But Career Element is drawing attention for its dream job feature, which allows people like Elizalde to name the price they are willing to pay to land a high-quality position.
If an “agent” helps Elizalde get a job, his $10,000 bounty will be released – 87.5 percent to the agent, and 12.5 percent to Career Element.
“The best way to get a job is through networking,” Campbell said. “But if you don’t know people, this is a great way to get their attention.”
Now this is interesting. I stumbled upon this website and news story the other day while doing a search on bounties, and this thing popped up. The concept is all about offering a cash award to anyone that can get you your dream job! Pretty cool huh?
I have not signed up with this deal, but this is how it could work for anyone in our industry. If you are the job seeker, you sign up and you post what type of job or jobs you are looking for in the industry. Obviously you should be qualified for the jobs, but still, put it out there and put up a sizable bounty that could get you some interest. In the example above, this guy posted a $10,000 dollar bounty for his particular field. The question you need to ask as a security contractor is how much of a bounty would it take to get anyone interested in finding you a job?
The other element to this is the agents. For those of you who are on gigs who pull some weight with the company you are with, your recommendation of a qualified individual that is just trying to get into an industry like this, could make you a little money and help someone out. Because what the job seeker is trying to do here is get a ‘network’ of agents, fueled by the possibility of collecting a bounty for their work or recommendation.
This Career Elements website also promotes the negotiation period, which will further allow the job seeker and agent to talk about what is required for the task. The agent can also determine if they even want to recommend this job seeker.
What is interesting with our industry is that there are numerous types of jobs out there that a guy could be qualified for, but because a job seeker doesn’t know anyone in the industry or know how to navigate it, getting a foot in the door could be rough. Or getting their foot in the right door could be difficult as well. An agent could also find that one job that the job seeker didn’t even think about. Either way, it would be a way of connecting experienced job seekers (agents), with the folks that do not have an established network and want a job.
The article below also talked about potential drawbacks of a system like this. That recruiters from the companies might come onto a site like this and go after bounties to get people. Would this be unethical? I mean if a job seeker is qualified and is willing to fork over a bounty just to land a job, I would classify that as pretty dedicated. Not everyone can be good at finding jobs, and something like this is just another way to achieve that goal.
I have noticed that companies already offer bounties to individuals that bring qualified linguists to them. Folks that are in high demand are worth several thousand dollars in head hunting fees. Some companies even offered rewards for bringing in special forces types to high level contracts. So if companies can do this, why can’t contractors offer bounties to agents that could find them the jobs they are looking for?
Oh, and one more thing. I am not sure if Career Element has a policy against security contractors using their site. I didn’t see anything that would prohibit our industry from participating, but you never know. And if they do have a problem, this might be a new thing for someone to start just for this industry? –Matt
Website For Career Element here.
New ways to find jobs: cash bounties, texting
Stop Endless Job Search Trials, Hire an Agent to Land Your Dream Job
New ways to find jobs: cash bounties, texting
By Casey Newton
December 19, 2010
Fernando Elizalde has tried the traditional ways of gaining employment.
He asks his family and friends for leads. He attends networking events. He sends out resumes constantly.
But after more than a year of looking for a job in private equity, and despite a master’s in business administration from UCLA, the 28-year-old finds himself with few leads and a growing sense of frustration.
So Elizalde took a different tack: He recently posted a bounty – $10,000 to the person who lands him a job.
Elizalde is one of the first job seekers to try Career Element, a Palo Alto startup that allows users to post a bounty for anyone who can help them get their job of choice. That person could be a recruiter or someone at the job hunter’s dream company who has inside knowledge on a position opening up.
“I feel like it provides a huge benefit during really hard times,” said Elizalde, who emigrated from Argentina a decade ago and lives in Los Angeles. “It provides more networking opportunities. Yeah, it’s artificial, because in some ways you’re buying those connections. But at the same time, when networking is so important, I don’t see why not.”
With California unemployment at 12.4 percent and the national rate at 9.8 percent, some Bay Area startups are taking novel approaches to helping people find work.
