A comparison of different recruitment platforms
2019 is the year of the gig economy. As more companies follow in the footsteps of Uber and Airbnb, and the percentage of millennial freelancers rises to 46%, a certain question emerges: How do you find workers for the gig economy?
It is no wonder that companies have difficulty finding the right platform to source their gig-workers. The traditional recruitment model is not apt for the nature of app jobs; nor is its structure sustainable for the future of work. The long-established recruitment style contrasts so greatly with the docile model of the on-demand economy that companies have to rely on dodgy referral websites, and worse, their own platforms to rigorously try to recruit new workers.
This is terribly disadvantageous for newcomers.
Which brings us to our most important point. The ideal recruitment model for the on-demand economy is one that is
We will now take a look at the different recruitment models of Sourcie, Company X and Company Y. For the sake of fairness, we have chosen to keep Company X and Company Y anonymous. In order to adapt to the recruitment needs of the gig economy, Company X and Company Y have recently started following more modern strategies tailored for companies hiring gig-workers. These two are rather big names in the recruitment industry, and as you’ve guessed it, their recruitment models remain still fairly conventional despite their efforts.
1. Speedy recruitment process
One of the defining characteristics of the gig economy is speed. It’s a scenario we have seen before: a driving company launches in an unexpected market as an unheard-of idea receives a large amount of investment. In this competitive market that is the gig economy, speed has become a necessity to make your business a sustainable model, a reliable brand and a timely enterprise.
We took a look at how AppJobs GAP, Company X and Company Y value speed when it comes to hiring temporary staffing and gig-workers. Although Company X did focus on momentum, their understanding of the term was slightly different. Because Company X doesn’t provide online listings for staffing jobs, they have to seek out gig-workers who will then be referred to these gig-economy companies. The process might take anywhere from 10 days to a full month.
Company Y, on the other hand, didn’t judge speed as defining factor. This is due to the fact that Company Y’s model is largely traditional and their target audience is temporary workers, but not on-demand workers. In other words, quality wins over speed for Company Y.
Now this is not bad at all, but it’s not a perfect fit for gig-economy companies. On average, Company Y takes 3 - 4 weeks to find and refer about 50 workers for a given on-demand company. Although the leads can be good quality, it takes Company Y way too long to find the leads.
Sourcie focuses on speed and quality equally. The biggest difference between Company X, Company Y and AppJobs GAP is that AppJobs GAP refers workers that are already part of the gig economy workforce. Thus, AppJobs GAP doesn’t have to waste time seeking out gig workers or planning recruitment marketing strategies. The platform simply refers its already tailored workforce to your business, resulting in fast and high quality recruitment. It takes AppJobs less than a week to add your listing, promote your business and send you quality leads.
This brings us to our next point. Now that we have covered the importance of speed and looked at how all three companies compare, let’s investigate solutions directed at targeting, reach and geo-localization.
2. Targeting, reach and geo-localization
For the traditional recruitment model, localization wasn’t an issue at all. A company generally wouldn’t recruit workers in more than one location (unless at a large industrial scale), and it would certainly not recruit over 100 workers in tens of hundreds of different locations at the same time.
This changed with the gig economy.
Targeting and reach are now absolutely crucial when it comes to finding the right leads for your business.
Yes, someone might be based in California.
They might be the right age to work for/with your business.
They might even have a driver’s license.
But how do you know if they are the best of the best you can get as a match?
In other words, are they a perfect match when it comes to:
• Age
• Gender
• Geo-location
• Licenses
• Certificates
• Physical assets (e.g. 5-door-car)
• Previous experience
• Their expected reimbursement
• Availability
and more?
Company X has an in-house screening team that goes through resumés, calls potential candidates and presents you with a list of temporary workers at the end of the month. Although it’s favorable that they have a team to do the work manually when it comes to quality (but not speed), gig economy companies approve of around 72% of the leads presented to them by Company X.
Can you guess why?
Company X’s traditional model, despite their efforts, fails to ensure that all the boxes are checked because they lack the infrastructure to automate lead generation completely.
Company Y doesn’t acknowledge the target and reach issue and relies on their expertise in the recruitment industry to find tailored leads. On average, the gig economy business accepts 59% of the workers sent by Company Y. In addition, the whole process is painfully slow.
Much of the trouble is not even due to technology: it’s because Company X and Company Y have never worked in such large-scale yet immensely targeted recruitment before.
Sourcie ensures that you get 95% targeted leads every single time. With over half a million gig workers and freelancers in over 180 cities, Appjobs uses their own algorithm to provide you with skilled workers that are not only interested in your business but have probably worked with a direct competitor of yours. They know what they are doing.
Sourcie also helps your business launch in a completely new market. As your gig economy recruitment partner, AppJobs GAP targets leads by category, previous skills, experience and geo-localization and more.
Company X has an in-house screening team that goes through resumés, calls potential candidates and presents you with a list of temporary workers at the end of the month. Although it’s favorable that they have a team to do the work manually when it comes to quality (but not speed), gig economy companies approve of around 72% of the leads presented to them by Company X.
