Can Web3 contribute to the Candidate Experience?
In this article I will take a closer look at Web3, what recruitment and HR could learn and which solutions (including from Belgian soil) already have been inspired by this phenomenon.
There is no need in starting to write that the employer brand is also of great importance in attracting and convincing talent, that part has already been proven. The fact that it goes further than just a frivolous or smooth, contemporary “front end”, based on an internal HR process, can only be emphasized.
The rising popularity of professional social networks like Fishbowlapp during Covid19, where people exchange experiences about employers and clients, therefore give an extra (internal) dimension to the Employer Brand.
Transparency becomes important for talent and thus for the employer brand. For example, in Belgium there is a platform called WiSEpeople where candidates can rate their Candidate Experience and companies can get their Candidate Experience rated.
In addition to optimizing that employer brand from the inside out, companies are always searching for new inspiration and looking at what appears further on the horizon: Web3.
What is Web3?
Web3 is more than the collective name of new technologies such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, virtual reality, the Metaverse, games, content platforms, artificial intelligence, etc.
Also the dynamics, the reason for existence and certainly the organizational structure defines Web3.
Without getting further into complex web3 learning, I've been taking a closer look at this world over the past few months and will present to you my greatly abridged version or simple interpretation. You better grab your web3-buzz-word-bingo card:
Someone or something named “Satoshi” came up with the idea of making a technology that could verify and send value decentralized over the internet without involving a central player (bank) anywhere: blockchain. The world of Decentralised Finance (DeFi) originated in 2009 (Launch Bitcoin).
This DeFi-movement grew organically and over the years various blockchains emerged, with valuable data (smart contracts) and thus also several (hundreds) tokens. These tokens (cryptocurrencies) are used when rewarding contributions by a community or managing a decentralized (or distributed) autonomous organization (DAO).
i.e. an underground world economy with all kinds of tokens was steadily emerging, by and for "creators", as a counter-movement to the existing world economy led by the Big Tech.
Digital contributors, initially developers and designers, were rewarded for their work in cryptocurrency, giving birth to the “creator-economy”. In this economy ownership of creations or data and digital identity are key.
The concept of digital contributions or creations can be taken more broadly than just a piece of code. It is about content, its ownership, its use and the compensation for it. What content and what value; that is being explored with NFTs and various (d)Apps. With various excesses in the art-industry. I wonder what Andy Warhole would think of NFTs, considering the worldwide use of his “Canned Campbell's tomato soup”-art.
NFTs and dApps seem not so well known. However, in Belgium Venly.io (NFT marketplace) and Settlemint (low-code blockchain) obtained several millions in funding; it generally remains a fairly unexplored area for most people.
Without going too deep into the technical details, the essence of a non-fungible token (NFT) is to bind ownership to certain digital data. An NFT itself is therefore a digital product to which certain data is linked to an owner, who can monetize the product or the data. Decentralized applications (dApps) add this and other functionality to it.
The metaverse then again is a phenomenon originating from Virtual Reality, an industry that responds to all this happening (or not) and is therefore part of Web3 (or not).
The gaming industry is also surfing on the Web3 dynamic. Both can be decentralized applications, but not by definition. Even the social network-industry has its decentralized opponents on what is called the Fediverse.
The same commitment actually applies to AI. Artificial intelligence is also considered to be part of Web3, as a dApp, a marketplace of data, and/or to move within and/or across the various technological ecosystems, including blockchains and DAO communities - but not necessarily. AI can do much without being a part of Web3, it is just hard to imagine a Web3-world without it.
Ecosystems and communities are the framework of the Web3-evolution, which arose bottom-up. Talent gathered around a certain mission and through participation or contributions, it helps shape the end result - where ownership is recognized and rewarded in a peer-to-peer-environment. Major brands are responding to this as we speak, creating a social ID and persona to blend in, often from a sales and marketing point of view.
Connecting the dots
It is highly probable that you will come into contact with Web3 more and more in the years to come. The shape will depend on the adoption rate of the different aspects, but just like in HR TECH, investments often drive that adoption rate.
By comparison, there was nearly $20 billion invested in Work Technology in 2022 worldwide, while at the time of writing, there is about $440 billion worth of Bitcoin circulating within the entire crypto market, which holds just over $1 trillion in value.
For recruiting and HR, that rising adoption rate becomes twofold; on the one hand an additional niche and market demand will create more business-opportunities, on the other hand more competition for the same profiles endangers revenue over time. These wanted Web3-profiles work almost self-evidently remote and/or spread all over the world, because as stated earlier: working remotely is a thing in Web3. Just as autonomy is important in Web3, but that depends on the type of organization culture one is recruiting for.
Gaming and Virtual Reality bring more than one metaverse of opportunities for marketing or brands, but also for recruitment and HR. It reaches the younger generation where it is present: online (GenZ spends a lot of hours there).
