Please describe your proposed solution.
According to a survey from StandOutCV which surveyed 1,785 Americans, 55% of respondents admitted to lying on their resumes. How can organizations determine the authenticity of resumes? Unfortunately, identifying fraudulent resumes is a challenging task, and hiring a background check agency can be costly. This creates a disparity between larger companies that can afford to hire agencies and smaller companies that may struggle with unqualified candidates and high turnover rates.
To address this issue, we propose recording work history as verifiable credentials tied to an Atala DID. This approach enables candidates to securely share their verified work history, while hiring organizations can verify the authenticity of the work history and hire qualified candidates.
There are benefits for both hiring organizations and job applicants when using verifiable credentials (VCs) for work history. Here are some key advantages:
- Trust and Verifiability: VCs provide a reliable way to prove an individual's work history, reducing the possibility of false claims and ensuring data credibility.
- Efficiency: VCs streamline the hiring process by providing verified and trusted credentials, eliminating the need for employers to spend resources on verifying work history.
- Data Privacy: As VCs are owned and controlled by the individual, they increase privacy and reduce the risk of personal data being mishandled or misused.
- Interoperability: VCs can be shared across platforms, enabling verification of work history across different organizations and sectors.
- Transparency: Using VCs makes the verification process more transparent by establishing what data has been verified and who issued the verification.
- Digital Portability: VCs are easy to store, share, and access, which can be advantageous in the digital economy.
- Reducing Fraud: VCs provide a verifiable digital record, which can reduce the possibility of resume fraud.
- Security: VCs use cryptographic techniques for verification, making them secure and hard to tamper with.
- Improved Job Mobility: VCs can ease the process of job hunting and changing careers, especially for people in gig economy jobs or with multiple short-term contracts.
- Global Acceptance: VCs hold potential for global acceptance and recognition, making an individual's work experience easily verified and accepted across geographical boundaries.
- Reducing Bias: The standardized nature of VCs can help reduce bias in the hiring process by basing decisions on verified facts rather than perceptions or potentially biased interpretations.
In summary, VCs for work history could revolutionize the way we share and verify work-related data, making processes more efficient, secure, and fair.
The project engages with a wide array of stakeholders, including job candidates, employers, and credential issuers. Our impact will be demonstrated through the adoption rate of our system, feedback from participants, and the reduction in fraudulent hiring cases.
This solution is crucial to Cardano as it leverages the Cardano blockchain's inherent security, transparency, and decentralization to solve a real-world issue. Moreover, our project aligns with Cardano's ethos of driving societal change through technology, showcasing the real-world application and utility of Cardano's blockchain technology.
We have already developed a system to record work history as verifiable credentials on Socious for jobs that were contracted and paid through the platform as part of our Fund 9 project (<https://projectcatalyst.io/funds/9/f9-dapps-products-and-integrations/recognize-impact-through-dids>).
Product Demo: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jTwgqlKj-Ypy_7XckFg0uDpMzdTPVzNj?usp=sharing
Step-by-step guide: <https://socious.notion.site/Socious-Mastery-Guide-ae3745be82ad4845b6e1521694fa5ed8?pvs=4>
However, jobs that were contracted outside of Socious or in the past were not within the scope of that project. This current project focuses on developing a feature that allows users to record their work history as verifiable credentials, even for jobs outside of Socious. If the user's work is for impact projects, they will additionally earn Impact Points. Individuals with a high number of impact points may receive benefits, including THANK tokens. More information about Impact Points and THANK tokens can be found here: <https://www.notion.so/Socious-Whitepaper-58fbe2c106f547898df42e409a00c73e?pvs=21>.
In addition to developing a feature (a pilot to commercial launch) to record work history as verifiable credentials, we plan to develop an Ecosystem Governance Framework (EGF) for Socious. For this, we will follow a Minimum Viable Ecosystem (MVE) approach. We will also convene regular meetings with stakeholders including issuers, holders, and verifiers, host a Governance Framework Workshop and publish a Governance Framework. Our stakeholders consist of previous hiring organizations as issuers, job seekers as holders, and potential hiring organizations as verifiers.
NB: We have already completed the Atala PRISM Pioneer Program via Canvas, which bolsters our understanding and implementation of decentralized identities (DIDs) within our project.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
Our proposed solution brings forth an innovative approach to verifying work history using Verifiable Credentials (VCs) tied to an Atala DID, addressing the problem of fraudulent resumes. This solution isn't just about the technology implementation but involves substantial coordination and stakeholder engagement efforts, in line with the challenge setting.
The unique aspect of our solution is twofold:
- Technology: We leverage verifiable credentials for the secure, verifiable, and efficient recording of work history, reducing fraud, and making hiring processes more trustworthy and efficient.
- Ecosystem Building: We engage with various stakeholders - from job seekers and employers to credential issuers - fostering conversations about interoperability, credential schemas, and technology gaps. This critical engagement process forms the core of our proposed project, echoing the importance of business coordination alongside technology development.
The proposed solution addresses the challenge in the following ways:
- One question that the challenge aims to address is, "How to create incentives?" We believe that the prospect of getting hired is a good incentive for individuals to create an Atala PRISM DID and record their work history as verifiable credentials. Additionally, if they have any work experience with impact organizations, the ability to get their impact work verified, receive impact points, and enjoy all the benefits that come with impact points will further encourage them to create an Atala PRISM DID and join the Cardano ecosystem.
