The National Student Clearinghouse announced a partnership with Velocity Network Foundation and 14 other entities specializing in education, HRD and Human Capital Management. They are launching a blockchain network that will transform the way students and employees manage and store their educational and career information.
Clearinghouse and Velocity Career Labs, a well-known developer of blockchain technology, will join hands to launch the Velocity Network Foundation. This Foundation will allow all the 15 partners, namely Clearinghouse, Cornerstone, Aon Assessment Solutions, HireRight, Cisive, Korn Ferry, Randstad, SumTotal Systems, SAP, SHL, Unit4, Ultimate Software, Velocity Career Labs, Unit4, Upwork, and ZipRecruiter, to manage the educational and work-related credentials of their students and workforce. At the same time, they will also give employers access to accurate employee information for recruitment and hiring.
The Velocity Network- More Power to the Student and Workforce
According to the Velocity Foundation, the Velocity Network will provide an open-source network that can be accessed globally. It will also be blockchain-powered and entirely trustworthy ‘Internet of Careers,’ if you will.
This network will be a great help to the employees and students as it will help them manage their educational and employment credentials. It will also help them maintain their privacy and security.
How Will the Internet of CareersWork?
The student or the employee will be given a permanent identity that only he or she can access fully by the blockchain technology. While only he or she can fully access the data, portions of this identity can be shared with individuals or organizations during job interviews or talent recruitment searches.
This means that you have full control over your privacy, and you and only you decide when, how and what data is shared with others. While you as an individual exercise self-sovereignty, this is reciprocated by universities and prospective employers too.
This blockchain network benefits employers, too, as they now have access to verified candidate data, which helps reduce hiring risks and allows increased overall compliance with hiring regulations.
The Velocity Network Foundation: Benefits
The Velocity Network Foundation will see the Clearinghouse bring its expertise to prevent fraud and misrepresent educational degrees and professional certifications.
This will be done in the following way-
The Clearinghouse will leverage its degree verification database to do an online verification of attendance and the degrees and certifications of all the candidates.
This stringent screening and verification will go a long way in assuring employers that candidates have the certifications and degrees for the jobs they seek.
The National Student Clearinghouse also claims that they are involved with many other initiatives like the Velocity Network Foundation because they feel that these will help students and job-candidates control their academic, employment, and work-related data. It will also empower them to take ownership of their life journey.
The Clearinghouse will use this partnership with blockchain technology to give students and learners a way to control who accesses their education and professional data.
But will the Velocity Network become the next big thing in career credential checking, and will it promote greater student and employee empowerment?
We don’t know yet. We also don’t know whether students will be confident about its security and effectiveness in their career journey and whether prospective employers trust its accuracy?
These are things that remain to be seen. For now, the Velocity Network Foundation is bringing a new blockchain, open-source resource to the table. It may revolutionize how the human capital management industry works, and we, of course, wish it does!
Whether it does so or not, one thing is clear: it promises to transform students’ ability, employees, and workers to take stronger control of their careers.