Downtown San Francisco has been even more of a madhouse than usual this week. Dreamforce, “the cloud computing conference of the year,” brought over 90,000 attendees to the city. It was my first technology conference and even though I was overwhelmed by all the people and booths I was able to sit and soak in Richard Branson’s fireside chat with Mark Benioff.
As Branson was talking I noticed a lot of what the billionaire had to say applied, to the work we are doing at SmartRecruiters. Validation from one of the most successful businessmen in history is not a bad feeling.
“Find the place where something is not working for people and change it,” said Branson. “It will change peoples’ lives.”
Changing people’s lives. At SmartRecruiters we aspire to make hiring easy and fix the broken labor market. Job creation and unemployment are two of the biggest issues we face. With an unemployment rating of 8.1% and 3.8 million jobs in the US unfilled it is clear something is NOT working.
“For those building businesses, quite early, it’s important to hire someone better than you to run the day to day,” he continued.
Couldn’t help but think, in business, hiring is the most important task.
SmartRecruiters is not brand new, but we are a startup. By promoting hiring practices that encourage individual growth and inspire creativity in employees, we know the people that are here WANT to be here. Capitalizing on each members’ talent is entrusting in their abilities.
“Life is short, and you’ll find you will come in contact with the same people time and time again in your life. I think If you have treated people well they’ll want to come in contact with you again.”
At this point in the conversation Branson was talking about his management style however this comment spanned more than just inter-company culture. Branson’s wisdom goes beyond the office. It’s about how people interest. At SmartRecruiters we believe hiring is a social activity. Better collaboration within the social enterprise will change the labor. We built HireLoop to empower employees to make hiring decisions more collaborative, central, and especially, social.
Branson’s adventurous and thrill seeking demeanor revolutionized the stereotypical frame for how people thought business should be done. Virgin enterprises changed the world. Branson says this is because, “employees feel like they are working for a cause.” I believe SmartRecruiters has the ability to change the hiring world. Our cause is to put people back to work, and create incentives to hire. We are disrupting old hiring and recruiting practices, and we couldn’t be happier about it.
Lexie Forman-Ortiz is a social media enthusiast. A San Francisco native, she has proven she can live anywhere with stints in Lawrence, KS and the Amazon basin of Peru. She believes social media is the perfect way to fight for a cause.
