I recently watched a video by Suppoman in which he recommended an ICO called ConnectJob.
For anyone who hasn't seen the video or had a look at ConnectJob and the whitepaper, the easiest way to describe it is as an "Uber" for the recruitment industry.
This is a link to the website: https://ico.connectjob.io/
As a recruiter of 10 years, and a crypto speculator, this ICO was right up my street, I know the ins and outs of recruitment and thought the idea (at least before reading the whitepaper and doing my research) was a decent one. Disrupting the recruitment industry eh?
Sounds good to me.
Unfortunately, after doing even just a small bit of research, I've concluded that this ICO can never make it, although still early in it's development the unanswered questions, terrible team (for the most part) and complete lack of recruitment experience spread between the team and advisors mean that it is doomed to fail.
In the next few walls of text, I’ll break down the team, whitepaper, ask a few questions in which you can decide whether the answers are viable and come to a conclusion.
Team:
VP of Marketing;
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-kellett-3649b1150/
Last role before starting at Conci (ConnectJobs Concierge app prior to ConnectJob) was working in a store, duties listed are;
Provided customer service
Managed the floor
Prepared operational plans
Gathered and worked individually with clientele
Organized the display of products
Handled cash register
Handled shipping of products
This is the Vice President of Marketing at an ICO that has raised over $6m dollars. Her current job as listed on Facebook is working at a Cafe in 2017.
Head Of Recruitment
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilona-makukhovskaya-703049b3/
3 jobs in less than a year, as a business developer, not recruiter, being in business development within recruitment is a completely different thing to being a recruiter. Less than 3 years in the recruitment industry in total, has more recruitment experience than the rest of the team and advisors combined, also has less than 60 Linkedin connections which is unheard of in recruitment where Linkedin is now the #1 place for finding new hires in most industries.
But hey, now she’s the Head Of Recruitment for a multi million dollar backed ICO.
Surely you’d think the Head of Recruitment at a Recruitment App should have a bit of experience.
Dev
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikita-marshak-a89a2a100/
No longer works at ConnectJob
CEO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoni-assouline/
Zero recruitment experience, claims he’s from Gibraltar (he’s not, Gib is a tax haven)
CTO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgueron/
Zero recruitment experience, claims he’s from Gibraltar (he’s not, Gib is a tax haven)
Senior Android Dev
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergey-skokov-557921118/
Main job is fixing refrigerators (maybe I’m being a bit harsh here but there’s a trend).
CFO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/irina-tonkonogaya-338bb1151/
Her degree wasn’t even in finance, 4 connections on Linkedin, last job was an assistant to a professor at a university, again, maybe I’m being a bit harsh on this one but if I was taking multi million dollar investments I’d ensure I had someone with recognizable accounting qualifications at least.
And wait until you see this!!!
Compare to LinkedIn profile.... The experience is the same, but wait, somethings wrong, it doesn't look like her...
https://www.fiance.com/agency.asp?main=page&id=52864
QA Engineer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tigran-begoyan-2a564b121/
Doesn't work there anymore.
The whitepaper and my initial thoughts based on 10 years of recruitment experience:
https://en.calameo.com/read/005345675300d0189a74e
So here is where I’m going to give my opinion, I’ve worked in recruitment for 10 years, own a recruitment business and think I can give a solid overview, I’ll try to break it down for people who don’t understand the industry but most issues are glaringly obvious.
Can I just point out too that I wanted this to work, I’m for disruption in the recruitment industry and by no means am I just trying to squash something that looks new and exciting.
The list of roles that will be available to “jobbers” initially are as follows;
Just looking at that list, we can start to see how problems could arise, and some are just ridiculous.
ConnectJob says that they will have a local team of recruiters who will vet and qualify every single “jobber” before they are accepted on the platform and then allowed to carry out jobs to (I suppose) the general public.
Let’s just think about that a second, this app is initially launching in London, Paris, Dubai and New York, we’re spanning 3 continents already here with different laws and processes to follow, even without going into legalities, let’s see if it’s even possible.
For this app to be launched in London tomorrow, ConnectJob would have to have a team of qualified recruiters in each of the above specialisms, someone with professional knowledge of the industries with the experience to judge whether that individual was capable of the task. Where is this team going to come from? Where are they going to be based from? It means offices in every one of those cities prior to launch with specialists ready to judge if somebody is capable of doing the work you’re paying for, where does that even begin for some of these jobs? Will it simply be a run through a CV? Will they be tested? Will they need references?
Secondly, and this is when it starts to get ridiculous, most of these roles are personal, client facing roles. I only understand some UK legislation, but a lot of these roles probably wouldn't even be allowed in the UK, Paris or the US and in the UK you’d need something called a CRB check (criminal record) as an absolute minimum for anything that required human contact.
Look at how ridiculous a suggestion some of these roles even are:
This is without even speaking about the actual laws that have been recently passed on GDPR in the UK and how we’re allowed to handle peoples data.
The more you read, the more you realise how impossible a project this is.
Conclusion
Unfortunately the task is impossible. It will never work. Even if it gains traction the local government will shut it down so fast your money will be gone, that’s before ConnectJob get’s hit with a law suit the first time a child is molested or killed by a “tutor”, but it will never get to that stage.
ConnectJob is trying to build an “uber” for recruitment without any recruitment knowledge or expertise, they literally built conci, the concierge app, and thought “hey, let’s do this for recruitment” without any idea of how they can actually execute it.
The team is a shambles and the initial investors in this obviously have bigger pockets than sense, but then again, if someone comes to you and tells you they’re building the next recruitment Uber, I suppose that sounds too good to be true.
Do not invest in this. If you are already invested take your gains when it hits the market and jump as fast as you can, your money will be worth nothing when the app launches.
