than 20% of SMEs are on the verge of being labeled bankrupt due to late payments.

Candidate fraud

Currently, the labor market is experiencing low trust in identity and candidate qualifications, as almost 50% of job seekers lie about their academic skills and experience; a percentage varies from one industry to another. Recruiters say that nowadays, a term like “Studied at Harvard,” means “Studied Harvard Business Review.”

The hiring process also faces selection bias and rapidly changing talent pools.

Data

The labor market is also experiencing a problem with centralized data and social media. Definitely, the internet has brought tangible changes to recruitment and work; think of the job boards like UpWork, CareerBuilder, and Indeed that has made job search more productive, and the chance to poach from social media sites like LinkedIn. However, digitalization still needs to offer much to the labor market regarding the visibility of work. Perhaps, the biggest challenge here in centralized data; hence, a decentralized system is the solution.

Recent social media data breaches, like the Facebook attack that exposed personal data of over 50 million users in 2018, have made people more cautious with their information.

How Blockchain technology can solve these problems

Photo by Launchpresso on Unsplash

You have probably heard of the numerous benefits of blockchain technology. One of the primary advantages of blockchain in business processes is the level of trust it provides.

Trust in the hiring process is a two-way factor.

As mentioned earlier, there is evidence of high profile candidates who lie about their qualifications and skills. A recent study by CareerBuilder shows that three out of four recruiters report that they have encountered lies in resumes. Therefore, it is evident that recruiters and companies could benefit from a secure and trusted verification model that would assist with:

· Academic verification

· Skillset verification

· Automated reference checks.

As the shift towards the gig economy scales up, verifying candidates’ skills is becoming even more challenging. Therefore, blockchain technology could help to automate and bring more trust to the future recruitment sector. Surprisingly, not only job seekers have been found cheating in the career industry. Greedy has lured some hiring agencies to twist the truth to win contracts.

Essentially, a blockchain system will put job seekers in control of their data. The decentralized ledger would then secure that data from the distortion we see when some agencies attempt to oversell talents.

Besides, blockchain will also help speed up the hiring process.

A blockchain-based CV verification system, supporting recruiters to validate skills, academic qualifications, and experience, would eliminate the issue of hard skills from the job market quickly. HR managers will have more time to concentrate on evaluating soft skills, which matters a lot in the era of digital transformation. Assessing a candidate’s match with the company and culture, ambitions, motivation, and flexibility to change is sometimes more important than hard skills.

The gig economy is also known for more administration. A trusted blockchain model will help minimize administrative expenses and time spent in confirming qualifications by automatically generating:

· Contract proposals

· Smart contracts linked to timesheets to automate payments

A practical use case of blockchain in recruitment - the Ispolink Platform

To solve the underpinning issues in the labor market, Ispolink has come up with a cutting-edge automated matchmaking job board that embraces blockchain and AI. We strongly believe that the best transformational method to source top talents is to combine cutting-edge technologies in our core product.

Ispolink is the first full cycle job board that incorporates an inbuilt blockchain payment system into its main platform to offer robust, immutable, and trustless method for users to exchange value and pay for services. We strongly believe that providing a blockchain-based and user-friendly platform is essential and will differentiate us from our competitors.

The Ispolink blockchain system will be based on the Ethereum decentralized network, powered by a native ERC20 token, Ispolink (ISP). In addition to the payment system, we are proposing a referral-based reward system designed to attract skilled job seekers and share success with our users by rewarding them with a commission for all successful referrals. Interested to learn more about our project? Visit our website now.

Get in touch with us:

Website: https://ispolink.com/

Whitepaper: https://ispolink.com/Ispolink_Whitepaper_v1.pdf

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ispolink

Email: contact@ispolink.com