Professional job network 8am.com.mt has signed up a host of sector-leading employers and an encouraging number of candidates since its launch late last month.
8am is to be fully integrated with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
Chief executive Stefan Debattista listed Panta Lesco, Farsons, Icon, BRND WGN, Switch, Muovo, and Bathroom Design among the employers to have supported the new project.
On its eponymous portal 8am.com.mt, the network seeks to connect candidates to employers efficiently and seamlessly on a platform entirely dedicated to active job search and headhunting. The site allows organisations to build a careers page featuring photos and videos giving candidates or aspiring employees an insight into corporate culture, philosophy, and environment.
Candidates, in turn, are able to build an extensive but anonymous profile: 8am prides itself on giving job seekers the facilities to remain anonymous and only reveal their identities to companies they choose to ‘follow’ or with whom they file a job application. By following an organisation, candidates are able to make their CVs available to employers and to keep track of changes or opportunities within the company.
By “nudging” a candidate – under the same principle as a “poke” on Facebook – firms are able to alert people to roles which could suit them. 8am is soon to be fully integrated with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
The original idea for a jobs social network dates to Mr Debattista’s student days at Leeds Metropolitan University where he obtained a BSc in Computer Communications. Originally from Għargħur, he earlier studied for a national diploma in ICT at MCAST.
“Now that we have our initial user base, we will cross it over the press, radio and Facebook,” Mr Debattista explained. “The campaign will showcase the network’s features and indicate how candidates and organisations can get noticed by signing up to 8am. There will also be a joint Facebook and radio campaign with a photo competition. People will take photos of their desks or an office activity with game consoles for prizes for use in breaks or such like.”
8am is geared for a diverse user base of candidates and is designed to be helpful to organisations from a cross-section of industries, from IT and media to administration and retail.
As the user base grows, pages will dedicated to roles in fields like engineering or design, sponsored by major local names, with news and updates specific to each industry.
The portal currently features eight employer networks for design, engineering, hospitality, leisure, entertainment and gaming, internet media and internet marketing, IT, tech and telecoms, media, recruitment and human resources, and retail and e-commerce.
Mr Debattista explained candidates were able to sign up to 8am by filling in personal details at no charge and with the peace of mind that their confidentiality was safeguarded.
Companies post an employer profile for free and then purchase a package of job credits to post roles to the site whenever necessarily. Early adopters are entitled to launch offers.
“8am complements vacancies advertised in the press,” Mr Debattista added. “Organisations advertising jobs are free to direct potential candidates to their profile on 8am where more detailed information is available. In this way, barriers for entry for employers are really low.”
Under a reciprocal arrangement with educational institutions which would become “Friends of 8am”, students will be grouped in sub-networks according to school, institute or the university.
Mr Debattista and his team – business partner James West, chief technology officer Tomas Janovsky, and non-executive director Mark Camilleri – hope the project will take off in the next few months and grow to include a team of web designers and developers, marketing and sales people.
The long-term aim after continuous improvement is to raise funding to internationalise the project.
The one thing you do not want to waste as a start-up – or indeed as any company – is resources
Mr Debattista already knows where to look: around the time he was living in the UK, he was active in the start-up scene, also known as the Silicone Roundabout in London’s Old Street area. He recalls how he was “lucky enough” to meet the chief technology officer of Facebook, the chief executives of LinkedIn and Mozilla, the vice-president of Google.org, the organisation’s charity arm, and others. He recalls many approved of his ideas for a job site influenced by social media.
Mr Debattista said he learnt several skills from the UK start-up scene.
“Communication, pitching, product design and product development methodologies like ‘lean start-up’, ‘agile development’, and ‘the customer development model’ are all things I learned,” he explained.
“These methodologies are all about rapidly developing prototypes of products, and of the features within them to test market assumptions first, and use invaluable customer feedback to make decisions on the rest of the build. This helps companies weed out bad ideas and not waste valuable resources trying to make them happen.
“Let’s say a couple of candidates on our website asked us if we could add a feature to allow them link their Flickr account to their profile. We would much rather build the button ‘Add Flickr account to profile’ in an hour, and see if people click on it, than spend a week building the feature to find out that just a fraction of our user base is using it. We could have spent that week developing something better, more popular, and the one thing you do not want to waste as a start-up – or indeed as any company – is resources.”
Given the opportunity, he said he will continue to build on his connections in these circles as a way to market 8am on the investor circuit in a bid to reach the team’s ultimate objective.
www.8am.com.mt