Tech Insights: On-Demand Talent Comes to the Aid of Recruiting

One of the most important new categories of HR technology is the talent platform.

These are the apps that connect clients to on-demand labor. In almost any field you can imagine, there are skilled people eager to work on short-term projects.

Of course, you need to find those people and that’s why this category of apps is important.

Finding the right person – with an app

Whether you need someone to drive you around, do market research, or write code, you can find the right person via the right talent platform.

Here’s an example: One sort of talent that recruiting departments sometimes need is a technical specialist who can sort out if a prospect has the exact skills needed for the open position. This is exactly the kind of task that fits well with on-demand talent.

One day you may need 30 minutes of time from a database analyst to verify the technical skills of a candidate; another day it might a few hours of work for someone who can ask tough questions to candidates claiming to be UX interface experts. One talent platform that offers this particular kind of on-demand help is eTeki (www.eTeki.com).

What is interesting?

It’s interesting that in even a narrow domain (interviewing for technical skills) a talent platform has sprung up to address a nagging problem.
A platform at eTeki can potentially find really expert people who do this kind of work on the side, both to earn some extra cash and because they find it fun. Few will build their career around being a technical interviewer, but it’s a nice addition to the portfolio of what they do. (And wouldn’t you rather have a portfolio of revenue sources, not just one job?)

What is really important?

Talent platforms are becoming a powerful way of matching talent to short term tasks in a way that wouldn’t have been practical before. In the past we would have done these short term tasks ourselves, even if we weren’t very good at it, or tried to get help from the limited pool of people we knew. Now we have much better access to free agents around the world. We ought to embrace this new way of accessing talent just like we embraced the power of smart phones and social media.