“Every 45 to 60 days when a self-employed person returns from an oil rig or ship, they must update their resume and email it to the entire contact list along with their availability.”
“If for any reason you change your availability, you should send another round of emails. But imagine if you only had to update your app once and everyone to whom you sent your custom link could see this change in real – time, “said Rowan Pearce, founder of KontactApp, with Vulcan Post.
This link feature helps KontactApp stand out from other job search sites, but later. As in other industries, working as a freelancer in the oil and gas (O&G) sector has its pains, especially availability.
As a person with 15 years of experience at O&G, Rowan knew first hand that trying to match the start date of the company project with the availability of the job seeker can be very intensive.
Some companies still use Excel to track talent
There are a variety of local sites that seek to associate freelancers with businesses, with a few examples Qwork i Go and get it. Globally, the concert economy is experiencing continued growth, with only 4 million concert workers in Malaysia.
The industry presents many opportunities for service providers to offer better solutions to hire workers, even LinkedIn joins the fight with its new product. Markets.
But for freelancers and O&G hiring managers, the process is a little more complicated. The temporary nature of work in the industry (which can last from a few days to 12 months), specialized skills by type of work and the tendency to work for various operators in various geographies in a very short time, creates a complex ecosystem job search, “Rowan explained.
A platform like LinkedIn wasn’t designed with the contract template in mind, and you can’t hire someone with three days ’notice on the platform, which happens at O&G.
Whenever a company needs a freelancer (for some, this is a weekly process), they should call and email dozens of talent who they know could do the job, simply trying to find what is available to do. -ho. “The more organized companies try to track the self-employed with an Excel spreadsheet, but the availability of the self-employed is usually obsolete after 7 days,” Rowan added.
Even costly hiring rates did not bring about change
Because of how heavy the process is, some O&G companies would resort to outsourcing this job with hiring companies.
According to Rowan, the current industry fees charged by recruitment companies are around US $ 1,000 a month for a self-employed person. Therefore, if a hiring company supplies five freelancers for a month, they will charge a fee of US $ 5,000. Although the cost is quite high, there is a reason why it does not yet encourage change.
Since O&G has historically been a wealthy industry, hiring in this sector can be lucrative, as many contracting companies are willing to pay recruiters a lot to find someone who can do the job.
“With the fall in oil prices in recent years, all purchasing costs are now being examined. But don’t forget: this is a very old industry, where changes in processes and purchases or even the status quo require time and are often met with resistance, ”shared Rowan. But for him, the cost of getting that manpower has to change drastically as much as it has to be more efficient.
Therefore, in KontactApp, SMEs that hire less than 5 self-employed per year will pay nothing, while active contractors will pay a subscription of 360 USD (approximately 1,525 RM) per year.
Don’t try to be a hiring agency
One thing Rowan wanted to make clear about KontactApp’s goals was that they were not intended to become a hiring company, but a supply platform for the self-employed to find businesses and vice versa. When a company finds a suitable candidate to hire, all the hiring will be done switched off the platform.
If you have signed up for other job search platforms, the overall process of signing up for KontactApp is no surprise. What is different, however, is the link feature mentioned.
Once you’ve created a profile, you can generate a link where anyone with your link can access your contact number, email address, availability period, resume, skills, and more.
The advantage of the link is that you can share it quickly with people you know, and it’s a personal page that can be updated as soon as possible with the changes shown on your network in real time. Anyone who receives your link does not need a KontactApp account on their own, as recruitment must take place off-site, as mentioned above.
Users should simply be careful not to share this link on public networks if they do not want their personal information to be spread so easily.
To help self-employed people assess possible jobs, the app will notify them if they have been selected or if a company has seen their profiles, so they can prepare for a possible phone call. On the part of the employer, they can see the exact availability of all the self-employed and their latest update.
Currently, KontactApp has about 200 companies on the platform and observes a weekly growth rate of 10% of the self-employed who incorporate the application.
Rowan shared that every month they came out with new features to further enhance the user experience. At the time of our interview, I had shared that in August 2021 they wanted to offer freelancers the ability to create timesheets and invoices in the app, as well as separate a portion of the platform for companies to manage their own staff.
A quick check shows that these features don’t seem to have been implemented yet, but the computer is still active providing incremental updates to the app on Google Play i Apple App Store.
- You can learn more about KontactApp here.
- You can read more articles related to the job search we have written here.
Featured Image Credit: Rowan Pearce, founder and CEO of KontactApp
