Knowbella Tech: The Future of STEM Recruiting, Today
As the CEO of Knowbella Tech, I always enjoy having conversations with people about our company and the plans we have for the future. I find people love our commitment to an open science ideal, something which has the potential to help bring about many great advances in our knowledge and understanding. I also find people are intrigued by our mission to reintroduce some of the $4 trillion dollars¹ of unused and idle intellectual property back into the scientific community.
I believe that Knowbella Tech can be successful by being good for the global scientific community and a force for positive change. Today however, I would like to talk a little bit more about another side of Knowbella Tech for those of you who are interested in how we will eventually monetize our platform. As we grow the user base and attract intellectual assets we will be well postioned to build the largest engineering and science community in the world. Below I provide a bit of background and insights to our bigger vision.
The Changing Workforce
First though, a little background information. The employment landscape is changing rapidly. In the U.S. right now freelancing is valued at $1 trillion dollars.² According to The Wall Street Journal: “more than one in three US workers are freelancers — a figure expected to grow to 40 percent by 2020”.³ Worldwide, the freelancing industry is estimated to be up to $3 trillion.⁴ It is clear that the global trend is moving towards more freelancing and contingent workers. That is something to keep in mind for workers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields too.
In the U.S. science and engineering professionals have lower unemployment and larger than average salaries. Further, these professions are expected to enjoy greater growth than the national average.⁵ Demand is high and the supply is limited. That makes recruiting the right people time consuming, expensive and fraught with difficulty. The jobs are there for those who can do them, but sourcing the right candidate and expertise is the biggest challenge. I believe that traditional recruitment methods will not offer the best solutions in the face of these challenges. I believe Knowbella Tech can do better for not only advancing science but advancing STEM worker careers and opportunities.
Is Scouting The New Recruiting?
As a platform for open science, collaboration and publishing, Knowbella Tech will create an online ecosystem for science that is populated by highly skilled and talented individuals from around the world. In this way Knowbella Tech will become a repository of knowledge for finding, comparing, contrasting and analysing scientific work. Those who contribute to our ecosystem will be rewarded in the form of Helix tokens while recruiters and hiring managers will have a new tool to find the best contributors.
You might think that this sounds a lot like a LinkedIn for science, but we believe we can produce a far richer experience. On the Knowbella platform hiring managers will be able to see the contributions as soon as they are made, keeping users’ profile information accurate right up to the minute, in real time.
When was the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile?
Users who opt-in won’t need to update their curriculum vitae or redo their online profiles, they just need to keep doing their work, collaborating and contributing for which they will be rewarded with Helix.
The main benefits of recruitment with Knowbella Tech are:
- Enables fast searching for people with the right skill-sets and experience from across the globe.
- Allows more real-time information and in-depth analysis than traditional recruitment methods.
- Offers reassurance to hiring managers as profiles are connected to real work, reputations, results, and findings held on the system.
- Considerably lowers costs by speeding up the recruiting process.
- Allows for the hiring (and payment) of contingent and freelance workers from around the world without the worry of currency exchange and cross-border taxes as everything can be done in house.
Wrapping Up
Knowbella Tech is well positioned to be the largest engineering and scientific community in the world. By providing rich tools, services, intellectual assets, Helix tokens, and technologies we will attract global talent to our platform. Through this open system Knowbella Tech will help the users to advance their careers, open new opportunities to work together, and find supplemental professional side gigs. We are positioned for the new era of recruiting, staffing, and sourcing STEM talent. Stay tuned for more updates on how we are leading the charge in sourcing STEM talent around the globe.
Citations
1. Hovis, Jeff. “‘Orphan’ Technologies…Leaving Four Trillion Dollars in Value on the Shelf”, ISPIM Innovation Insights, Product Genesis, April 2014
2. Unknown. “New study finds freelance economy grew to 55 million Americans this year, 35% of total U.S. workforce”, Upwork.com, (https://www.upwork.com/press/2016/10/06/freelancing-in-america-2016/), Nov 2016.
3. Lauren Weber, “One in three U.S. workers is a freelancer,” Wall Street Journal, (http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/09/04/one-in-three-u-s-workers-is-a-freelancer/), September 4, 2014
4. Sonal Khetarpal, “The Rise of the Freelancer”, Business Today, (https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/features/companies-are-hiring-more-freelancers-than-ever/story/230742.html) April 2016
5. John F. Sargent Jr, ”The U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Recent, Current, and Projected Employment, Wages, and Unemployment”, https://fas.org. (https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43061.pdf), Nov 2017
