Here’s an interesting concept from blog reader Todd Palmer, who wants reader opinions as to whether his concept can work in the marketplace; and he also needs a good domain name.
Todd’s idea:
The site would function as a recruiting network, giving students and corporations an entirely new dimension of access to one another. Corporations would post tasks, real or simulated, for students to work on. These tasks would be organized by subject area or industry, such as computer science, mechanical engineering, journalism, marketing, web design, etc.
Already Been Blegged
Here’s what Freakonomics readers have been blegging for lately.
Students would create individual or team profiles and work on selected tasks, submitting their completed work in the form of text, images, videos, power point, audio, or any other format that can be uploaded. Companies will have the ability to rate submitted work, allowing students to accumulate a “work score.”
The benefit for the corporation would be their new outlet to recruit students who have a proven ability to excel at the type of assignment they will be faced with on the job.
They will also find that they have a large audience of well-educated students who are quite motivated to impress them with their submissions. This will give them the power to bleg. They will be able to post tasks that they are unable or unwilling to pay a single individual to do, and they will get at least a few surprisingly high-quality submissions due to the nature and size of their audience. They will be able to tap into the creative minds of the masses at their will.
The students will be able to showcase their skills while still in school full time, and they will also be able to build a work portfolio that can be integrated into their resume. Each top-notch project that they complete for a corporation will get them noticed, and make them more likely to be hired upon graduation. This format could even allow for students to go pro early, meaning they could get recruited while still in school and get a jump on their careers while their new employers pay for the remainder of their education.
This new site could be to summer internships what online education has become to on-campus education. It would give students exposure to real-world scenarios and assignments without the face-to-face interaction of an internship.
Todd asks the following questions:
– Would corporations and students spend the time and effort to participate in such a site?
– If all parties participated in the site as hoped, would it create a win/win situation for companies and students?
– Could it have a large enough impact to alter the traditional college curriculum by encouraging the teaching of material more relevant to the real world?
– What could be added to make the site more useful to all parties?
– What would a good domain name be?
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The major problem with this idea is that a lot of companies would probably use it as a way to get work done for free, without bothering to actually hire any of the participants.
A key consideration is that applicants be able to take their portfolios with them and reuse them in different contexts. That is, if the portfolio is owned exclusively by the company asking for the work, there is no benefit to the applicants (other than the possibility of getting a job, but that already exists).
An additional win would be features that make it easy for applicants to remix existing portfolios for new applications.
I don’t see why more corporations simply give trial work as part of the interview process – nothing crazy, but something that demonstrably shows whether the person has skills, talents, ingenuity, and the like.
A professor of mine who taught more for kicks than anything does this for his small accounting firm – giving them simple tests to start off an interview. Nobody has ever declined to take it, and he’s easily weeded out numerous candidates who otherwise seemed good.
That screams exploitation.
This is brilliant–I’d use it now if it was available (as someone just starting their career, not even a student). So many jobs are gotten via networking because people don’t like to deal with ‘unknowns’. If you had a creditable portfolio behind you already, it might help you get roles that you otherwise could only have gotten by ‘knowing someone’.
I can see where this would help companies too–by widening their pool of available talent. I’m sure they don’t like to solely rely on networking either, as that almost assuredly misses talent (especially folks who may be awesome at their jobs, but awful at people skills–computer scientists, anyone?).
Why create a new domain–pitch the idea to LinkedIn as a new segment of their site. This would go hand in hand with networking.
In the computer industry, this already exists… it’s called “working on open-source software” and includes coding, graphics, documentation, web administration, and more. Not nearly as many people work on it as they could, even though it offers the opportunity to create a very public portfolio. Somehow, even among the unemployed, there’s a distaste for doing work for delayed and intangible benefits.
How about http://www.slavelabor.com? How would I, Joe College get paid for project x? how would I defend my IP rights against megacorp who is right now using my PowerPoint to sell the next big thing?
Perhaps you should contact Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and see how much fun it is when Mary the Artist shows her work to megamart and they say no thanks and six weeks later her idea is on the shelf for $8.99 but made in China?
Realsume – real world experience for your resume.