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!