As a partner at the human resources consultancy CareerXroads (CXR), Chris Hoyt works with some of the world’s best-known brands on their recruiting strategies. CXR’s roster of clients includes 110 Fortune 500 companies. Over the past year, Hoyt has been receiving an increasing number of inquiries about blockchain’s potential role in verifying resume information and streamlining the recruiting process. Hoyt also has been intrigued by its possible benefits to a process that is subject to inaccuracies and inefficiency.

“Thinking as an employer, knowing that it would be a great way to get validated background information or credentials or certifications that I could trust seemed like an interesting idea,” Hoyt tells ThirtyK.

Verification of Education, Work Credentials

ThirtyK: How did you become interested in blockchain?

Hoyt: Maybe five years ago, I had an interesting conversation about the financial sector at a South by Southwest Conference. The more I learned about [distributed] ledger systems, the more it seemed they could be applied to other things, certainly to HR and recruiting.

ThirtyK: What aspect of recruiting could blockchain particularly benefit?

Hoyt: Background checks or credentials for students and for professionals. Thinking as an employer, knowing that it would be a great way to get validated background information or credentials or certifications that I could trust seemed like an interesting idea.

“If you have a resume an employer or business partner could trust, it would be something they could rely on,” says Hoyt.

ThirtyK: How important is the verifying credentials of candidates?

Hoyt: If you were a vendor and went into the education centers or career centers inside colleges and made available to students the ability to carry their diploma, all their scholastic records and history on a drive or device, or give them a bar code that they could easily give to any employer when they ask for it, this makes, in theory, an application process cleaner and smoother. So at any time allowing students as they continue through their career to add elements that are validated to that ledger would in theory be a 100 percent, nonexaggerated resume.

ThirtyK: Does the candidate or the employer stand the most to gain?

Hoyt: Both. I could see blockchain incentivizing students in that they would never have to order their transcripts again. Students who are graduating don’t mind tapping into technology. If you have a resume an employer or business partner could trust, it would be something they could rely on.

ThirtyK: How often do candidates forge their resumes and information? Is this a problem employers face?

Hoyt: It is not uncommon you have an extra year here, an extra set of skills that are exaggerated or that have been mistakenly added to a resume or a profile.

Eliminating the Background Checkers

ThirtyK: Do you think that blockchain could mean the demise of how companies now hold onto candidate resumes and other profile information?