We constantly hear about the importance of networking. It’s often said to be the best way to land a dream job, further your career, or simply get on peoples’ radar for future opportunities. And aside from networking for professional reasons, we all have our own personal networks: from our college besties on Facebook, to the randos who follow you on Instagram and Twitter, and everyone in between.
Now, how many times have you said “What can my Facebook friends do for me?” Okay, maybe not that many times, since you’re probably not an inherently selfish or narcissistic person, but hear me out. I’m about to tell you about a way for you to help your network help you by helping them. I’m sure you followed that.
Boon is a startup out of Culver City, CA that pays people for successful hires within their networks. Here’s how it works:
- Businesses post opportunities to Boon outlining the opportunities requirements as well as the reward amount for the individual who’s referral fulfills the requirements.
- Boon followers get a notification of the opportunity
- Those followers leverage Boon to search through contacts on selected social networks and refer the opportunity to candidates most likely to meet the opportunities requirements
- Upon receiving a referral, the contact chooses to accept or decline the opportunity. If they accept, the information they have uploaded to their Boon profile is automatically forwarded to the business to review.
- The business then accepts or declines to speak with the referred candidate. If the business accepts, Boon automatically facilitates a time for the two parties to connect.
- If the business decides to hire the referred candidate, the Boon member who made the referral is notified and the reward (up to $5000 per successful referral) is automatically transferred from the business to the Boon member who made the successful referral
Boon’s goal is to leverage personal networks to do what have traditionally been the jobs of recruiters. They’re hoping to disrupt the $400 billion recruiting industry, one referral at a time (or–best case scenario–many referrals at a time). In order to do this successfully, they hope to streamline the process so that only relevant opportunities are making their ways to the right people.
This seems to be the next step in a recent shift in hiring trends over the last few years. Traditional recruiters will have to seriously adjust their strategies to remain relevant into the future.