Besides being a 'rental' economy, Singapore also has a thriving economy for the 'middleman'. A huge number of people worked in 'middleman' jobs. These professionals specialise in connecting buyers and sellers. The more commonly known ones are real estate agent, headhunter, recruiter, insurance agent, mortgage broker, car dealer, modeling agent. In Singapore, there are listed companies like HRnet Group, Propnex and APAC Realty providing such services. HRnet connects job seekers to employers while Propnex and APAC Realty connect property buyers to sellers.
If you follow soccer, you would know that a soccer talent agency will usually broker a transfer for a player between clubs. If the transfer goes through, the agent will get a percentage of the transfer fee. In some cases, the agent might even get a percentage of the player's future earnings. Famous top players also require the agent's help in negotiating for multi-million dollar endorsement deals with sports brands like Nike & Adidas. The agent gets his cut from such deals too. Can the player himself negotiate with the soccer club and sponsors? Sure he can, but he won't if he is smart. He doesn't possess the 'middleman' skill-set and experience of the agent.
In recent years, we saw tech companies like Grab, Uber and Airbnb expand rapidly based on this 'middleman' element. Grab & Uber help to connect commuters with private car-owners in an efficient manner. Airbnb helps to connect tourists/tenants with private home-owners. In today's internet age, these 'middleman' firms have a platform to expand more than ever. Take eBay for instance, lots of people make a decent living by buying specialty products and re-selling them on the site. Most of the trading flows through these trusted middlemen, sellers who have built up the best reputations over thousands of transactions. YouTube acts as a middleman to connect their YouTube celebrities with advertisers/sponsors.
All these middlemen now make up a larger part of the economy than ever. They are thriving because they provide value to buyers and sellers. They connect nodes on the economic network to increase the value & efficiency of the network. They are mini 'bridges'.
HRnet Group - An Expert In Recruitment
HRnet Group has been in the recruitment business for decades, specialising in hiring talents for a few industries. The main industries like finance, I.T. & telcommunications, retail & consumer, healthcare life science and manufacturing are relevant and growing. Due to this sharp focus, they were able to develop deep expertise. They know exactly what sort of candidates their clients want to hire.
Why don't the companies do the hiring themselves? Why do they need to outsource the 'talent acquisition' task to HRnet? The answer is simple. Managers and executives would rather spend time running their businesses than screening candidates. For example, a typical VP of sales doesn't have the time. He is often flying across the region, busy with day-to-day operations and countless meetings. The last thing they want to do is to run a recruitment advertisement and get bogged down reading 300 resumes.
Surely the VP can throw this recruitment job to his subordinates, right? Sure he could, but these in-house hiring managers lack sufficient incentives to do it fast and right. A recruitment agency like HRnet has a greater sense of urgency because they only get paid when they actually fill a job opening. And it is not just about motivation. If a client has a job opening, being the largest recruitment agency in Asia-Pacific, HRnet's knowledge of the industry and their connections made over the years should enable them to find the most promising candidates in a short period. The internal HR department of a company could struggle to achieve this. Internal staffers don't have the time, the knowledge, the contacts, the relationships. They may know what type of workers they are looking for, but they rarely have an accurate sense of the talent pool available out there. As a result, they end up settling too early or too late, either interviewing too few candidates or wasting time on too many candidates. An expert recruiter such as HRnet has the experience to know when to keep searching and when to stop.
Reputation is important to any company, but more so for a recruitment agency. Just imagine if the agency filled a position with an unsuitable candidate, the client would be stuck with an under-performing and probably disgruntled worker. Unlike buying a rotten lemon or faulty appliance, the company could not simply throw the worker out of the door without proper compensation. Then, the company has to start its search all over again. Huge waste of time and resources. The client would blame the recruiter, fraying the relationship.
HRnet has developed a trustworthy reputation and long-standing relationships among clients and candidates. That's one of the key reasons how they stayed competitive and profitable over many years. Clients and candidates come to them. HRnet is essentially in a 'three-party relationship' with clients and candidates.
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