NEC and PERSOL CAREER Start PoC of Recruitment Service for International IT Engineers Using Blockchain Technology

NEC Corporation and PERSOL CAREER CO., LTD. announced the start of a proof-of-concept of a new direct recruiting service for companies seeking to hire IT engineers from India, particularly Japanese companies.

The aim of this PoC is to test the direct recruiting service for Japan-based companies considering the employment of foreign IT engineers. Six companies in Japan, including GMO Internet, Inc. and Wired Beans Co., Ltd., are participating in the recruitment activities for IT engineers living in India.

Engineers who participate in the service shall take an IT skill test, where their experience, skills, achievements and resume are confirmed. With this information, recruiters can expect to increase the success of their recruitment activities.

Moreover, the service is based on the concept of self-sovereign identity (SSI), where individual identity holders can fully create and control their credentials, including how their personal data is shared and used.

Points to be verified by this PoC include the following:
– Evaluating the needs of India-based IT engineers seeking to work in Japan
– Simplifying the recruitment process for Japanese recruitment companies
– Ensuring the adequacy of the programming skill check

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Background

In recent years, the shortage of IT human resources in Japan has become a serious issue and it is estimated that this shortfall could rise up to 800,000 people by 2030(1). Amid the intense competition for IT human resources in Japan, it is important to attract and retain talented international human resources in order to further revitalize the Japanese economy and boost its competitiveness. Moreover, spread of the new coronavirus infection has also accelerated online recruitment activities and work styles.

Under these circumstances, job seekers need to digitally and remotely authenticate their experience, skills and achievements that cannot be measured through conventional interviews and resumes. Similarly, it is important for recruiters to access the abilities of job seekers. In line with this, job seekers are increasingly required to manage and control access to their personal data, which raises the question of how this data is handled.

This PoC will be carried out with a smartphone application that leverages AONT technology(2), both developed by NEC, in addition to blockchain technology as well. Job seekers can securely and easily manage (add/edit/delete) their highly confidential information, such as personal data, set access control for data disclosure, prevent falsification of information, and ensure high authenticity.

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Authentication of job seekers’ skills

IT engineers in India who are seeking to change employers take a test to verify their skills beforehand. This skill check test can be taken online and the results will be auto-linked to the smartphone application. With this, job seekers can save their skill certificates as highly reliable information. This certificate can be viewed by companies that have been given permission to access it. This eliminates the need for taking a skill check test for each company and expands a candidate’s chances of getting shortlisted. This PoC will be conducted in collaboration with HackerEarth(3), a developer and provider of IT skill tests.

Future prospects

In this three-month PoC from August to October 2020, the two companies are seeking to create fair job opportunities across India and Japan based on job seekers’ experience, knowledge and achievements, and based on the results, NEC aims to launch the direct recruiting service in FY2020.

Further, in this PoC, considering the impact of the new coronavirus infection, there will be an analysis of the best ways to provide services that effectively respond to the changes in future employment and working environments in India and Japan.

Through this approach of conducting a PoC that uses the latest ICT, both companies will be contributing to an ecosystem where people from all over the world can live and work in different ways, and where they can freely trust and cooperate with each other.

Mr. Teruyuki Nakajima, General Manager, Corporate Business Incubation Division, NEC Corporation, said, “I’m very pleased that NEC will start a new direct recruiting initiative that utilizes its own blockchain technology. Through these initiatives, we hope that opportunities to find employment online will be provided to everyone fairly, and that a world where diverse work styles and lifestyles will be realized.”

(1) “Study on Demand and Supply of IT Human Resources (contracted by METI)” Mizuho Information & Research Institute, in 2019 PDF https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/it_policy/jinzai/houkokusyo.pdf
(2) AONT (All-or-Nothing Transformation) technology:
A technology to transform data to generate multiple new data pieces so that the pieces reveal nothing about the original’s content unless all the pieces are combined to recover the original. It helps store highly confidential data securely
(3) HackerEarth:
HackerEarth is a developer of assessment software which is used for measuring developers’ skills through online coding assessments and remote interviews. The company also has a community of over 4.5M developers worldwide who rely on HackerEarth to practice their coding skills and become job-ready https://www.hackerearth.com/

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