zubka…. …bless you

I posted a press release from Zubka in the newsletter this week.  Their PR chap also arranged for me to have a chat with David Shieldhouse who set up the site. 

As I’m really keen on networking I love the idea of making the most of your business contacts.  At present, for UK recruiters, there are three main sites you should be looking at www.linkedin.com. www.openbc.com and www.ecademy.com.  They all work on the same principle.  You create a personal profile and then start "connecting" with other users.  As a recruiter you can then use your network to help source the perfect candidate for those hard to fill roles.  You can post jobs out to them and ask for referrals.  If you want to link to me on LinkedIn I’m here.

The guys behind Zubka think that these sort of sites are all well and good but for business networking to be more successful there has to be an incentive for you to do the leg work on someone else’s recruitment assignment. 

The Zubka site follows the same principle as www.h3.com in the US.  This site pays a "bounty" to the individual who helps find the candidate who gets the job.  You can see how it works here .  With H3 the person posting the job chooses how much the bounty is. 

With Zubka the fees are fixed.   You pay £25 to post the job and then a placement fee when the candidate takes the job.  They are on a sliding scale and work out at between 6% and 10% of basic salary.  For example if the candidate earns £25,000 the fee is £2,000 and if they earn  £70,000 it’s £5,500.  80% of the fee goes to the referrer, 15 per cent to Zubka and 5 per cent to the Referrer’s introducer.  So if everyone I know signs up and yet, I don’t help anyone directly get a job, I get a percentage of the placements in my chain.  If you want to connect on my recommendation my referrers link is here. 

It is going to be difficult for Zubka to be sure that every placement made as a result of an introduction via their site is billed for. However, they say that as the referrer has a financial interest they will help regulate this.  With a "placement fee" of up to 10% many recruitment firms won’t be able to afford to use the service so it may be used more by corporates or for assignments with good fees on them.  On the subject of financials, this is just a little niggle I have, why not refund the fee for posting the advert when the placement is made.  I understand why they feel the need to charge a fee (to dissuade non genuine job postings and time wasters) but there’s really no need to take a fee twice!

Anyway, as I said right at the start I like the idea of business networking so I’ve signed up to Zubka and will be more than happy to help out other users where I can.   www.zubka.com