- The challenge also aims to address the question, "How to unlock positive impact?" The proposed solution offers a dependable method for verifying an individual's work history. This reduces the likelihood of false claims, enabling organizations to hire people with the proper qualifications. Furthermore, Socious' impact score system motivates individuals to contribute their time and expertise to social and environmental impact initiatives, resulting in a positive impact.
- The challenge also aims to address the question, "How to streamline coordination in a decentralized ecosystem?” The proposed solution has the potential for global acceptance and recognition. It allows an individual's work experience to be easily verified and accepted across geographical boundaries, enabling coordination. VCs can be shared across platforms, making it possible to verify work history across different organizations and sectors.
- The challenge lists the following as “Key Metrics to measure”; we’ve added our actions below:
- Complete the Atala PRISM Pioneer Program → Seira Yun, the CEO of Socious, has already participated in the Atala PRISM Pioneer Program via Canvas.
- Complete a Governance Framework workshop → We will be hosting a Governance Framework workshop.
- Establish or join a Governance Framework working group at Trust over IP, or another host organization. → Socious is a member organization of Trust over IP
- Identify stakeholders including issuers, holders, verifiers, policy makers, and their business requirements → We will be having regular meetings with stakeholders, such as issuers, holders, verifiers, and policy-makers and hear their business requirements.
- Establish a cadence of meetings and contribution and convene a home for parties to adopt and participate in the Ecosystem and Ecosystem Governance → we will establish a cadence of meetings with stakeholders.
- Progress towards publishing a Governance Framework → we will publish a Governance Framework at the end of this project.
- Develop a Proof of Concept, Pilot, or commercial launch → we complete the commercial launch of the product by the end of the project.
Number of newly created Atala PRISM DID addresses. -> By offering a feature to record work history as verifiable credentials and utilizing Socious' incentive mechanisms, we can attract more individuals to the Cardano ecosystem. Currently, we have over 3,800 registered users, many of whom had no prior experience with Cardano before joining Socious.
Our project aligns with the campaign brief by bridging technology development and business coordination, aiming for a more robust, trustworthy, and inclusive Cardano ecosystem.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
The potential benefits to the Cardano ecosystem from our project are manifold. We're primarily focusing on enhancing the vibrancy of the ecosystem, boosting productivity, and fostering growth, both in the short and long term.
We are using both quantitative and qualitative measures to gauge the success of our project. Our primary quantitative measure is the number of registered users on our platform, Socious. Currently, Socious boasts over 3,800 registered users, many of whom are new to the Cardano ecosystem as developers. Our goal by the end of the project is to ramp up this figure to 10,000. We deem this target realistic considering the current growth trajectory of Socious and the significant value that the project adds to the platform and the wider Cardano ecosystem.
On the qualitative side, we intend to use user feedback and testimonials to measure the level of satisfaction and the perceived value of our platform within the Cardano ecosystem. We will continuously engage with our users, seeking their opinions on the benefits, improvements, and overall impact of our platform on their interaction with the Cardano ecosystem.
As for the project’s benefits to the Cardano ecosystem, they are three-fold:
- Attracting New Users: By employing incentivization structures, our project aims to draw external individuals to the Cardano ecosystem, offering benefits such as secure verification of work history and impact scores.
- Unlocking Positive Impact: Our solution furnishes a reliable way to verify work history, mitigating false claims, and facilitating the hiring of suitably qualified candidates. Further, Socious' impact score motivates individuals to engage in social and environmental initiatives, thereby contributing to a positive impact on a broader scale.
- Streamlining Decentralized Coordination: Our proposed solution facilitates the seamless verification and recognition of an individual's work experience across global boundaries, enhancing coordination. Verifiable Credentials (VCs) can be shared across platforms, verifying work history across varied organizations and sectors, fostering global acceptance.
Our innovation will markedly improve Cardano's productivity and growth. In the immediate term, members of the Cardano community can leverage our platform to document their work history as verifiable credentials, securely sharing their employment records. This practice also enables employers within the Cardano ecosystem to mitigate the risk of hiring unqualified individuals.
In the long run, our innovation will entice more individuals to create Atala PRISM DIDs, driven by the unique incentive mechanisms of Impact Score and THANK tokens. These tokens will not only increase engagement but also spur more contributions to the Cardano ecosystem, driving its productivity and growth in the process.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
We plan to spread the project's outputs during and after its completion. While building, we provide monthly and milestone reports, and present in two Town Hall meetings every two weeks: the Eastern Town Hall and the Pacific Town Hall. We regularly attend these town hall meetings to provide project updates and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. While we are based in Japan, which naturally aligns our schedules more closely with these two Town Halls, we make efforts to reach beyond these forums. At significant moments, such as the completion of a project phase, we expand our participation to include other town halls, overcoming time zone challenges to do so. We greatly value these occasions as they present an opportunity to share our accomplishments and engage in beneficial discussions with a wider audience.
We will share the projects’s outputs, impact and opportunities with the community members. The links to our close-out report and video will be publicly available on Youtube. We will also share information on our website and social media. Because we are a gig marketplace, gig opportunities for Cardano developers will be listed on our Socious platform.
Since Socious is an open source project, our code base is public on our GitHub page and Cardano developers are encouraged to fork and use it for other projects.
We will be analyze the results of this pilot project to further our research and development activities.