Career Element aims to be the “Priceline for jobs,” allowing high-end job hunters to offer thousands of dollars to the person who lands them a job. For more blue-collar workers, San Francisco’s Job Rooster is developing a service that helps users find jobs using nothing more than text messages.
Some career coaches scoff at their methods, and a professor of business ethics says that offering bounties could corrupt the hiring process. But the founders of both companies say that in a tough market, job hunters should consider new approaches to finding work.
“In today’s economy, you have so many qualified candidates,” said Paul Campbell, founder of Career Element. “How do you separate the best ones?”
Campbell started Career Element after realizing he wanted a job at Facebook so much that he would pay for it.
Campbell, a 26-year-old Palo Alto native, was a graduate student at Stanford when he decided he would pay up to $7,000 to anyone who could help him get a job at the social networking giant.
Rather than pursue the job, he decided to turn his idea into a business. He launched Career Element in March 2009, and the site became active in October.
Career Element offers some traditional job-hunting services, allowing users to post profiles and network with one another. The site also stages regular career fairs in Silicon Valley.
But Career Element is drawing attention for its dream job feature, which allows people like Elizalde to name the price they are willing to pay to land a high-quality position.
If an “agent” helps Elizalde get a job, his $10,000 bounty will be released – 87.5 percent to the agent, and 12.5 percent to Career Element.
“The best way to get a job is through networking,” Campbell said. “But if you don’t know people, this is a great way to get their attention.”
Campbell expects that most people who use his site will be looking for jobs that pay more than $100,000 a year, noting that for every week they’re unemployed, they’re losing $2,000 or more. With the average person on unemployment taking 33.8 weeks to find a new job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those candidates have a strong financial incentive to accelerate their search.
Ethical questions
Still, using Career Element raises ethical questions. Managers who have a direct role in the hiring process shouldn’t accept a bounty for hiring candidates, said David Vogel, the Solomon P. Lee Chair in Business Ethics at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
“That would be a violation of the person’s responsibility to the firm,” Vogel said.
And Campbell said employees who plan to seek bounties should check with their hiring managers to make sure it is allowed.
But a bounty system could be a useful incentive for workers to help others in the labor market find jobs, Vogel said.
“It seems to me to be a creative use of market mechanisms,” he said. “It actually might facilitate the efficiency of the labor market, by encouraging people to come up with jobs that they might not necessarily have thought of.”
Bridging the divide
While Campbell is focused on the six-figure clientele, Nick Ellis’ attention is on those who earn far less.
Along with partner Azeem Butt, Ellis is the co-founder of Job Rooster, a company that can help find jobs for anyone who can send text messages.
Ellis, 30, developed the idea with Butt last year after market research showed that a large number of Americans still do not have regular access to the Internet, often referred to as the “digital divide.”
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, more than 40 percent of Americans making less than $50,000 a year do not have broadband access at home. But 75 percent of people in that group have a cell phone – an asset Ellis hopes to leverage.
“When you look at the unemployment rates for this population, they are the highest. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that they have the least access to the resources they would need to solve that problem,” said Ellis, who previously worked as a recruiter in San Francisco. Job seekers can join Job Rooster by sending the text message “JOBS” to 27697. The site then asks users a series of questions over text message to determine where they live, what jobs they are seeking and what level of experience they have.
Job listings via text
The site’s users can get up to five job listings per day for free. For $4.95 a month, they can have access to unlimited listings. Recruiters can post a job to the site for $50, less than one-quarter of what career website Monster.com charges.
Users can apply for some jobs simply by sending a text, and hiring managers can text candidates back to ask questions. Candidates can also create profiles and apply for jobs directly using the website.
The startup, which leases space in a building owned by Hearst Corp., parent company of The Chronicle, had a soft launch of its service in October and plans to ramp up operations in January. Today it has about 1,000 users and access to more than 4 million jobs.
“I’m very optimistic about how this is going to be received,” said Karla Potter, director of workforce development for the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry in Pennsylvania. The group is working with Job Rooster to create a custom site for its members that will enable job searching via text message.
