Jobs and Social Networking

As many of you that read this blog know, I've been involved as either a participant (Spoke Software) or innocent bystander (Friendster, Myspace) in the social networking space for some time now.

There are two new "social networking" sites I thought I would bring to you attention that are pretty interesting (both run by folks I know). Both of these sites are focused on helping people find jobs or helping companies find qualified candidates.

The first is a new site called Doostang. Doostang, at first glance, is similar to another social networking / jobs site called LinkedIn. There are a couple of marked differences though:

1. LinkedIn tried to build a huge network and then monetize it by adding job listings and recruiting. A viable strategy perhaps, but building a job site first and a social network second is Doostang's objective. Time will tell which is the better strategy.
2. The quality of jobs on Doostang is much higher because it is a closed professional network. They even have stuff like going on tour with Coldplay.
3. They don't make you pay to list jobs. I talked with the company and they don't plan to ever charge employers and employees to post jobs. I'm a big believer in the "build value for users and there will be ways to monetize it" theory. I think that's their plan. Other revenue sources might include: advertising, background checks, etc.

The second site is called karmaOne. karmaOne has a totally different take on the job market. They took the typical recruiter model (companies generally pay a recruiter 15-20% of first year salary to hire qualified candidates) and put a new and interesting spin on it.

karmaOne works like this:

1. As an employer I post a job and put the amount I am willing to pay someone to refer a qualified candidate. I only pay if I end up hiring that person.
2. I send an email via karmaOne to my list of contacts (my "social network") asking them if they know anyone they would like to refer.
3. If they do know someone they send them my way. If they don't know someone they can forward on my email and still take a cut of the referral fee if someone they know ends up referring a candidate that is hired.

The cool thing about this is that I can skip out on having to pay a recruiter crazy fees and use my network to find good people that I otherwise might not have known about it. Now my friends really have an incentive to pass along my "hey, we are hiring" email spam!

Looking at how people find jobs has been well-documented in sociology literature. My friend Mark Granovetter was one of the first to point out in his paper "The Strength of Weak Ties,"that "connections between colleagues, acquaintances etc., are more important for personal advancement, such as getting good jobs, than the strong ties of family and friendship." Doostang and karmaOne are two good examples of sites that are that are using this research to create viable businesses.

At 4INFO, my current endeavor in the mobile search space, we've posted jobs on both Doostang and karmaOne. Nobody has been hired yet off either site, but we've had some very good referrals. If we end up hiring anyone I will update this post. Speaking of hiring, we are still in the hunt for a couple of very talented engineers to round out our team. If you know of anyone, send them my way!

Technorati Tags:
4INFO, Social Networking, Jobs, karmaOne, Doostang