A Marketplace of Expertise to Curtail or Eliminate Unemployment Business,Business News,Business Opportunities (1888PressRelease) Article describes the rationale for the gaps between skilled workers, a consistent and upward demand for skills, and the unemployment rate, and a marketplace solution to alleviate this gap.

Along time ago it occurred to me that there was a gap between the corporate job opportunities, the consistent demand for skilled workers, and the available candidates to meet that demand. Not to be biased, but I am a talented analyst, and all around technologist, but I found myself without a job back in the end of January of this past year. My background was stellar, and I had several referrals from junior and senior colleagues of upstanding stature, but for some reason I was not able to find a job. I tried career boards, professional networks, recruiters, and even resume writers to ‘repackage’. That’s when it occurred to me to make opportunity where none existed. I believe challenges, if we look hard enough, might illuminate opportunities we never even considered, if those challenges did not present themselves.

Let’s consider the challenges of overcoming unemployment:

1) Inconsistent Style and a Flood at the Gates: If there is a job opportunity, people flood their resumes into a job posting, either directly to the company, or through recruiters. At some point, the job posting comes down. Let’s say the company receives 100 qualified resumes for that role. Out of those resumes, many have different formats, and based on the style tastes of the recruiters, and the hiring manager reviewing the resumes, a few of these candidates may be selected; however, these candidates may not be the best candidate for the role. In fact, the best candidate for the role may have been the one which would have been considered, if the flood gates were not already closed.

2) Needs for services continue to rise, and bottlenecks in receiving services: When calling a company, I may need to go through several automated menus to get someone on the phone, and once I get someone on the phone, they might not be the right person. I may be transferred several times, and wait on hold until I either hang up, or eventually find someone who may or may not be able to answer my question. In some situations, I find myself waiting in store lines longer now than I did before this ‘downturn’ in the economy. Companies are either laying off, not hiring, or forcing people into early retirement; however, we as individuals needing services go through a smaller and smaller funnel of corporate resources, either because we ‘trust’ a particular brand, or the Internet is filled with so many web sites of companies, we just go to the simplest solution, the company we know.

3) Forced to Go Independent: Many people of all professions / trades may be forced to go on their own because of the lack of job opportunities. They need to get a corporate structure in place, put up a web site, because most companies have sites, and they have to advertise their web sites to gain visibility. These new, independent contractors / companies are competing with established companies with established advertising dollars and resources. There are also some people who are still having trouble putting up web sites. I’m not mocking them, but it’s really a challenge for some, even though there are simple wizards to put up a corporate professional web site up in minutes, and the cost of keeping the web site to maintain their Internet visibility is minimal. The real challenge for these independents is this long path to sustainability, and the advertising dollars to distinguish themselves from the other established firms.

So I had a simple thought, an E-Bay for all legitimate, professional services, and put everyone on equal footing. There are several companies in this space, but I don’t believe their approach can help solve our employment gap issues.

One company is approaching this ‘untapped [human] resource’ issue, us, from a corporate partnership perspective, whereby people are still nameless faces in some sense, and if a company needs a resource, like a customer service person, this ‘cloud sourcing’ platform attempts to marry up the resource with the role. Another company takes an ‘exclusionary’ approach, and helps the customer eliminate the ‘unqualified’ professions providing the services.

Both these approaches do seem to attack some aspect of the untapped skills market issue; however, the Service I built leverages the “virtual word of mouth” approach, leveraging a simple customer service rating and comments, similar to the E-Bay model for selling products. If I buy something from E-Bay, I look at a seller’s customer service history rating, their average rating, their amount of transactions on the network, and negative and positive buyer feedback. The Service I build approaches the challenge similarly, and the people who use the AMBIS Service search for a service by category, and can filter by customer service ratings, or distance, and the self proclaimed experts receive customer service requests, send proposals, and respond to service tickets / answers requests. Once customers receive the expert service, they provide a simple rating of their service experience, and comments. Through the Service experts create a profile, which may direct their clients to the expert’s web site or a text description, if they don’t have an Internet presence. Potential customers can view this expert profile, as well as their customer service rating history, and view the number of services provided.