The world's first decentralised jobs platform.

LinkedIn is the largest job site in the world. Multiple other job sites co-exist but tend to offer niche products. 

LinkedIn went live in 2003. The initial idea was to create a professional network where people could connect with their colleagues and business acquaintances. LinkedIn was social media for work.

In 2011, LinkedIn went public, and by 2012, it had 200 million members. Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26B in 2016. By 2017, membership had reached  500M.

Today, because of its monopoly, LinkedIn controls the jobs market. LinkedIn algorithms have become a deciding factor in who gets the job. 

Candidates must now be careful of what they write in case they fall foul of opaque rules and have their accounts frozen or closed. This has a chilling effect and causes self-censorship.

Recruiters have become zero-hour contractors. Their livelihood depends on LinkedIn, so they have no negotiating power and pay exorbitant fees. Recruiters typically get paid 20% of the base salary of the chosen candidate. However, many recruiters cannot negotiate exclusivity, retainers or upfront payments. Consequently, they may do hours of work and not get paid or paid months later.

With no competition, employers are overcharged to post jobs. If they hire a recruiter, they pay a significant fee for the privilege, with no guarantee that the successful candidate is right for the job.  

Here is how recruitment works today.

The Job Poster advertises a job describing qualifications, experience, and responsibilities. The candidate submits a resume and cover letter that describes how they are a good match. This is the think part of the process. Suitable candidates are called for interviews where they tell stories about their experience or demonstrate how they would behave in certain scenarios. This is the feel part of the process. Finally, a shortlist of candidates is reviewed, and a gut feeling determines who gets the offer. This is the know part of the process. 

The selection process is upside down. Currently, the process is think, feel, know. Ideally, the process is know, feel, think. Why? Because the best candidates share the same values, and are a cultural fit. It doesn’t matter how well-qualified someone is if they are impossible to work with.

It is quite normal for a new hire to last less than a year. In fact, up to 25% leave depending on the industry and sector. That tells you the process is broken.

This is why most jobs go to people who are already known. 

Displacing a network like LinkedIn is a challenge. But finally, there is a way to do so, and every LinkedIn stakeholder has a strong incentive to disentangle them from Microsoft’s control.

The Nostr protocol offers this alternative. We want to explore this possibility. We assume that readers understand what Nostr is and how it works.

Enter SlinkedIn. 

The concept is simple. Candidates own their resume. Employers own their jobs. Recruiters optionally smooth the relationship between the two by filtering candidates on behalf of employers, saving them time and effort.  Candidates can hire AI agents to search and apply for jobs on their behalf. Employers and recruiters can hire AI agents to find suitable candidates and encourage them to apply for jobs. As AI matures, agents for employers, recruiters, and candidates could be authorised to offer and accept work on their behalf.

Initially, SlinkedIn will extend Nostr to enable a jobs market. Candidates will post resumes. Job Posters (Employers and Recruiters) will post jobs publicly. Candidates can apply for a job privately. Job Posters can filter out unsuitable candidates with a set of customisable questions. They can tag candidates to make it easier for teams to determine who to shortlist. They can message candidates to arrange interviews. Future iterations might have interfaces with tools like Zoho Recruiter to make it easier for Employers and Recruiters to transition.

SlinkedIn will be built in public and will be open source. The advantages outweigh the risks.

Our goal for the hackathon is to answer the following questions:

1. What is the business model?

2. How might we make it easy for Job Posters to source candidates in Nostr

3. How will we incentivise recruiters so they get paid?

4. How will we use a NIP to extend Nostr to support resumes?

5. How will we make job postings public but the application process private?

6. How might we use a web of trust sourcing algorithm to identify quality candidates?

7. How can we reverse the broken think, feel, know the process so that the right candidate gets the job, not the one who interviews well?

8. How can we restore LinkedIn’s original mission as a professionals network?

As the team includes members working with LinkedIn, we are not publicising their names. Suffice it to say that between us, we have extensive subject matter experience of the jobs market, business development, technology development, and how Bitcoin and Nostr work. We seek a co-founder with the technical expertise to build the SlinkedIn solution and VC funders to provide rocket fuel, and advice.