From oligarchy to meritocracy.

Skyllz
Skyllz
Published in
4 min readMar 9, 2018

“All companies can benefit from fostering a more flexible environment (creating a place where the most talented, industrious, and entrepreneurial people want to work) and relinquishing hierarchical control to favor a results-oriented meritocracy.” — Maynard Webb, Best-selling author of “Rebooting Work”.

The current work marketplace is, unfortunately, dominated by an unjust law of selection, where the most resourceful wins over the smartest. The criteria used to measure whether an applicant will be a good fit for a job, is still based on inefficient considerations packed under a diploma, a certificate, or a job title.

It is not a surprise that 42% of traditional interviews fail because of the interviewer bias, based on ethnicity, religion, gender, economic status, age, colleges’ reputation, etc.…all standards the candidate is definitely not responsible for (source: Recruitment Statistics 2018: Trends & Insights in Hiring Talented Candidates).

In this scenario, companies are not creating the bases for a diverse environment, despite 57% of employees considering this would be beneficial (source: Glassdoor)

Not to mention that there are unfortunately many job seekers trying to magnify their resume, pushing Branding far beyond the limit of legit presentations, in a way that frequently crosses the frontiers of faking. We all try to appear at our best, but lying is not a good option. According to CareerBuilder’s survey, around 58% of recruiters have spotted a lie on a resume.

As a result, employers face a major challenge when verifying information on a candidate’s resume, which makes them losing time and efforts, or forces them to outsource the hiring process to a third party, with arising high expenses.

Consequently, employers tend to trust increasingly their professional network recommendations: 48% of businesses say their quality hires come from employee referrals (Source: Linkedin).

In an ideal world, individuals should be recruited merely on the base of their talents, skills and abilities to accomplish goals. However, the real scenario does not seem encouraging at all, as job seekers are far from being offered equal opportunities.

Sad but true, and maybe a bit extreme, but it looks like they will rather succeed if they graduated in a prestigious college, they come from a privileged group, they are really good in powerfully “restyling” their resume, or they have a good professional network to recommend them.

The hiring process would be much more effective and impartial if individuals could be judged on the base of their competences in providing excellent outcomes.

To attain this condition, the job market needs a reliable system of accurate metrics.

“You know, I believe that technology is the great leveler. Technology permits anybody to play. And in some ways, I think technology — it’s not only a great tool for democratization, but it’s a great tool for eliminating prejudice and advancing meritocracies.” — Carly Fiorina, Former CEO at Hewlett-Packard (HP).

In the last decade, recruiters have been exploring technological solutions to help them reducing the time dedicated to the screening process; 75% of hiring and talent managers use recruiting software and/or applicant tracking software when hiring (source: Capterra).

The rise of groundbreaking technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain will help even further in making choices based on reliable metrics.

Blockchain provides a decentralized, secure and trustworthy ledger, where users can validate the information related to an action. This innovation allows avoiding any centralized algorithm or intermediary entities.

As an intrinsic effect of this new concept, the best professionals are more likely to be rewarded, as a Blockchain based ecosystem is, by definition, trustworthy, transparent and distributed, thus creating the perfect conditions for meritocracy to flourish.

How can both job seekers and recruiters take advantage from this system?

Skyllz is a Blockchain-based open source skill-validation protocol, which aims to replace resumes with a unified, portable and trustworthy skill-related reputation thanks to Proof-of-Skill.

In this ecosystem, users have the opportunity to track and demonstrate their talents across all the applications of the ecosystem. Whether a new skill is acquired, or a skill is applied or improved, on any platform on top of the protocol, Skyllz allows users to track and store Proof-of-Skill associated to it in a unified and common way. Their performances are examined by Raters (Oracles), who are independent experts. The rating process takes place in a distributed, public ledger, where applicants remain anonymous, while, at least three Raters, certify the candidates’ skills.

As a result, any user, included job seekers, will be provided a powerful tool to build their professional identity, with a reliable set of real skills and talents.

How does this shift the paradigm from oligarchy to meritocracy?

Humans (including job seekers) are finally judged by external and independent Raters. Their reputation will be perennially accessible and constantly improving, in a never-ending process of lifelong learning. Talents become the real individuals’ assets. Proof-of-skill replaces resumes. No matter your gender, background or any other external limitation, any human has the opportunity to build its reputation from scratch and based on the same criteria. Same rules, same game, same opportunities. We want to leverage real value against influence. Meritocracy against oligarchy.

Join Skyllz’s revolution! 🚀

P.S: for more info, join our community!

Telegram// https://t.me/Skyllz

--

--

Skyllz
Skyllz
Editor for

https://skyllz.org | First blockchain based and distributed skills validation protocol to showcase, track and boost human talents across applications.