With companies relying on resumes, ATS platforms, and social media, a fundamental shift needs to happen when it comes to hiring. These current solutions are based on someone’s skill to market themselves rather than being able to prove their skills and experiences.

Firstly some context. Leonardo da Vinci is credited with the first resume in 1482 in a letter he wrote to a potential employer. The letter contained what skills Leonardo possessed, his design ability, and his plans for the role. It also includes a pitch on why he is the best fit for the position.

While the format may have changed ever so slightly, we still use a very similar system to apply for jobs today, nearly 450 years later. The advent of social media, applicant tracking systems, video cover letters, and many other gimmicks has not fundamentally shifted how people hire. It is still wrought with bias, still leads to bad hiring, and leads to companies wasting time and money.

All current systems have an inherent issue. That being that the resume/application form/social profile is self-written by the applicant. As a result, they are incentivized to exaggerate, in some cases lie, and in many cases lack any context of the person’s role in a project.

Let’s take, for example, a junior front-end developer. A role we hired for recently at Pyme. We received over forty applications for the position. Many had the same courses they had taken, the same sample projects they had built, and the same educational background of studying computer science at university.

Some had a photo, some had their age, some used numbers rather than bullet points, and some even, heaven forbid, went to three pages. Yet none of this has anything to do with whether they can do the job we need them to do. It’s not their fault in any way; let me be clear about that. It’s a system that has traveled the globe and become the norm in hiring.

When I am hiring, I want to know if this person can improve us, if they can offer solutions to the problems we have, and see if they can think independently. And, for what it’s worth if they will fit our culture. Current systems fail to even begin to answer these questions. The hiring process has evolved into a convoluted mess of resumes, application forms, videos, cover photos, multi-stage interviews, case studies, reference checks, panel interviews, etc.

Making a wrong hiring decision will hugely impact a company, and more than most, I understand the pain of hiring the wrong person, yet I’m not so sure that more steps added to the process are needed. Instead, I think it’s time to start again, look at finding optimal solutions to the questions that truly matter, and then go build those.

We believe that web3 offers a far superior, fairer, and more efficient solution. Here at Pyme, we are working hard to build an end-to-end platform that will allow any worker globally to prove their skills, demonstrate their experiences, and connect with roles looking for precisely what they can offer.

So let’s deep dive into why the world needs Pyme, what’s broken right now and how we plan to fix hiring.

Current hiring methods have bias inherently built-in. This disproportionately affects women, people of color, non-binary and queer people. By moving to a system driven by proven skills and experience, we can make hiring more democratic and fair.

It’s in the very nature of a hiring manager to review an application through the lens of their past experiences. Each hiring manager I have ever worked with or for has built a worldview and a model for the ‘type’ of person they are looking for. Unfortunately, ATS systems are built to filter out, track and ‘manage’ the hiring process; yet again, they need to be programmed with conditions, filters, and the user’s bias.

Moving to a hiring model built on proven skills and experience will remove bias. Perhaps not entirely, and I fully believe and see a continual need for a cultural fit, yet this is already evolving as we move to remote work and a decentralized workforce.

Bad hiring costs companies money, time, and hope. A bad hire can kill a small business. It can slow a start-up down and make businesses scared to hire. Unfortunately, 74% of hiring managers in the US admit to making a bad hire. At an average cost of $15,000 cost to a company per bad hire, we are not talking about a minor issue.

For workers, being hired for the wrong role sucks. Maybe you have been there, and you get a job description that ends up being nothing like the actual job you’re being asked to do 4 minutes into your new career. Then, you realize you don’t have the skills, the job isn’t what was promised, or the tasks are not what you wanted to be working on for your growth plans.

Pyme can assure hiring managers that a worker is qualified to do the job. For example, seeing at a granular level what projects the worker has completed and the skills or education they acquired. For workers, they can find projects they love with the confidence they are being hired for the unique set of skills they have gained.

I remember the moment that I decided to quit the stable job that I had at the age of twenty-six. My mom sitting in front of me, had just turned as white as a ghost as I told her that I would give up my regular income and start my own business. Her responses were, in hindsight, incredibly fair; how was I going to pay the mortgage for the apartment I had bought mere months before? How was I going to feed myself? What about my gym membership? All very valid questions.

Yet questions like this from loving family members, and in most cases from inside one’s own thoughts, stop people from taking the leap to back themselves. The comfort of a stable salary leads many to stay safe, avoid risk and stay dreaming about the future they could create. By giving workers more certainty that they can find meaningful, fulfilling work, more people will choose to back themselves.

I am such a fan of people creating a side hustle with the rise of web3 only going to enable even more to earn on the side of their stable income. However, I believe there is a greater shift that will be transformed by web3, allowing more people to leap in pursuit of their passions. Knowing they can find the roles they get paid fairly for and that they can prove their on-chain skills without the drawn-out, lengthy hiring process, which is for many a waste of time.

In many countries, workers do not have access to PayPal, access to credit cards, or bank accounts. When I lived in Indonesia, 80% of my transactions were in cash, with every member of staff paid that way. Living now in Tbilisi, we spent months getting a business bank account to let us send money from the US and UK.

Crypto payments will become the accepted standard for future global work payments. If I want to send a payment to a friend on the other side of the world, I can do it in a matter of seconds with a transaction fee of no more than a penny using crypto solutions today. If you work right now in a salaried role in the same country as your employer, this likely isn’t an issue you are even aware of. Yet currently, hundreds of millions of workers work remotely, with many unable to join them in doing so.

We have a long way to go on the compliance and regulation with crypto globally, yet at Pyme, we are excited to play a role in helping onboard more workers to crypto, help them get paid faster, and let them keep all of their money.

We will help families put food on the table. Current job marketplace solutions can take up to 14 days to pay out to workers. I have first-hand experience myself, and with freelancers, we have hired over the pain that can create. Being able to get paid upon completion of work will improve the overall quality of life in many, many countries around the world.

I wrote a blog covering how I see the future of work, yet whether you want to call it Metaverse, web3, blockchains, web3.0, or any other name, we are all talking about a future where we live in a far more decentralized, digital native world.

I see a world where users work on many projects at once. Where workers can contribute their skills, be rewarded for it, and then move to the next project able to prove their skills and experience on-chain. At Pyme, we give every worker a unique NFT of the work they have completed, regardless of the length of the project, the skills, or how much they got paid. This allows any worker, wherever they live, to build up a profile of their verified work history.

This will transform the speed of hiring, change how people apply for jobs, and even the very nature of employment in the future.

Our community is growing fast, and we are always looking for people passionate about making a difference in the world of work and helping bring web3 to more people. So please reach out to me on our discord or Twitter if that is you!

TL;DR

• Current hiring methods have been used for nearly the past 450 years without much change.

• Hiring models built with self-marketing rather than based on verifiable skills and experience are doomed to fail.

• Bias is an unfair and fundamental flaw in hiring today.

• More people will become entrepreneurs due to web3.

• In many countries, working remotely and banking do not mix; crypto will change that.

• Bad hiring costs $15,000 per bad hire.

  Originally published at https://pyme.team.