One of the most popular topics to come out of the blockchain and cryptocurrency sphere tech over the last few years has been surrounding Non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Companies like Tiffany & Co, Nike, Adidas, Starbucks, Prada and McDonald’s have all jumped into the NFT hype with their own variations on digital blockchain collectables.

Yet the technology behind NFTs has far more practical applications beyond digital collectables that could have an impact on workplaces and jobseekers. NFTs have also been used for digital IDs, digital contracts, access passes for digital financial activities, event tickets and proof of event attendance.

What is an NFT?

So what actually is an NFT? It’s a digital asset that stores a little bit of data and has a unique digital signature that is impossible to duplicate. Mathematically embedded in each NFT is a one-of-a-kind cryptographic signature, like a digital fingerprint. An NFT exists on a blockchain, so there is a permanent and unchangeable record of its data.

Along with that digital fingerprint any other data can be stored within, or linked to, the NFT.

For example, NFTs have already been used to issue badges for event attendees. The Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) generates digital badges to showcase participation in online or in-person events. Since 2019, over 6m POAPs have been issued. These digital badges are connected to specific time periods, events and activities but cannot be traded or sold.

It’s not difficult to see how a similar system could be applied to continuing education credits, participation in professional associations or as records of completion in training courses; and they contain a permanent and immutable record connecting the receiver with the issuer.

While there is a fun element to digital collectibles that may be more appealing to younger audiences, the practical benefits should also be evident: a digital catalog of professional activities, achievements and milestones accumulated over the years can be invaluable for both personal career progression, and as a fantastic resource for recruiters.

• For individuals: They can accumulate a digital portfolio of personal and professional achievements, such as a record of conferences and events attended. These can be displayed, or they can be connected to applications that can automatically provide career advice, develop customised profiles or tailored professional development recommendations based on past activity and experience.
• For recruiters: NFTs are often designed with open-source and transparent features, allowing sophisticated analytics of behaviour based on blockchain data. The specific digital assets a person accumulates, combined with their online behaviour, opens up opportunities for identifying people with specific skills and interests, and conducting broader labour force research on the relationship between skills and interests. Trends and behaviour and can be analysed in real time based on activity tied to digital wallets.

Potential workplace and career uses of NFTs

One of the most important areas for validating digital information is for professional credentials: qualifications, degrees, career history and experience.

Some American universities – including Duke University, Pepperdine University and the University of Georgia – have started issuing degree certificates as NFTs for certain courses.

The European Union is currently running pilot tests across 28 countries to connect educational credentials with digital wallets.

There have always been issues with people faking qualifications or credentials, and with the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard being used to generate CVs and cover letters, we’re going to need tools to verify the provenance and authenticity of digital information quickly and efficiently. In a digital world where generative AI makes it easy to create fakes almost instantaneously with simple prompts, immutable records stored with cryptographic keys that make them impossible to falsify could prove invaluable, especially for recruiters who need to quickly validate a person’s educational qualifications, professional credentials or history of professional development activity.

The confluence of digital assets and social platforms

The next step in using digital assets would be to embed these in social or career platforms like LinkedIn. X, formerly Twitter, allows Premium users to display an NFT as their profile picture. The workplace utility for that is low, but it is likely we’ll soon see more digital assets integrated with social platforms.

As users can currently input their information into predefined fields on LinkedIn or careers websites, it’s not a stretch to imagine embedding NFT versions of credentials within these platforms. This would allow recruiters and employers to quickly verify an individual’s credentials or qualifications using a cryptographic signature generated by the issuer, such as a university or training provider, acting as an automated and instantaneous reference check.

Embedding NFTs in a digital CV or linking to a public digital wallet with qualifications stored as NFTs is technically possible today, but is not yet practical because of technical hurdles, limited awareness and lack of user-friendly technology.

Power Points

1. There’s still time to learn about how NFTs function while they are an emerging and avant-garde technology. Although the technology has been in development for nearly a decade, we have yet to experience a groundbreaking moment, like the introduction of the ChatGPT, where a user-friendly consumer-facing product quickly captures the attention of the global workforce.
2. There are a wide range of uses for cryptographically verified digital information, connected to digital wallets and online profiles; generative AI will increase our need to do this effectively and at scale. NFTs and various other functionalities of digital wallets are likely to be part of another wave of digitisation and automation that affects the recruitment industry.
3. Digital wallets play an increasing role in storing digital assets and data, so it’s important to approach the technology with both curiosity as well as caution and scepticism. There’s no need to spend a lot of money on highly speculative digital collectibles to see how the technology works. And while legitimate blockchain companies are growing, along with clearer regulatory frameworks in both the UK in Europe, there’s still a lot of scams and fraud related to blockchain and cryptocurrency activities, so it’s a highly risky sector of the digital economy.

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