PROBLEM
There's a lot of sales in the marketplace, making it hard to find the quality amid the noise. Matching employers with employees is costly, and many people are not happy in the jobs they are in. Matching investors and founders is bottlenecked with gatekeepers. Finding partners for a venture, a sports team, or music band can be challenging. Competition can produce a lot of fronting, fake or warped history, and attractive promises. Sifting through the bluster takes time, and trusting intermediaries costs.
- Finding the right people is hard
- Searching is time-intensive or costly
- Job interviews suck
- There's too much sales in the way
CHALLENGES
Can we cultivate the wisdom of the crowd to improve recommendation? Can crowd-intelligence match employers and employees, founders with investors? Help writers find the right publishers, or editors find the right content-writers? Or help partners form their team or band? Can we trust people to share opportunities wisely?
Reward people who invest time in matching up opportunities for others.
The task of matching opportunities is a variation of Virality, which matches products, services and experience with consumers. We reward the chain of people who connect up the right people. In turn we are matched up with opportunities ourselves.
You Are Not Alone
Instead of just you working to find a job or investors or the right publisher for your writing or music, what if everyone tried to help? Instead of putting out a job request, you enlisted the help of everyone to find the right person for the job? You are not alone. By sharing forward opportunities, we help the right people connect. We do not need to know the right people, but we may know someone who might help. In turn, we are matched with opportunities and connect with the right people.
Naturally Incentivised
Once the right people are connected, a reward is distributed equally to members of the chain between them. For example, a finders' fee for recruitment of £1000 is distributed to the four people between an employer and employee, each receiving £250. If only two people in the chain, each gets £500. Therefore, when considering who to share with, we are naturally incentivised to think of people who really might be the right people, or who really may know the right people. This rewarding of the chain is the social equivalent to the dopamine surge which reinforces a pathway or pattern through neurons when learning a new thing. We are incentivised to help.
What Goes Around Comes Around
Those who are naturally good at connecting up people will find themselves in chains more often, thus generating revenue for themselves. In addition, the good deed of sharing opportunities for others, means that others are looking for opportunities for you. Share what you value, what you'd like to see in the world. Want to see more women in CEO positions? Better representation of BAME in organisations? Or want to see a local artist produce a blockbuster film? Connect up the right people. Every ten opportunities shared may result in an opportunity coming your way, which may take the form of a job or an opportunity to professionalise your art, or an opening to invest, or might just help you find the team you've been missing.
Do This
Sequence of actions to set up Social Neuron.
Link card to your request which is online. A video requesting what you are looking for, a text description specifying details.
Include in your linked content a financial reward to be split everyone between you and match. Ask people to Share forward your content. The reason why someone looks at your content is because they trust the person who shared with them. They will share it forward if you ask them to, and they may invest in sharing if you provide a sufficiently attractive reward to do so.
Share with a few trusted friends, folks you feel will share forward appropriately. Quality, not quantity. It is better to share with two people who share forwards than with 10 who might.
Once you find your match, and the opportunity is realised, release the promised Reward. This should be split equally to everyone in the chain between you and your match.
Encourage organic sharing using the following techniques
Nudge
Nudge people by thanking them and asking them to share it forward, especially if they have valued it highly.
Reward
Ensure the Reward is realistic, eg the finder’s fee for a job opportunity, or a percentage of the investment found.
Learn
Join the Open Meeting to learn from other match makers how to successfully match opportunities.