Expand the network to find a job

By RICHARD WOOD

If you're hankering for a new job but are sick of recruitment firms and employment advertisements, or you're an employer who just can't find the right person, then an entrepreneurial Christchurch company might have the answer.

RealContacts.com is a web-based method of passing around information about jobs through friends of friends.

You put your name and email into the RealContacts system and immediately start building your own network of people with whom you will share information about jobs.

If someone you come across is already a member you suddenly tap into their existing network as well as rapidly expanding your network and the networks of anyone connected to yours.

It's surprisingly simple to use. On RealContacts you have "levels" of contacts. On the first level are the people you know directly and are the only ones who know your name on the system.

The second level is for people you don't know personally but who are friends of your direct contacts.

The third level is friends of the second level contacts - and so on.

You don't see the names of the people at the lower levels but you do see jobs available from up to five levels away, filterable by job type and location. Jobs under your selected categories will also be emailed to you.

It can feel a bit like multi-level marketing, especially when you are trying to interest your friends in the concept and you realise you may have to wait a while until they get their friends to join as well.

But don't let that put you off as it is a free service (except for the 2 per cent of salary paid by an employer on a successful placement.

The system does not involve a rating mechanism - although you can remove friends from your immediate contact list if you fall out with them.

In effect, it models conversations at a pub or coffee shop, or in gossip sessions on the phone. On the site you identify yourself as someone looking for a job, offering work, looking for staff, or just helping out.

In real life you will consider seriously a job that is mentioned by a friend because they know you. You will be slightly more reserved about jobs that your friends know of from their friends, and so on.

At some point the reference factor becomes meaningless, after all there's the "six degrees of separation" cliche that you can find anyone in the world through six contacts.

A site in the United States called Friendster.com uses a similar approach to help people find dates and make new friends through mutual friends. It has been a roaring success internationally, and hundreds of thousands of people are involved. Other sites have also sprung up for a variety for purposes.

RealContacts has been going about 12 months but has yet to be fully marketed.

Its chief executive, Grant Ryan, claims just "thousands" of users so far but a deal this week with the Kiwi Expat Association looks set to expand that by hooking into KEA's own "thousands" of global members.

Additional services are being looked at specifically for KEA that will allow for sharing other information such as sales leads and international market intelligence.

Ryan said RealContacts was also discussing involving the Software Cluster in Christchurch and Women in Technology.

Ryan was behind the firm Globalbrain, the creator of a search engine technology that was sold in the dotcom boom and was subsequently brought back to New Zealand after the dotcom crash. It now trades as SLI Systems.

He said it was when reflecting on the roller coaster ride of building Globalbrain that they realised that all the staff came from people recommended by contacts.

"It was scary how random it was finding those people. Good people are key to a successful business but it is random and ad hoc."

RealContacts is the result of trying to formalise that approach. "It's not about online networking, it's about enhancing your real world networks through a tool that makes that information flow more easily".

He said in some industries the number of people hired by word of mouth was close to 50 per cent.

And how will RealContacts get its placement money from all corners of the globe?

Ryan said that because of the networking approach, getting paid by employers had not been a problem. "People don't want to be seen to be ripping people off. It's also very good value."

Real Contacts

Friendster