Genie Journal

GENIE is the first automated talent agent. In short – she engineers the intangibles of a talent spotter into AI form, giving companies direct access to best in class talent.

Her secret sauce is her matching algorithm which matches talent to a project, whilst she gathers live data on interest and availability, enabling companies to make a booking in an instant – whilst automagically sorting all the paperwork too.

We fully believe that talent is, indeed, a gift – and GENIE is built to serve the talent first. Against the norm of the market, talent profiles are hidden, and they are in control of deciding whether to share their details with a hiring company or not.

This unique approach actually better serves the companies too, as they get a curated shortlist of talent that are actually interested and available – served often only minutes after briefing. The Companies we are working with have been blown away by the speed of access they have to exceptional talent – our record from brief to hire being an astonishing 7 minutes.

Nicky, Bonnie and I (the co-founders), were headhunters to some amazing talent and companies in the creative industries, and we witnessed a fast-growing problem. The talent were rejecting the notion of working for a single company, instead wanting access to the best projects wherever they were. Meanwhile, companies were beginning to move away from the long-held notion of owning a standing army of talent, and instead wanted to be far more agile and flexible in requiring access to the right talent at the right moment.

The existing analogue systems simply weren’t able to cope with this, and we were becoming increasingly frustrated with being unable to keep up with a fast-changing market. Quality at speed in matching was being demanded while opportunities were being missed by talent and companies. Platforms were emerging, but while being good at democratising access to talent – they were beginning to overwhelm their users with unvalidated choices to search through. Quality and speed to the right match matters. Not one or the other.

We set out to codify our experience, knowledge and data into an automated process that better served the talent, without treating them like commodities, and put a proof of concept into some clients and talent hands to try. From there, GENIE was born.

Entrepreneurs calculate risk, they’re not reckless. Be smart and test your ideas in-market before you start spending lots of time and money on them. You’ll learn a lot from how customers want to use your product or service compared to how you think they do.

I wholeheartedly believe we’re entering a new age of work where businesses rethink how workforces are constructed and networked, and how careers are imagined and managed. Ownership of a standing army of talent makes little sense for companies, access at the right moment to the right skills in a highly agile environment does make sense. Especially in the creative industries, but also more than ever in many others.

But with this change there are watch-outs. Talent need security of regular work and companies need the security of always having that access at the moment of need. This can’t be a race to the bottom.

We’re developing GENIE into the operating system for this future. And one that always puts talent at the centre and in control. We believe that if you best serve the talent, you’ll better serve the companies that need them.

This article was originally published in  TechRound on June 4th, 2021