Selling out your friends might not seem the best way to nurture your relationships, but if the transaction involves hooking them up with their dream job - they just might forgive you. Top Prospect is an innovative new startup that connects with your existing contact networks on platforms such as LinkedIn, and then allows you to suggest friends for job roles. If they get the job - you get paid a bonus - anywhere between US$5,000 and US$20,000 depending on the role.

Before you get too excited at turning your colleagues into cash, at this stage most of the job roles are in the US, and there is also a heavy tech sector skew. Nevertheless, Top Prospect is an intriguing concept and one of many new services that I predict we will see in the future that enable hyper-connectors to better commercialise their networks.
By attaching a financial reward to the matching process, companies like Top Prospect may actually enable the recruitment ecosystem to work more effectively.

Think about it. Much of the talent acquisition market is broken. You hire an headhunter to fill a role. He either strip mines his own network of people he has placed for another client, or charges you to advertise the role with either outdated web ads or expensive print notices which tend to attract the disenchanted and perpetual job changers. For the very top positions, industry focused recruitment specialists generally know who the best performers are, and are well placed to defend their turf. But for middle tier roles, connected professionals may have better knowledge of who is smart and open to moving onto a new opportunity. It is in this space, that I see emerging platforms doing the most damage to the traditional model.

During the first digital revolution, the Web killed print classifieds. Now that we are in round two, headhunters should stand warned.