Online: the ‘sharing economy’
Original post by NICK CHURCHOUSE via stuff
Elyssa Pallai founded micro-tasking website Pocket.Jobs to match talent to need, skill to shortage, pet feeder to pet feeder needer.
She describes Pocket.Jobs as ”a connection marketplace” linking people to people online, facilitating the delivery of a needed service or talent in the real world within existing communities.
People with a need for curtains can find someone nearby who can sew curtains, for example. Ditto dogwalking, lawnmowing, housesitting, fence painting and so on.
Outsourcing talent and resources is a common way people are using the web, and provides great avenues for business models delivering platforms for this behaviour tailored to specific communities of users.
Dubbed the ‘sharing economy’ it is home to some of the fastest growth and most hyped web-start-up companies.
Elance, based near San Jose, is an online site that allows companies and individuals to hire and pay independent professionals and contractors online and in the cloud.
The site boasted 80,000 new employers and $43-million in contractor earnings in the first quarter of 2012. And the number of people hiring on Elance grew by 120 per cent in 2011.
Another successful site is AirBnB which advertises people’s spare rooms for rent. There are countless others making huge revenues, as well as those looking to earn.
Original post by Lauren Hockenson via Mashable
Digital recruiting has certainly come a long way in such a short time. Since the dawn of the computerized job process, quick and simple strides have been made in recruiting that have ultimately produced a major impact on how employers find young talent with the right skills.
Original post by Bushra Azhar via Wamda
Investors are lined up, the website is done, glossy promotional material with smiling faces is all set, your core team is pumped, and you are ready to go live. Now is the time to worry about hiring the rest of your team. A social startup, unlike other businesses, is not just about “business”; it is also about passion and values, without which you cannot survive. Hiring the best team with all of the necessary ingredients is the key to your success.
That said, “best” can’t be determined simply by a university transcript or a recommendation letter; best is what gels most effectively with your enterprise and its values. Define your own best and then hire, not just those with suitable expertise, but those with suitable personalities that contribute toward success of your start-up.
Five little-known costs that can sting your start-up
Original post by Michelle Hammond via startupsmart
Starting a business invariably involves a series of “obvious” costs such as finding and fitting out business premises, permits and licenses, inventory and equipment, and initial marketing costs.
But according to the experts, there other less obvious costs that every start-up needs to consider.
“Start-up businesses incur many and various costs, and quite often they are caught by surprise when they discover just how much those costs can amount to,” says Marc Peskett.
Peskett is a director of MPR Group, a Melbourne-based firm providing business advisory services as well as tax, outsourced accounting and financial services to small businesses.
“Even when they have identified the costs, timing can be an issue. Finding sufficient cash at the right time in order to meet those costs can be a challenge,” he says.
“Broadly speaking, there are two groups of costs – setup and ongoing costs, and they both need to be planned for.”
“Apart from the financial cost, there’s also the time cost involved in establishing a business.”
“This needs to be factored in by a business owner, especially in those early stages when they are probably trying to do as much as they can themselves in order to save on costs.”
Original post by Dana Hull via MercuryNews
Looking for a place to stay, dinner to go, or a car to drive? A new economy is emerging in the Bay Area and around the country with a different, more convenient and often cheaper way to find what you need: sharing.
A wide array of local startups are angling to make a business out of matching those who have with those who need. There’s Airbnb, which helps travelers rent out spare futons or rooms from private parties and has emerged as a popular alternative to hotels. Getaround and RelayRides make it possible to rent cars like “Jimmy’s Toyota” in Mountain View for $8 an hour. When dog owners go on vacation, they can use DogVacay to find a host willing to take Fido into their own home.
The goods and services being bought and sold are familiar, but the way the marketplaces work is brand new. Location-based technology in smartphones often makes it possible to find what you need in your immediate neighborhood. And social media offer reviews from fellow users, creating a community of trust around the transaction.
