getstaffed is recruitment 2.0

I’ve sat on this post for a while. Um’ing and Ah’ing about posting or not. But no more. So here goes …

One of the really critical thing about starting a business is getting the right exposure. Traditionally it’s been MSM (the mainstream media) who have been courted because of their reach. The getstaffed story is a pretty compelling one: a fresh new business looks to use intelligent web technologies to disintermediate recruitment agencies who are seen by many (most?) of their customers as costly and offering indifferent service. Shhhhh - if you listen carefully, you can hear the howls of protest of recruitment agency owners as they dispatch another Dom Perignon.

So we approached a major NZ newspaper. A reporter took the bait, got back to me and asked for a 30min chat. The chat turned into 60+ minutes an ended with the reporter co-ordinating a time for the [now award winning] photographer to take some snaps of Greg and I. This duly happened, and 100’s of photos later  the photo shoot was done. Presumably it took so long because one or both of us have a facial elegance of the side of a quarry

And then we waited. And waited.

Some time later I contacted the reporter who I genuinely believe was furious… towards their editor. Apparently a story about a Recruitment 2.0 start-up could offend the papers large recruitment agency advertisers. Horrors…

So there you have it. We have a great story - well 500+ contractors and 29 businesses and everyone else we speak to thinks so, a reporter has researched and written a story, there are photo’s ready to roll .. and the editor of a major daily newspaper won’t publish the story out of a fear that their advertising revenue would be impacted. Perhaps that fear is evidence of a bright future for getstaffed.com. I want to make it so.