Can you guess why?
Company X’s traditional model, despite their efforts, fails to ensure that all the boxes are checked because they lack the infrastructure to automate lead generation completely. Company Y doesn’t acknowledge the target and reach issue and relies on their expertise in the recruitment industry to find tailored leads. On average, the gig economy business accepts 59% of the workers sent by Company Y. In addition, the whole process is painfully slow. Much of the trouble is not even due to technology: it’s because Company X and Company Y have never worked in such large-scale yet immensely targeted recruitment before. Sourcie ensures that you get 95% targeted leads every single time. With over half a million gig workers and freelancers in over 180 cities, AppJobs GAP uses their own algorithm to provide you with skilled workers that are not only interested in your business but have probably worked with a direct competitor of yours. They know what they are doing. Sourcie also helps your business launch in a completely new market. As your gig economy recruitment partner, AppJobs GAP targets leads by category, previous skills, experience and geo-localization and more.
3. A user-friendly recruitment platform for businesses
Managing your recruitment efforts and keeping track of your leads through email can be a hassle. It can be an even bigger hassle when you want to stop recruitment for Los Angeles, double your efforts for Chicago and analyze why interest in New York City is so low.
The gig economy needs a user-friendly recruitment platform for businesses. In order to optimize and target their marketing recruitment efforts, these businesses must have the flexibility to adjust their budgets instantly and have 100% freedom in their recruitment spending.
Once you have decided on your spending budget, Company Y proceeds with giving you daily/weekly updates on your progress. If you want to make budget changes, however, this can take up to a full day. Overall, Company Y’s clients get 90% freedom over their budget with minor details increasing their dependence on external factors (communication issues, technical bugs, time differences, etc.) by 10%.
Company X has recently built a digital platform where you can see your spendings as a business. Although this is a great effort on their side to make their business more gig economy-friendly, they still rely on communication via email and manual adjustments by account managers. If a partner wants to adjust their budget, they still have to talk to an account manager, who will do it for them. In conclusion, Company X’s clients have 93% freedom over their budget, with additional factors increasing their dependence by 7%. It takes Company X’s clients about 5 hours on average to adjust and finetune their budget and lead generation initiatives. The very speed that the gig economy thrives on works against Company X and Company Y’s clients in this case.
Let’s take a look at Sourcie.
Sourcie gives companies 100% control over their recruiting budget.
How?
Soucrie lets you decide and update your budget, concentrate your spending on certain locations and even instantly stop all campaigns with a single click. It takes less than a second for you to adjust your recruitment initiatives on Sourcie. In addition, all gig economy companies get access to a customized analytics panel where they can look at their gig-worker acquisition flow, analyze competitive insights to compare their popularity with their competitors, receive tailored data on demographics and even industry trends for their job category and city/country.
Sourcie, Company X and Company Y all provide specialist support for budget issues and technical glitches. Yet, since Company X and Company Y rely heavily on manual updates by their account managers, misunderstandings and communication issues make the process rather tedious and tricky. Lastly, the fact that clients have to pay per listing and per lead is less than ideal.
4. New age recruitment marketing
We have talked about the importance of targeting the right leads in our second point. Targeting the right leads is indeed crucial and sounds great in theory. But how does that work out in practice? There are two ways of doing it:
Going through resumés, manually contacting all the possible leads and making a list of potential recruits
OR
Using the most tailored and powerful tool of the 21st century: social media
Company Y uses trained recruitment specialists to meet all potential leads one by one and doesn’t work with social media or any marketing channels to promote their clients’ recruitment ads. Indeed, because Company Y relies on closed in-house recruitment, their promotional marketing efforts contribute to 3% increase in their lead generation.
Company X uses emailing marketing for their database. Although the attempt certainly doesn’t go unnoticed, the initiative is too weak and is not customized. In other words, everyone in Company X’s database gets the same announcement newsletter, regardless of what job category they specialize in. Their newsletter marketing promotion leads to a 15% increase in lead generation.
Sourcie uses AppJobs’ social media channels and the largest gig worker community in the world to optimize their marketing initiatives: The AppJobs Community. Sourcie makes optimal use of promotional marketing to reach the right leads: clients get customized blog posts, their own newsletters, social media posts & videos. AppJobs’ promotional marketing efforts lead to a 50% increase in lead generation.
Social media presence and online marketing are not only vital for targeted lead generation but play a critical role in employer branding and benefits brand visibility on the clients’ end. That’s why AppJobs GAP’s marketing efforts focus on brand visibility and use new-age strategies to help clients launch in new markets.
In an attempt to define the ideal recruitment partner for the gig economy (for both the oldtimers and newcomers), we have provided a comparison of SourcieP, Company X and Company Y. The analysis was based on the speediness of these three companies’ recruitment processes, their target and reach strategies, the user-friendliness and responsiveness of their platform and their promotional marketing initiatives, focusing on social media. As more companies emerge and the gig economy becomes more established, the need for high-quality targeted leads will become apparent than ever.