How to Ensure Your Day Job Doesn’t Own Your Startup
Original post by Thursday Bram via 21times
There’s a hint of legend about the way that Apple was founded: Steve Wozniak was working at Hewlett-Packard when he and Steve Jobs came up with the idea to sell fully assembled printed circuit boards. The Woz took the idea to his managers at Hewlett-Packard and they turned him down. The rest, as they say, is history.
But what if Hewlett-Packard hadn’t turned down the concept that became the Apple computer? Wozniak probably had a contract outlining the terms of his employment. I can’t say for sure whether it included a clause that the company owned the rights to any intellectual property that its employees developed during their term of employment — but if that contract were written today, it certainly would.
If you’re employed while you’re working on a project on the side — whether it’s a full-fledged startup or something smaller — you need to make sure that your employer doesn’t actually wind up owning what you build.
The current crop of recently graduated job seekers is leaving small business employers struggling to identify the best possible candidates.
College graduations are in full swing and a fresh batch of college graduates is entering the career marketplace. But with an estimated 1.7 million recent college grads looking for work, a lot of small business employers are feeling overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of resumes they are receiving when they advertise job openings.
With many small businesses preparing to add staff in the near future, the business experts at Wasp Barcode Technologies offer a handful of tips designed to help business owners identify and recruit the perfect hires.
Original post by Sandra Lewis via Forbes
It is no longer necessary to wait until you have grown your business enough to hire “real employees.” By tapping into the global talent pool of virtual professional services, you can build a team of skilled professionals who choose to work from home at little risk and great reward.
It is Monday morning. In a Denver office, the phone rings – a client is calling from Osaka. The phone is answered promptly and courteously by a virtual assistant working from her home in Manchester, England. Not a faceless call center employee, but a dedicated team member, who just happens to be half a world away.
Small businesses like this one are busting down the walls and going global in sales and in their workforce. Smart businesses of all sizes are finding and hiring the exact skillset they need for a project, for ongoing work, or even a few hours without having to worry about overhead, payroll taxes, benefits or future layoffs. And they have good company. This year Elance, the world’s largest online platform for freelance work, topped $500 million in online work.
Original post by Josh Tolan via Business Insider
Branding isn’t just for your favorite household products anymore. In fact, branding isn’t just for brands anymore period. All good companies know they should be aware of their brand identity and what it says about the company at large. On an individual level, with the increasing importance of internet and social media, everyday workers are also becoming more savvy about their personal brand. So why aren’t more companies concerned about branding when it comes to employment and recruiting?
A good employer brand strategy is like a good product brand strategy. It focuses on, among other things, potential profitability, reference groups, “product” features, and word-of-mouth. Recent research has found that only about 51 percent of companies have a working employer brand strategy in place. A further 24 percent are working towards a plan and 19 percent are revising theirs. That means that it’s certainly not the time to wonder if making an employer brand strategy is useful. Your competitors are likely devising and implementing a branding plan that will help them scoop up all the top talent.
Turn your idea into a working business in a weekend
Original post by jessica via Startup Weekend
Auckland’s entrepreneurs will be able to develop their ideas in a weekend startup high intensity event on 15-17th June. Building on the successful international Startup Weekend model, Startup Weekend Auckland gives the Auckland’s innovators the chance to develop business ideas that could fuel the city’s future.
The third Auckland Startup Weekend is being held on Auckland’s North Shore at ecentre. ecentre is looking to enable the winner of the next Startup Weekend to take their business from garage to global. The winning team of the October 2011 Startup Weekend Auckland has come a long way from their 60 second pitch on a Friday night, to pitching in Singapore at DEMO Asia.
Ticket sales are now open via the website http://auckland.startupweekend.org/.
Startup Weekends are aimed at entrepreneurs and anyone thinking about business ideas. The process allows people to rapidly build and test ways of bringing the idea to market. Developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come along to form teams which will work on start-up ideas, building products, and launching. This leads to prizes, publicity and tangible outcomes.