Charles H. Miller
Another day, another new use for blockchain. This time, we have a company trying to use the technology to change the labor market by putting CVs to a shared ledger.
APPII is that company, having launched what it calls the “world’s first blockchain career verification platform,” leveraging blockchain’s function as a “trustless” system to give employers confidence that the candidate sitting in front of him is who he or she claims to be.
The origin
Like many other industry professionals, APPII’s Gary McKay first came across blockchain while working in the financial services sector, only to realize just how powerful this technology is. And how it could change many industries.
“I thought — hold on a second — this can be applied to any broker industry where trust is required to exchange value between two parties — so that could be real estate, or recruitment,” McKay told Forbes. “In the case of recruitment, it’s the exchange of a candidate between one party that sources the candidate, and an employer.”
And so the APPII was born…
How it works?
APPII’s platform enables candidates to create what the company calls “Intelligent Profiles,” featuring details of professional achievement and educational certification on the distributed ledger, where it can be verified and then permanently recorded. In a way, it is like a distributed LinkedIn profile, which can be verified by businesses and educational institutions mentioned on the resume. The key thing is that once some record is verified, there is no need to re-verify it again.
In addition, the platform uses facial recognition technology to verify the identity of candidates; it asks them to take a photo using the mobile app and compares it to a photograph on official identification documents such as passports.
According to McKay, this is very important in high-risk industries such as financial services. “If you’re providing your money to someone to invest, you don’t want that person to have got their job by falsifying their CV,” he said. “It’s the same if you go to see a doctor or nurse.”
Time benefits
At the moment, vetting and verifying identity and CV details takes an average of four to six weeks in the public sector and financial services, and with APPII that process is streamlined and all redundancies are removed.
In that sense, the service has clear uses in today’s increasingly globalized employment market, where candidates can search online for opportunities from a different country. This is especially true in IT, where freelancers can work for clients on a different continent.
So it’s unsurprising that APPII has started with the tech sector, making its system live to users of the Technojobs service.
Benefits for employees, too
It’s not just employers who get to benefit from blockchain-based resumes; the system gives assurance that (good) candidates’ applications will be judged on their merits rather than the style or format of their CV.
“It makes candidates far more employable because they can use the blockchain to verify their career history, and have it trusted, and it benefits employers by diminishing time and cost to find talent,” McKay says.
Cryptocurrency coming next year
What’s a blockchain without its own cryptocurrency, right? Well, APPII is looking to add one next year in a move that would reward both employers and candidates for participating in the service. Tokens will be issued to organizations which verify assertions, and to candidates who submit their CVs for verification. Once earned — or bought — these tokens will be exchangeable for courses and education. Which is another similarity with LinkedIn — it too is offering courses.
We can’t but keep comparing APPII with LinkedIn. We have heard stories that a blockchain-based service could eventually replace Facebook. But before (or if) that happens, perhaps we get a service that will take on LinkedIn. That’s where verified data is more important, after all. And with cryptocurrency added as an incentive for all parties included, perhaps APPII manages to emerge as a leading social network for business. Sounds like a plan.
