Impressed by LinkedIn? See What A Blockchain Upgrade Can Do

After failing the technology sector for so long, the recruitment market is about to be reinvented

Fresh out of ICO and running a multi-million dollar blockchain firm. You can’t seem to find qualified employees. The recruitment market has long been failing the technology sector in general.

Let’s understand the problem.

Job references were formerly a useful tool for evaluation quickly and cost-effectively the suitability of a candidate for a job before the interview.

But due to widespread abuse and misuse by recruiters and agencies, references have lost their value — in the eyes of employers, professionals and recruiters alike.

Increasing competition in the recruitment industry drew recruiters to tactics like

Online spam

Misusing work identities

Abusing personal data

Intrusively phishing for leads

Rather than skilfully matching professionals and employers, as expected, recruiters these days abuse information to pitch business.

For example, a recruiter says that they need to collect employment data from a professional to match them a job, but then uses the contact information to call up the former employers and ask if they are looking for new staff or a new job themselves.

As a result, professionals are disinclined to share any personal data, leaving a huge information gap.

In 2010, 75% of employers would reference workers for technical jobs, but today only 25% of employers take references.

To confound the issue, employers also have little incentive to provide references for former employees.

“Did the service give me any motivation to offer helpful answers? Why would I say anything negative — and risk being sued?” Jay Goltz in New York Times — The Quagmire of Checking References

And so, although pre-screening is expected by companies seeking to fill a job position, it either never takes place or, if the recruiter does obtain a reference, it’s often near useless. Companies must then unnecessarily go through a dragging and costly interview process with many unsuited candidates.

The recruitment process has therefore lost valuable tools and data assets to guarantee the best candidates for companies from the get go.

What about LinkedIn?

The reliability of information on community driven employment platforms without a built-in trust mechanism depend on the integrity of the person creating the profile. As is clear from the state of the industry, this is a major vulnerability.

It’s worse, if a scammer obtains access to an employee’s account. They could potentially gain access to sensitive corporate information and compromise thousands of professionals, as was the case with the breach of a Department of Justice email account that resulted in a data dump of more than 9000 people’s personal information.

Rather than invigorating, the advent of the Internet has run the $400 billion recruitment industry into a standstill.

The top 10% of technical professionals have given up with LinkedIn and other online hiring platforms.

Loss of confidence in references, recruitment services and social platforms have resulted in a lack of verifiable data on which to base important hiring decisions.

The industry has reached a stalemate.