Human Resources Giant Randstad Explores Blockchain to Quickly Match Talent With Recruiters

Randstad, the world's largest human resources firm, has begun testing a combination of the Cypherium blockchain and Google Cloud to better match talent to corporate needs.

The Netherlands-based firm said in a blog post the blockchain can offer ways to automate bureaucratic tasks associated with workforce recruitment by handling the "nuts and bolts" of day-to-day recruitment activities, making the entire process more efficient.

A recent study conducted by Randstad found that distributed ledger technology (DLT) provided a means to securely preserve customers' personal data while enabling the verification of academic and professional qualifications, as well as birth dates, addresses and IDs, of prospective talent.

The initiative aims to match appropriate candidates with companies seeking immediate role fulfillment such as healthcare services requiring emergency staff after a disease outbreak, without compromising on privacy.

Cypherium CEO Sky Guo told CoinDesk recently clients did not have to store all the data centrally using the network and could employ a database extractor to preserve their privacy.

"If a job candidate wants to prove that he has the grades and diploma, what they need to do is provide the hash of the diploma and the employer can verify that hash with the hash of the university," Guo said.

Cypherium is a blockchain infrastructure platform, specializing in smart contracts, based on a hybrid concept marrying proof-of-work and HotStuff, a relatively new consensus protocol that has been adopted by the Facebook-initiated Libra project.

Google Cloud's G Suite would further offer Randstad a means to monitor and build its human resource platform without the need to maintain and manage its own cloud system.

Frank van der Bijl, global collaboration manager at Randstad, said that a blend of Google Cloud's services and the Cypherium blockchain provide the company with a faster and easier way to verify and match appropriate workforce talent.

“Google Cloud and G Suite already free us from some manual verification tasks, and we plan to use Cypherium’s blockchain to hand off even more,” Bijl said.