While spending time creating a powerful résumé is still a good investment, you must have talent to show your talent. But in 2023, even that doesn't cut it. Founders of Bondex say referrals and professional networks go a long way. As trends emerge towards skill-based and referral-based hiring, predictions of Gen Z waving goodbye to the traditional résumé systems grow more potent. However, that hasn't stopped job-seekers sending as many as 500 résumés in a day, according to reports from Bloomberg.
Bondex wants to change that with a gamified, professional network app focused on not only allowing sourcing and managing talent or seeking opportunities but also allowing referral rewards, incentivising users to tap into their networks to refer suitable candidates for recruiters. The company launched in August 2021 and has since raised $3 million in funding led by Chainlink, C2 Ventures, and more.
Since its launch in 2021, led by CEO Ignacio Palomera, it aims to compete with platforms like LinkedIn by adding web3 principles. The company has grown to have over 3 million app downloads, 1.5 million total active users, and more than 700,000 monthly active users on its beta mobile app.
Bondex onboarded partners to launch the job portal with web3 industry famous names such as The Graph, Blockchain.com, Fantom, Ankr, Chainlink, and more. The referral and crowdsourcing recruitment method has been an industry first for Bondex, which has doubled its candidate pipeline. Bondex was created to productise the same approach.
A recent survey examined more than 200 companies' hiring practices and recruitment procedures and found that most do basic background checks or only look into their résumés as a 'table stake.'
Although reference and credibility checks are essential for gauging things like culture fit and how the employee's skill set matches the job description, less than 5% of the surveyed companies use them.
"Employers value not necessarily your education or experience, but your skill set. And rather than read a marketing document on your resume, employers want to know what they're getting," says Ignacio Palomera, CEO of Bondex.
Bondex makes acquiring talent and getting hired easier for all parties involved while applying web3 principles such as reward mechanisms to its business model. Palomera says it considers LinkedIn its most significant competitor because of the world's largest database of passive candidates. However, he adds that the recommendation feature on LinkedIn still needs to provide the social checks and references that companies need to make good hiring decisions because most of them are provided by the candidate.
The app provides referral bounties to users on the platform, allowing them to act as extended recruitment arms to hiring companies. Referrers on the Bondex platform receive US dollar or token-gated referral bounties of up to $10,000 for successful hires by recruiters.
"This allows them to act almost as an extended recruitment arm to hiring companies, allowing companies to save time, reduce costs, improve quality, and enhance diversity in their talent pool," says Palomera.
"We allow users to be an employer, recruiter, talent, sales agent, or all of those at once and get rewarded for their efforts," continues Palomera.
Although the app is in beta, more than 30 companies already use Bondex for recruitment. Most are web3-based and are looking for technical and non-technical candidates. Palomera says Bondex's typical customers are a good mix of early-stage startups to mid-stage or established projects or even Web3 creators, such as the Crypto Banter network, looking to fulfil their recruitment needs.
The app aims to onboard more than 10 million users by 2025. Bondex is free for recruiting companies and talent and monetises through commission-based fees that users only pay if they hire or get hired by the platform.
