Another recruitment innovator shakes things up
As Richard Branson proved, time and again, it takes an industry outsider (almost always) to truly innovate and create a genuinely different offering.
One of the current recruitment sector innovators is 22-year-old Genevieve George a Gen Y entrepreneur with no recruitment experience (other than as a job seeker) who has established OneShift, a short-term job networking site, as its name suggests.
BRW ran a story on her two weeks ago which stated that less than 12 months after commencing, OneShift has 20 staff, 135,000 job seekers registered, and about 3000 business entities including Rockpool restaurant, Hungry Jack’s, and Dial a Dump. Approximately 2400 ‘shifts’ are filled each month.
As BRW goes on to say:
‘Applicants upload details including their skills, education level, photos, and videos. There are also personality profile questions. On the other end, employers post jobs and requirements. They are then matched to each other, with the employer finally paying $22 to connect to three people. Interviews can be conducted using a video-chat feature.
The site also has a dynamic calendar so a traveller can fill in his or her future location and availability, and be matched to short-term work along the way. Employers give the employees a star rating based on how well they did the job.
George says the site has evolved into part-time work and maternity-leave jobs, and is working towards permanent shifts.’
In a similar profile earlier this year StartUpSmart noted that OneShift was exploring venture capital investor options with a view to raising up to $30 million to fund its desired expansion into New Zealand and south-east Asia.
If you think this is probably another fly-by-night operation, think again.
We have received positive feedback from both our users, job seekers and businesses looking to hire. I believe the success of the site is largely due to its unique functionality, the online platform matches a job seeker to an available position based on their skills, location and availability. On both behalves this saves a job seeker and an employer time, effort and money as the process of sifting through endless, unrelated resumes has been removed.
The positive response to the platform has also influenced our future plans of expansion to New Zealand. At the moment we are making the final improvements to the site and ensuring that the job network is servicing the variety of industries using OneShift to the best of its ability. Once this stage is completed, the site will be launched overseas in a couple of weeks.
I like the fact that the site matches people. It's a great way of essentially doing the work for both parties, based on the information they have given them, and therefore saving a lot of time. They will no doubt expand very successfully and seem to have a very clear goal in mind.