Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
company insiders or super-agents (and anyone can be a super-agent—read on). The key here
is that the referrals are from people whose opinion she values. The description includes a
bounty she is willing to pay for a hire as well as a limit to how deep and how wide a referral
tree she desires.
It’s fascinating to see that Referrals.com is building in a 
limit
to the ideavirus! They don’t
want any given job search to get out of control and start being passed from friend to friend
ad infinitum. Instead, they artificially limit how deep a job search can go into the
community. This limit ensures that employers can focus their searches on a certain hive
without it running amok throughout the entire population. The web has turned what might
have been a multi-level marketing business into a carefully regulated ideavirus.
Anyone who gets involved in referring can sign-up to be a “super-agent.” Once you sign up
as a super-agent, your performance ratings will be available to hiring managers (in recruiting)
looking to find experts to help with their search. And of course, you get first crack at the new
job listings.
Let’s say the company wants a CTO. Let’s say they’re willing to pay $5,000 for a successful
hire. And let’s say they’re only willing to go two levels down the referral tree.
Now, a super-agent can send an email to five people he knows who might be perfect for the
job. If one of them takes the job, the super-agent gets $5,000 just for sending five emails.
But let’s say none of the recipients want the job. But one of them knows someone who does.
Bang. He forwards the mail a second time, and this time it lands on the desk of the perfect
hire. Assuming this guy gets the job, the first super-agent and the second referrer split the
money.
All of a sudden, you’ve monetized word of mouth! Referrals.com could create a class of
thousands of “super-agents” who spend their time doing nothing but finding people through
networking. Essentially, it lets just about anyone become a contingency headhunter. (Now, I
know what you think of contingency headhunters... but the small scale of each person’s tree
makes it unlikely it’ll ever get that bad!)

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