Daniel Dunne, co-founder of the Leinster, Ireland-based HireVibes, talks to Block.one about his company’s vision for an ethical, decentralized recruitment platform

How do you describe your DAPP?

Daniel Dunne: HireVibes is an open-source jobs DAPP that will enable people to get hired, earn more and give back. Today, centralized recruitment agencies earn over US$450 billion annually in global revenues. Their main functions are to source suitable candidates for job openings, and to act as payroll contractors. Using smart contracts, HireVibes can easily automate the payroll process. However, to source suitable candidates, HireVibes will incentivize the public crowd to apply directly to, or refer others to, job openings, by offering a 5% reward in HireVibes tokens, based on the salary or rate of the job in question. That will include a fixed 1% for every successful candidate to donate to qualified charities and environmental initiatives of their choice.

Where did your initial idea come from?

Daniel Dunne: Having worked as a Technical Recruiter with global talent agencies in Asia-Pacific and Europe, before moving to in-house roles with companies like Amazon Web Services, I’ve experienced many of the common challenges of sourcing and hiring engineers using traditional job boards and centralized agencies. Very early on I became aware of the high fees agencies charge to employers, and I always felt a portion of this fee could, and probably should, go back to the worker putting in the shift. I later began exploring ways humanity could divert a portion of its collective energy and channel it to people and environmental projects that need it. With HireVibes, the two ideas merged.

Can you introduce your team?

Daniel Dunne: The idea for HireVibes would have stayed an idea if I hadn’t caught up with Daniel Beere, a creative Product Designer, after he returned home to Ireland following a stint with a startup in Silicon Valley. When we met in a cafe, he started sketching out, on a napkin, a website and mock-ups of what the HireVibes DAPP could look like. Daniel had contributed design to the Polka Dot blockchain before so he wasn’t new to the space. Basit Raza, one of our lead developers, has extensive blockchain experience; Elliot, Yumna. Milos and Liam make up the rest of our current tech team, while Luke, Gary, Mehtap and I focus on everything else. We’re also currently hiring!

Daniel Dunne and Daniel Beere — Co-founders of HireVibes

What stage is the project at?

Daniel Dunne: Right now, we’re making progress on developing the frontend and backend of the DAPP. We’ve iterated through a lengthy design process over the last year or so by speaking and working with HireVibes end users — jobseekers, referrers and hiring managers. There are a number of companies already eagerly waiting for HireVibes to launch. Our White Paper can be found on GitHub.

Why did you decide to build on Blockchain, and specifically on EOSIO?

Daniel Dunne: As a community-based and purpose-driven alternative to centralized profit-driven agencies, the HireVibes concept is only really viable if it’s decentralized and built using blockchain technology. When it came to deciding where to build the application and the decentralized autonomous community that will govern it, we felt EOS was the one blockchain platform that could handle the weight of the HireVibes DAPP in the case of mass adoption. The speed, the reliability and the free transactions, along with the ability to arbitrate which EOS can offer, positioned it as the best option for our needs.

How has the EOS community been supportive?

Daniel Dunne: It’s been very supportive. It’s quite amazing to consider how global it is already, to be honest. Every second day we get messages and offers of support from enthusiastic EOS community members, EOS Block Producers and even other DAPP teams that are building on EOS that want to share their knowledge and help others. Among the highlights was being invited to present HireVibes at the Global EOS Developers conference in Beijing recently. It was a memorable event and we hope we inspired developers and entrepreneurs to create more DAPPs that have ethical and inclusive business models at their core.