“I have the ability to receive a text message in real time as soon as the job is posted,” Potter said. “And with a couple of keystrokes, I’m able to shoot my resume to that organization.”
Ellis said texting can help recruiters sort through applicants quicker than the traditional approach of sifting through hundreds of resumes. He hopes it will be a boon to job seekers who don’t have regular access to the Internet and other networking opportunities.
“Our theory is, if we can surface this information to people faster and get them off of unemployment even one day sooner, the net savings to the social system can be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.
What has worked
While Career Element and Job Rooster have novelty going for them, career coaches warn that job seekers shouldn’t abandon traditional – and more proven – ways of finding work.
Dean Tracy, executive director of Job Connections, a San Ramon professional group that offers free help to the unemployed, said 80 percent of job seekers wind up finding a job through a friend, family member or acquaintance.
“You shouldn’t have to pay someone else – especially $10,000 – to get you in front of people,” said Tracy, who also works as a recruiter. “That’s why we exist as a culture. We’re here to help each other.”
Tracy recommends people join job search support groups and focus on networking instead of Internet-based services, where uploaded resumes often disappear into “a big black hole.”
But Elizalde, who is now more than a year into his job search, said he needs to consider other options.
After posting his bounty to Career Element, Elizalde got a call from a recruiter who talked with him about his background and interests.
And with $10,000 on the line, what has the agent found?
“I haven’t heard back from him,” Elizalde said.
Story here.
—————————————————————–
Stop Endless Job Search Trials, Hire an Agent to Land Your Dream Job
Posted by Career Element
October 3, 2010
With unemployment statistics reaching an all time high, the job market just got even tougher. The bad news is that the public sector is not adding many new jobs. The good news is that a limited number of private companies are gradually increasing their numbers and are hiring! However, job hunters require additional skills and strategies to grab these high paying jobs.
Limited Success Job Search Strategies
So, how do you search for job opportunities? Maybe you use job portals. Many might say OMG! That sounds so outdated! Why do you want to use job portals when you can drop your resume at a hiring consultant’s firm? Well, manually submitting your resume is outdated too! What does a job hunter do then? Think of new ideas to grab that dream job. Is it not so?
Well, a next trial could be using the social networking websites. Do you have a blog? Do you job hunt using your blog posts? Yes, many people post their resumes on their own blogs. They hope to attract employers who may look for resumes on blogs. Now, that may not be a very successful strategy. How many recruiters and companies have the time to check blogs for resumes?
Job seekers also look for job postings on Twitter, Facebook and other similar sites. True, there are job postings on these sites. Yet, not many people actually get a job that way. It is very difficult to track the progress of your resume using such complex methods. You have no idea whom to contact at these sites. In the end, you may end up posting your resume to some unknown person’s email address. Frankly, it can be an endless and useless wait if your resume fails to attract a recruiter.
Hire an Agent to Reduce the Endless Job Hunting Trials
How about using Career Element’s hiring agent? This agent has several key contacts in many companies. The Career Element Agent keeps you in the loop and informs you about the progress in time. You know what job you want but do not know how to find it. The agent at Career Element knows what job you want and helps you to find it. You have help in marketing your skills. The agent is guiding you each step of the way until you attend the interview and land the job. In turn, you pay the agent a small bounty reward for the help. There is no need to pay until you get a job. Once you get your job through the agent and start your job, you pay him the previously agreed amount.
With a high number of job seekers in the market, you face tough competition. The private firms do provide good salaries but are hard to get in. As such, you can be more efficient on your search by hiring an agent. When you job hunt by yourself, it is highly possible that you remain jobless for months. Instead, hire an agent, get a job quickly and begin to earn your salary sooner. Hence, paying a small bounty reward to Career Element agent instead of being unemployed for months definitely makes sense! So, delay no further and register with confidence at Career Element (http://www.careerelement.com). It is your one stop place to land the career of your dreams.
Story here.