Changes at the top for Zubka

After only having had David Sheildhouse talking so passionately about his service (Zubka) a couple of weeks ago it appears he is now "looking at other opportunities".

In their words;

Zubka's management team has evolved. Armando Ruffini, Zubka's Co-founder and
previously COO, has moved into the role of CEO as David Shieldhouse, Zubka's
Co-founder and incumbent CEO, refocuses his energies on new entrepreneurial
ventures. David tells us: "From developing the original idea, through to
launching the business, securing VC backing from Balderton (previously
Benchmark) and building a solid foundation of users, we have been on an
incredible journey. We are all justly proud of what Zubka has achieved so far
and I look forward to seeing the business realise its full potential as a global
player in the recruitment industry."

The article then goes on to describe the backgrounds of the rest of the management team. So I did what everyone can do these days and looked them up on LinkedIn. A quick search under people for the company Zubka and I have my suspicions confirmed. What a great research tool.

My concern here is that there have been many technology based products that aim to dis-intermediate recruiters from the recruitment process. The aim to bring passive candidates (someone who is not actively looking) to the attention of hiring authorities. The issue is and from painful experience getting the name is only a small part of the battle. If I am a talented individual in my vertical, am I going to be motivated to enter into discussions about a future career move on the basis of a job posting, and probably a poorly written one at that.

The management team at Zubka have great, solid experience in some great companies, I dread to think what their payroll is each month! The gap, I feel, is that their does not appear to be any recruitment experience, David had been involved in executive search, I saw that as a huge positive. He says he will still be involved, I hope that is the case.

Third party recruiters have been alienated before by web based plays in the recruitment market, you ignore them at your peril. They simply cannot make this work for them unless they outsource or unbundle part of the process and say get a team of researchers in India trying to make residual income from their recruitment databases. The model is not clear but I will start to take a closer look.

For the general day to day individual, you may find a role that suits you, get a friend to refer you and then hopefully split the fee (a pseudo signing bonus). But, I would hardly call that attracting a passive candidate!

Recruitment hits Second Life

An article that really starts the head spinning from VNUnet.com, I am not unaware of Second Life, and I am more than aware of the growth and hype surrounding it's online community. But the blending of your real life (first life) and the escapism of your virtual life (second life) feels like a stretch, if not defeatist. With a globally aging demographic it is getting harder and harder to attract, hire and retain the talented people that will help companies achieve their goals. On that basis I have to applaud the creativity of taking the career fair concept to the virtual world.

The Career fair is being run by TMP and those interested in attending need to pre-register at the following site http://www.i-jobsforreal.co.uk/. By this point I was turned off already, but I am going to persist and see if I can report on the event and give you my feedback.

Year in and year out, I have read about the mythical passive candidate that job boards are supposedly bringing to the attention of recruiters! I am sorry, but I have yet to see someone passively, accidentally, as if by magic, end up on a job board and apply for a job! A career fair in a virtual world is going to be attracting the same kind of people that would be looking for work in a real world career fair in their real life. The hype and PR that goes with this is one thing, what I want to hear about is the time to hire, quality of hire and cost per hire from such activity before we give it too much credence.

For the majority of us the fact remains whether we are interacting in the real world or in a virtual world, we leave a trail of activity that creates a perception of who we are. Educate yourself on the best way to promote and represent your personal brand online and ensure your information is consistent. No matter where you decide to work or play online, your business partners, colleagues and potential future employer or clients are online too.

Zubka Blog - Celebrates Success

Whilst attending a franchise exhibition at the Birmingham NEC, I had the fortune to bump into David Shieldhouse of Zubka. Not only did I discover they were just down the road from my current office, but they were also solidly founded in executive recruitment in their former lives.

Zubka is relatively new, but our discussions took me back to the "dot com boom" days when over far too many drinks one evening, a group of friends came up with the idea of shunt-a-mate.com. The idea being that there are times when you reach a point in your career path where you cannot move forward without your boss moving on! By referring your boss for a job (commonly known as shunting) you could free up some room at the top for career progression. The idea took on a life of it's own we started thinking of the many people that could benefit from shunting someone else from a role!

OK, so a liquid fueled idea created a fun evening, and then sure enough as with many great ideas it seems a team of people got off their bottoms and did something about it! That appears to be what David and team has done. In their words;

"Since we launched Zubka, we've evolved our platform, built a
business that is active in around 100 countries, won awards and accolades from
our peers, brought vacancies onto the Zubka job
board from some of the leading brands and
businesses in the world today and generated (to date) over £2.5 million GBP of
rewards for our thousands of referrers to benefit from."

There is one global truth, companies are always looking to reduce their cost per hire, recruiters are a necessary evil in many hiring authorities minds. Corporate hiring authorities are struggling to find talented individuals to hire. That is because talented individuals, who are happy where they are, being looked after, and doing a great job are not actively looking for them!

The incentive of a referral fee may be enough to provide and incentive to an individual to refer a friend. This functionality has been on the job boards for a long time. But, with an incentive it may make you think a little harder! With the referral fee being a fraction of what a corporate hiring authority pays to a recruiter the motivation will be there to make best use of such a site. There is still a large amount of work to do in the process though.

My issue in this respect, having worked as a recruiter, is that the fraction of the fee is being paid because providing the name is only a fraction of the task in attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent. Any recruiter "worth their salt" is aware that in this tight market, covering counter offers, and steering candidates with multiple offers on the table is what makes the difference.

Finding clients that are also prepared to sell the opportunity is also a key part of the battle. When I consider the amount of work in finding the name, and then having to hope that they get through the process to be hired, when I have no control over that part of the process, it worries me. I can only see the odd placement being made unless you have large database of candidates and throw names at it. In a candidate tight market, that can only be described as full employment in many markets, I'd rather make a 20 - 30% fee from a candidate than settle for a small referral fee.

On the other side of the equation. Recruiters usually work specific assignments and struggle to work with talented individuals that do not quite fit the spec they are working on. This talent often "withers on the vine" if they are not introduced to new opportunities quickly. It could be here that a recruiter could earn incremental revenue, over and above their normal business. Particularly if they find someone outside of their area of speciality, in which case they would usually get no further business.

Zubka seems to have a role to play, but it needs to permeate into the everyday life of a normal web user, rather than something that an active job seeker will go and do. If an individual wanted to go and look for a job there are many job boards that would meet that need.

Management of expectations is key. I have heard so many times that one of the biggest criticisms of the recruitment industry is that individuals are given very little information about the role that they are asked to interview for and it ends up being a complete waste of time and energy. Simply putting a name to an opportunity and hoping that the individual and hiring manager fall in love still seems like a long shot. I am sure David and team will prove me wrong and I support the passion, drive and innovation they are putting into their business. I applaud it, and with £2.5m in referral fees to be collected something must be going right!

Another reputation checking company!

The article above highlights another company that is providing a business service based around using information found on the public web to establish or protect an individuals background. If you think that Facebook, MySpace and other such sites are only for Gen X and Gen Y then think again.

The company in this article, Reputica (http://www.reputica.com/) launched in June '07, has launched a CEO version that allows recruitment companies to gather information from many web sources to establish the credibility of candidates they are working with. Text from their site;

"ReputicaCEO Search a service to executive search agencies which offers a full
download of all online articles, chats and blogs written about
candidates, providing a far more detailed and balanced background
view."

Reputica also has a product that allows you to view your own data and highlight areas that may need work as you manage your online reputation. We will take a closer look at their product and report back to you shortly.