Forget social media profiles: Sparrho helps employers find their next specialist hires with science

Sparrho’s vision is a world where everybody has the tools to allow science to improve any decision, recruitment included. Here’s how we’ll be using scientific content to match employers with the right PhDs and postdocs.

At the end of January, we launched our Research Perspectives initiative, sponsoring scientists to explain the context and importance of their publications, available on Sparrho, to researchers outside their own field, as well as the general public.

We believe that at scale, these Perspectives can facilitate more interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations, whilst informing the public of the recent advances in science.

How will Sparrho support scientific communication and recruitment in the long run?

Through our Research Perspectives, we will be featuring industry sponsors who share our long-term vision of improving the dissemination of scientific knowledge, and want to foster innovation in their fields.

This pilot initiative is designed to test a new model for streamlining PhD recruitment, where Sparrho provides a platform for employers to highlight their brand and vacancies to highly relevant students and researchers.

Our team will manage the entire commissioning, editorial, and marketing process for the Perspectives. Therefore, our users’ personal data and reading history will not be shared with the employers without explicit consent on a case-by-case basis.

This model will benefit key stakeholder groups in scientific publishing:

1.The general public and multi-disciplinary researchers will benefit from communication of the latest scientific advances in clear and concise Perspectives.

2. Researchers will be given a platform to showcase their expertise, and interact with a wider community, including new collaborators and industry partners, whilst being rewarded for their efforts by either Sparrho or an industry sponsor that they are happy to work with.

3. Content providers will receive more exposure for their brand and original publications via Sparrho’s Perspectives, and those interested in finding out when Perspectives have been written about their content can get in touch with our team.

How exactly will Sparrho be helping employers?

Employers will be able tap into Sparrho’s thorough understanding of our users’ reading interests to select the most relevant research articles and writers for their sponsored Perspectives.

Published Perspectives will be featured on Sparrho’s recommendation platform, blogs, and social media channels with branded acknowledgement of the employer’s sponsorship and links to invite interested candidates to interact with the employer.

By sponsoring content on our platform, employers are seen as innovators at the forefront of their industries and leaders in the global movement towards better digital dissemination of scientific content, thereby attracting high-quality candidates as well as media interest.

Feedback so far from researchers

The response we have received so far from the research community to showcase their publications has been overwhelming, and from this week onwards, we’ll be publishing a new Perspective every Wednesday. Click here to view our first batch of Perspectives, covering topics as varied as penguins to planets.

“Sparrho’s Perspectives are a great way to spread the word about my research, and I wish I had this opportunity when I was a PhD student.”
 — Dr Henry Day, Sparrho Perspective writer, Chemist, United Kingdom

We were originally concerned that researchers would be uncomfortable with associating their scientific writing with an industry brand, but all of the writers that we have asked have expressed that this would not be a problem as long as: (1) they were told the identity of the sponsor before they committed to write the Perspective, and (2) the sponsor of the Perspective is clearly identified as separate from the funders and authors of the original work.

The Sparrho team is continuing to consult those within and beyond the scientific community on how they feel about our proposed model for industry sponsoring researchers to better communicate their work, while building their brands for PhD recruitment.

We value your views — if you would like to contribute, please leave a comment below, or email Dr Sybil Wong (sybil@sparrho.com) directly.