Employment Services in SL

I was wondering... has anyone ever considered setting up an employment service? I mean.. granted I know many on the SL Forums, but many don't go to the forums and many newbies are in need of money. So I was thinking, is there an employment service or bulletin board available? If not, do you think it'd be a good idea to put one up? Maybe in the Welcome areas of SecondLIfe?

I've thought about this and tried to push a friend into doing this kind of thing because 1) they needed a job, 2) they have real world experience with this kind of thing. Question is, where would the profits come from? People looking for jobs or the potential employers? Some agencies charge a fee from those looking for a job while others charge a fee from those looking for employees, sometimes both. Realisticly I doubt people looking for work will pay because if they had money to begin with they wouldn't be looking for work. Most likely employers would be the ones paying, but even then there are those stingy. Gotta find a middle ground to get things to work out.

My experience has been that "outsourcing" companies take about 50%. That is, if the employer pays $20 an hour, the employee gets $10. The rest goes to payroll taxes, Social Security, and profit.


As far as some sort of referral service in SL.... how many employees are there in SL? It seems to me that most people are business owners. When there's no cost to make an object and very little overhead in the sales infrastructure, it seems that being an employee doesn't make much sense... and if you're working freelance, advertise in the classifieds.

Actually I noticed different. I've seen people FORCED to have to learn how to build or script that rather just work for someone and get paid. Not everyone is creative or skilled enough to be able to make anything. If all you do is hang around sandboxes, then yes it would seem like everyone is a business owner. In reality its far from it. Many people live day to day off what little stipend they have or what they get from moneychair camping or free slots. I've met people who became premium just because they can't make anything and they needed the extra stipend to get by (half these people don't even own land). And lets not forget those who do make stuff, look at all the compitition in SL when it comes to just about anything dealing with sales. Unless you're good enough to get reconized you won't be rolling in cash. So yes there are people looking for paying jobs. Ya know what? I'm a business owner and I STILL have to work sidejobs just to help support my business by helping to cover my tier.

I've often thought about doing this service. But I have so many other projects on my plate at the moment. I think it would be a great business for people to start!

That's my point, Ron.

What kind of work is there in SL? There are only two ways to (directly) make money that I know of:

1. Sell something
   
2. Dwell
   

Any employment would have to relate to one of these tasks. You can sell property (including rentals), and you can generate dwell for existing property... but if you don't have money to speculate in land, can't script, can't texture, can't build, and can't animate, what is left to do? You can freelance any of those.

As far as "side jobs", do you really mean freelancing? I don't think of a freelance as an employee. They're more of a contractor. An employee would be someone who works for the same person pretty much exclusively and on a regular basis.

I can think of a good model for an employment service, but I'm not sure how to implement it in SL. Perhaps it could be incorporated in to the new user area... which would benefit everyone.

Might find some helpfull stuff here
/118/1.html

I do know there have been some modeling agencies around, and some escort business that went ok...

Ideally what I wouldn't mind seeing is permissions changing on created content to where someone can buy from you wholesale and they sell at retail prices. but not gonna happen with thre bit permission settings. It's really kind of a joke of a permission sysytem, ok stopping now before I rant.

The problem is: what job could you get that wouldn't need exactly these same skills?

There's event hosting, of course, but it seems so far that rather than paying employees to entertain guests, you'll do far better by just paying the guests.

"Sell something" does not have to be limited to manufactured stuff, i.e. scripts, prim objects or clothing. Sell services instead! My random side jobs have included doing snapshots for L$ and scouting locations for L$ - and I have exploited my friends as copy editors, styling consultants, bug tester and others. If there was some kind of employment service platform in SL, I would use it to look for exactly that kind of services: store greeters, people who can write user-friendly tech manuals, marketing help or consultancy...

I do both freelance DJ work and work exclusively for Varick Elsenburg as a sales associate besides running my club. And once again I have to point out that NO ONE MAKES TONS OF MONEY OFF OF DWELL. Dwell bonuses are very minor unless you makes 10's of thousands of traffic and you & you alone own the land. Most cases the land is group owned and thus dwell is devided. Dwell serves only 2 purposes: getting higher up on the search results to attact customers and trying to earn a chunk of those cash prizes LL hands out every so often (problem being its the same 20 people all the time so the second part probly shouldn't be even mensioned).

Jobs that don't require photoshop, scripting, or building skills:

Modeling
Advertising
Photography
Customer Relations
Dancing
Radio DJ
Business Management
Sales
Body Guard
Bouncer
Event Host
Game Host
Accounting
Super Intendant
Alpha/Beta Tester
the Sex Trade
Marketing
Realty Agent

These are just some things I can think of off the top of my head.