Bounty Hunting Hits Wall Street
Courtesy of A&E
Would you pay a one-time charge of $100 to use a job-networking site? $10? How about $15,000? OneWire, a New York job-networking start up, bets that you will. Well, that a Wall Street firm will. With more than 61 firms and 40,000 individual candidates already on board, the counterintuitive notion of a business paying for services currently offered for free elsewhere may not be so far-fetched.
Until now, LinkedIn has been considered the dominant force in the world of job-networking, providing professionals with a platform to expand their business contacts. So what strategic innovation could be causing such a stir? OneWire claims that LinkedIn-inspired sites, by requiring individual users to search for job opportunities rather than streamlining the process and focusing on corporate recruiters, are simply approaching the situation from the wrong direction.
OneWire’s aim—to ‘take the search out of the job search’—allows recruiters to search for candidates based on data the applicants themselves provide. However, this data may only be selected from a predetermined number of answers, allowing recruiters to locate candidates who fit their criteria. OneWire is furthermore completely confidential—no identifiable information is released to potential recruiters until the candidate himself chooses to do so. It seems that finally, in 2010, the days of ineffective privacy measures are coming to a close. If only Facebook could establish something so user-friendly.
However, the most innovative and intriguing aspect of OneWire’s approach is undoubtedly its ‘Bounty Hunting’ feature. (Fun fact: Actual bounty hunting is only legal in the United States and the Philippines. Take from that what you will.) Recruiters who fail to find a candidate can send a bounty notification to ‘nearly-successful’ applicants, who may themselves know candidates for the position. If the secondary candidate is successful, OneWire awards a bounty to the hunter. You don’t have to be an entrepreneurial genius to know when a star initiative crosses your path. Who hasn’t secretly dreamed of being a bounty hunter—tracking down criminals, fugitives, and Wall Street employees for a living?
President Brin McCagg is so confident his model will work that he predicts the death of sites like LinkedIn, as well as any similar search software. McCagg also states that he would happily refund a recruiter who fails to locate a desirable candidate within a few days, after a number of search intiatives.
Although McCagg bases his confidence on recruiter interest and impressive investor enthusiasm ($17 million from 67 investors to date), it would be unwise to underestimate the power of those ambitious former Wall Street executives and their need for spending money. If OneWire began to take off and I were a certain bounty hunter with my own show on A&E, I might start researching some other career options myself.
[Courtesy of Business Insider]
