The recruitment market model is broken, slowed down by intermediaries and recruiters who in many cases are not adding much value. It is time-consuming and costly for organizations to identify and hire short-term talent. Is it a market ready for disruption?

Cointelegraph caught up with Sergei Sergienko, CEO at ChronoBank, who is launching a next generation labor exchange platform (LaborX) built on Ethereum using smart contracts.

CT: So how will it work?

Sergei Sergienko: We are seeking to disrupt the short-term labour-hire sector, creating an exchange on which buyers and sellers can trade skills for time and money.

The recruitment industry is broken, with intermediaries charging high fees to introduce suitable employees to businesses seeking to fill vacancies. Whilst this is generally accepted as the price of doing business for long-term appointments, it can be prohibitively expensive for contract or freelance work.

Organizations can spend more time and money securing an employee than they do on the work itself.

The LaborX exchange is built on Ethereum’s smart contracts platform, enabling workers and businesses to connect on a peer-to-peer basis. ChronoBank is a Blockchain initiative backed by Australian labor hire company Edway. We are seeking to revolutionize the short-term recruitment sector by creating decentralized mechanisms for employers to access and rank prospective employees.

By using LaborX, organizations can buy labor and acquire the skills they need directly – in much the same way that Uber connects drivers with those looking for a taxi, or the way Upwork works to allows freelancers to access work directly.

LaborX will include a decentralized reputation system that will enable workers to be rewarded in line with their talent and experience, instead of on a one-size-fits-all basis.

CT: How are things progressing towards launch?

SS: The LaborX exchange platform is built on Ethereum’s ground-breaking smart contracts capabilities. Although ChronoBank’s crowdfunding is still under way, a significant proportion of the critical development work has already been completed.

The rewards contract, which handles automatic payment of dividends for token-holders, has been created, as has the exchange contract that will allow trading between different token types on LaborX.

The ChronoWallet allows users to view offered rates and make trades quickly and easily. It is also possible to view amounts of Labour Hour (LH) tokens to be transferred in fiat equivalents and to switch between different currencies.

It looks like ChronoBank crowdfunding is going well. We have already raised large amounts of Bitcoins (around 1,200 Bitcoins), and quantities of other cryptocurrencies (LTC, ETH, ETC, WAVES and NEM).

The project has also received $1.1 mln in venture capital funding from AXL Strategic Partners and has the backing of Edway, a major labor-hire organization based in Australia.