Greg from GetStaffed is a reader of this blog, and the other day I stumbled upon something he’d written.

It seems that a reporter from a major New Zealand paper got interested in the GetStaffed disintermediation story and spent time with them writing a piece about what they do. After waiting considerable time, the Get Staffers contacted said journalist to find out what the problem was. Apparently;

…a story about a Recruitment 2.0 start-up could offend the papers large recruitment agency advertisers.

Here on Diversity Blogs we hate commercially forced censorship, and love disruption and disintermediation. To this end I’m going to tell the story that couldn’t be repressed (or similar melodramatic terms!)

So what is GetStaffed? It simply seeks to disintermediate the current paradigm of IT contractor recruitment. GetStaffed are aware of the expense, poor service and lack of proactivity displayed by traditional recruiters. To this end they’ve created a service where potential contractors can register, upload their CVs and have testimonials for completed contracts build the kudos. All this is creating something of a “rise to the top” service.

For businesses their service saves money ($3/hour service fee for temp assignments, $2000 fee for permanent), and provides some nice features like being able to watchlist a certain individual and be advised when they become free. There’s also some nice things like points to the contractor for hours worked which can later either be donated to charity or converted to airmiles.

GetStaffed currently has over 700 contractors but that number should grow virally as they get more exposure.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

5 Comments
  • Thanks for the writeup Ben, all details correct! we’re pretty excited about getstaffed, while still having the angst and nervousness of a startup. so its great to get support from all quarters, and we have learned that traditional media is probably more interested in revenue gathering.

  • The service looks good – I’m going to sign up now. But I just wanted to point out that on the “Who we are” page, it’s great to see who runs the site. I commented on your eTree post a while back that I don’t trust startups that don’t tell you who runs the site, this is a great example of the creators proudly displaying who they are.

  • Falafulu Fisi |

    I think Greg’s GetStaffed is going to kill his competitors which are the dominant online recruitments such as jobseekers and the like. Having had an email dialog with Greg over recent months, I can see that he has great vision for taking GetStaffed further. There is no doubt in my mind (based on my online conversation with Greg), that the type of technology that he is going to developed into his GetStaffed application is state-of-the-art that is hardly been done commercially anywhere (to the best of my knowledge). The killer technology that Greg will introduce (perhaps now or over time) will definitely kill jobseekers and the likes.

    The established online recruitment agencies, either want to acquire GetStaffed because they feel threaten or otherwise Greg and GetStaffed acquire them, since they will be loosing market ground to GetStaffed.

    Good stuff Greg. Spread the words in the cloud and your day comes.

  • Thanks guys. We’re certainly very upfront about it all. Andrew and I are looking at completely changing the face of IT recruitment. $3/hr and we give $1 back to the contractor, or $2000 and we give $1000 back to the contractor. We recognise the value we can add is a meeting service, a worker marketing service (resumes, skills, testimonials). We don’t pretend we know all the jargon (what the hell is ITIL?), although we definitely know more than any IT recruiter.

    We just think its time for a change, and we’re choosing the simplest cheapest, most honest model we can, to change the industry for good. Early days, and some pretty tough days, but… time for change.

  • Yeah adding my to Greg’s thanks here. It’s awesome getting so much +ve feedback.

    We’re busy unbundling the components of today’s recruitment process, and giving our customers simple and fast online tools that they can use for free. Our other services (eg reference checking) can be purchased on an as needed basis.

    The establishment hate this. Large service bundles are places to hide huge, otherwise unjustifiable margins. We’re changing that.

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