Hiring is dead, long lives work sharing
Online recruitment platforms have sparked a revolutionary idea but ultimately it’s only a digital version of the good old well-established recruitment system. If you thought that these platforms would democratize freelancing to do without recruiters, it’s a mistake.
It’s not about the technologies you’ll use: candidate network, chat bot, performance scoring, matching algorithm, Artificial Intelligence, or any other solution that a developer might create. These technologies help to solve some aspects of the problem, but the real issue is more profound.
Recruitment, even improved by these technologies, will not provide enough work for everyone.
Recruitment will always create inequalities
The problem is recruitment.
To do the same job:
Is it normal that a woman will be paid less than a man?
Is it normal that a young will be paid 500$ or so as an intern?
Is is normal that a remote worker will earn less?
While wanting to hire the “best” candidate, recruiters use certain criteria: experience, diplomas, and, all too often, sex, age, skin color, health, geographical location. These criteria define the value: if those criteria equals zero than the price of the candidate equals zero.
By favoring certain types of profiles, the system becomes unbalanced: there are few experienced profiles and a majority looking for experience.
We can not create a balanced workforce without having a minimum of profiles that become more and more experienced over time.
The job market, already has its problems, recruiters work only with companies with the most important resources and monopolize talent by outbidding on the value of these profiles.
This prevents the development of smaller companies: as long as they can not match the prices of large corporations, they will not have the resources they need to grow and the opportunity to create new jobs. Whoever has access to recruiters and can pay the highest price, controls the market and protects itself from competition from small businesses.
Some may argue that agility or internships will allow small businesses to compete with large groups through innovative methods and cheap employees, but that’s only postponing the problem.
The organization with the best talents will always be the most productive.
Increasing market prices thanks to recruiters, who benefit largely as middlemen, may be better for freelancers but this does not solve the problem of centralization of work.
Inequalities will always leads to centralization
In this system, discrimination in accessing to work for young people, women, seniors, disabled people, or any “minority” is only increasing.
Online recruitment is just a variation of the current system where the richest manipulate the market to their advantage, as long as money places them above and beyond the system.
They do not care if everyone does have a job, if tomorrow there are no more talents, they will create schools to meet their human resource needs.
So when it comes to changing the job market, they will always put their interests first.
Centralization makes work sharing impossible
If only a few companies control the online recruitment market, what’s the difference from traditional recruitment?
You replaced recruiters with online recruiters.
The power that has been given to online recruitment platforms is the same that is destroying the idea of sharing work. Any platform that allows a company to choose its candidates through its prices will create the same problem unless it gets rid of the notion of competition between workers.
We need a new way
No one should be above the system or have other motivations than to be part of it. There should be no discrimination between workers. Everyone should be equal. This can be done by removing competition among workers.
No competition = no inequality . No inequality = no centralization
How to allow access to work to everyone?
The answer is simple and Open Studio, one of Studiolabs’ projects, has embrace it from the beginning: a system of shared work where freelancers do not have to define their price, can work remotely and choose their tasks.
The price of each mission is defined by the most experienced members of the community.
Everyone can gain experience because all missions are shared with the community and are accessible to ALL , regardless of experience, education, gender, age, skin color, health condition, geographical location or any other factor. As simple as that.
Because of this no worker is above another.
Each member earns money according to his work.
A true community of freelancers, at least on the form where work is shared.
Our community is not perfect but it can only improve with the participation of everyone 😄