Moreover, if safety training can be done in VR, why shouldn't a pilot project or candidate onboarding be possible in VR? A candidate that visits a VR job fair through his Readyplayer.me avatar, on a separate platform or in an existing game like Roblox, from his/her own comfort zone (or gaming chair), it is not that hard to imagine.
Through exclusive NFTs for instance marketing, but also recruitment-marketing, could create a nice collection-campaign or can set up and/or reward contributors to the campaign in a gamified or creative way. Big brands even deliver new custom-made products as an NFT; among others Nike already did it and more recently SKODA also launched their SkodaVerse using NFTs.
Also the recent hype around ChatGPT, as an exploit of generative AI, does one question the limitless capabilities of artificial intelligence. Many recruiters already look forward to publishing the automatically text-filled vacancies, but forget it also generates automatically text-filled CVs and motivational letters. Still, there are plenty of applications for AI out there that directly serve recruitment and HR. The question of using it unsupervised and developing it to its full potential is merely ethical. (Also read: "Is generative AI in recruitment a must have?")
In this decentralized world of autonomous communities (DAOs) people seem to deal with work and recruitment creatively, transparently and above all purposefully. It's a bit like self-steering teams or Holacracy.
For example, people communicate quite openly and often use incentives, among other things; from sponsored hackathons, bounties for certain assignments or rewards for good ideas. Possible creative initiatives from which recruitment and HR can learn a thing or two for the Employer Brand if you’d ask me.
Many of these communities are somewhat similar to what we know as Freelance Talent communities, who nurture freelancers and assignments - with the (method of) remuneration of the work as a differentiator.
The rising popularity of these talent communities could even explain the growth of (local) Freelance platforms and social-professional media, despite the strength of market leaders like Fiverr, Upwork and Toptal.
Web3 dynamics “for work” in practice
Unbox.work is a Belgian dApp that started from a solution for alternative remuneration of employees. Today, it has evolved into a platform that “reprograms behavior and redefines finance distribution within closed-loop networks,” going beyond HR.
PlayItSafe has been making gamified 3D-safety trainings for years,The Hazard Factory does the same with Virtual Reality safety training,The Park Playground recently opened up to team buildings in their VR-gaming studios and Bouwgroep Willems nv has been working with a VR project from Yondr at job fairs since 2015.
Unique, a Dutch Staffing agency, launched its Uniqueverse this january.
“Why wouldn't an inbox exercise or skills assessment be possible then?”. SHL probably had the same idea when they invested $30M in their own metaverse lab in 2022.
It is also exciting to look forward to the further developments of play-to-earn platforms that represent real value, such as Winkyverse or the Belgian PamogiDAO
We are of course also talking about our digital identity here and the connection with recruitment and CVs is easily made. Global dApps as BrainTrust, MetaIntro or Job Protocol focus on shaping the CV as a digital key. For example, by using their CV-wallet, references are checked immediately and jobs are filled in faster - but the talent remains the owner of their data and in some cases gets rewarded for the verifications.
At Talent Protocol one can litteraly invest in the development of a person to obtain a ROI later on. A perspective on learning that seems interesting to always train talent, internally and externally - regardless of retention.
At Rabithole.gg, Buildspace, OdysseyDAO, Questbook anybody can start earning by learning Web3-skills.
There even is a decentralized payroll solution for Web3:WorkDAO.
Other work-related DAOs:Gitcoin, Dework, DeveloperDAO
On the HRTECH-market in Belgium and the Netherlands Magnet.me and Karamel.one found inspiration with the Web3 idea by matching the talent with candidate employers, and not the other way around. The talent is at the steering wheel here, just like with Web3.
Also Jobfunders is a platform that seems to have sought and found its inspiration in rewarding the community as they do in the Web3-world. It turned that inspiration into a recruiting platform that gives anyone the chance to become a recruiter by rewarding successful recruits in cash.
As for Freelance platforms, is Malt conquering Europe from homebase France, where in Belgium and the Netherlands start-and scale-ups Fringe, GigHouse, Jellow, Beelance, Linkus, e.a. are trying to gain ground.
In addition to the traditional RPA (robotic process automation), we mainly find AI for recruitment with a focus on skills. In the Benelux, e.g.Traicie.com, TechWolf.ai, TheMatchBox.eat, Actonomy.com, Radix.ai, RecruitRobin.com, Neurolytics.ai, Understandling.com and others.
When it comes to conversational AI for recruiting, Joboti.com, Scotty Technologies, futy.io, Happyrecruiter.com and others are also present in our market. Also for HR-compliance a customized AI-chatbot can be programmed.
Conclusion
Web3 is very broad and may bring less control for recruitment (however…), but more possibilities. It is certainly a world to watch, to learn from and to remember the good examples from.
Can Web3 contribute to the Candidate Experience? Well, it probably can. It all depends on the adoption rate, how much one bets on it and how (transparent) it is included as part of the value proposition for candidate employees.
It remains important that an organization displays the full Employer Brand to the outside world, and turns its own weaknesses into strengths. Web3 or not.
One thing is pretty certain. We have exciting times ahead.