Simplifying the Hiring Process with Dock
Let’s face it: job hunting and hiring can be very stressful. For employers, the stakes are high - in addition to entrusting their business to the hands of the employees, they will be investing a significant amount of time and resources in recruiting and training their new hires, so it is essential that they thoroughly vet the candidates’ qualifications and bring the right people into the team. For job seekers, landing that dream role is an important step for their careers and livelihoods. And to be able to take this step, they need to survive what can sometimes be a long and daunting interview process and prove themselves to be qualified for the role.
Unfortunately, the hiring process is fraught with challenges that only add to the pressure. On top of many hours of interviews, employers face the time-consuming work of checking the candidates’ education, work history, test scores, and professional certifications. The verification process of these credentials tend to be quite manual, often requiring paper copies of certificates to be collected, calls to be made to issuing institutions, and inspections to be performed manually. This can be a slow, expensive, and frustrating ordeal for both employers and candidates, and in today’s fast-paced labor market, this can cause the candidates to drop out of the hiring process in favor of other employers. In addition, there’s no guarantee that the manual checks could properly detect forged credentials, or verify that the tests were indeed taken by the candidates, rather than imposters paid to sit the exam on their behalf.
Streamlining the process
The Dock Network streamlines the hiring process by providing credentials that are cryptographically verifiable. Compliant with industry-leading W3C standards, it allows universities, employers, and certification-issuing organizations to possess decentralized identities (DIDs) on the blockchain, and issue and revoke credentials that reflect the candidates’ skills and experiences. These credentials can be easily, quickly, and accurately verified without arduous and inaccurate manual steps, and are tamper-resistant as a result of a public blockchain combined with decentralized public-key infrastructure. Job candidates can use the credentials to create digital resumes that can be shared and verified readily, and they can control what personal information gets shared. In addition, Dock’s demonstrated interoperability allows its use alongside other W3C-compliant networks, blockchains, and wallets.
For example, a candidate can request digital diplomas, proof of employment, and professional certificates from universities, former and current employers, and certification-issuing organizations, who can in response issue these credentials in the form of verifiable credentials (VC). When the candidate applies for a job, the hiring manager can request from the candidate a verifiable presentation (VP) which is signed by the issuer. As the issuer’s public key can be cryptographically verified against their DID, and the issuer’s signature cannot be forged without access to the issuer’s public and private keys, the VP demonstrates to the hiring manager in a fast, reliable way that the candidate’s credentials are valid.
Dock’s VC and VP can help prevent cheating in academic and professional exams as well. A VC confirming the test taker’s identity can be issued by a school, professional institution, or a government, and embedded in a hard-copy ID. On the day of the exam, the exam proctors can use the ID and the associated VC to verify with confidence that the person taking the exam is indeed the person registered for it, as the VC makes the ID difficult to forge.
In both of the above scenarios, the recipients of the credentials decide which pieces of their personal information is included in the VP, hence ensuring that only the necessary data is shared with others. And they can easily store and share their credentials using any W3C-compliant digital wallets.
Dock’s technology can help simplify the hiring process for both job seekers and employers, by enabling instant and reliable verification of candidates’ skills and experiences. The end results are huge savings in administrative costs, increased trust in the talent pool, and a quick turnaround that gives an employer a competitive edge in the labor market.
