This Is Absolutely The Future Of Work. But It's Not For Everyone. Or 15 Reasons Why Some Applications & Project Briefs Are Rejected

We are big believers that there are mountains of extraordinary skills out there, which is a big part of why we’re building the MeasureMatch professional services marketplace platform - to make those skills easily accessible, within easy reach for businesses anywhere to tap into. 

We’re especially proud of the broad, deep, specialist network of consultants, consultancies, agencies and systems integrators in our global network. They truly are awesome.  

Need a Power BI dashboard built? Not a problem. A client in New Zealand booked a Power BI pro in Cairo a few days ago. 

Need an Intercom specialist to configure Product Tours across your online store? We “ate our own dog food” [i.e. we used our own platform] to book an Israel-based consultant who was in Thailand to deploy Intercom for us, to the point where we’re confident to do the Product Tours part ourselves now. That same consultant is deploying Intercom's Product Tours for a client in California right now.

Need help to do some strategic marketing technology planning? Great. A MeasureMatch consultant in Singapore was just flown to New York to kick-off a month-long engagement.

But, in order for these engagements to happen, clients & consultants need to get into the platform to participate.

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They need to apply.

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To ensure we're creating a professional, productive and profitable environment for all participants, we screen and vet all applicants, which includes a call with nearly all new prospective clients (sometimes we only exchange comms via email), and we invite all relevant consultants/consultancies for an interview call.

Importantly, both clients and service providers need to go through an application and screening process.

So, why would any new Client account application not be immediately approved? Here are 5 things that trigger red flags for us:

1. The first and/or last name of the applicant is a single letter (why?)
2. The applicant’s email address is not from a recognized business (consumer email addresses are blocked)
3. The email address domain is different from the website domain
4. The phone number probably goes something like 123456789
5. The website fully doesn’t work or it’s “under construction”

And here are 5 things that hold back new clients’ project brief submissions:

1. The brief is submitted by someone who meets one or more of the above conditions
2. The project brief’s description is a copy/paste of the project name or it’s riddled with typos
3. No skills are added (No skills are required? Huh?)
4. The client also chooses to submit discreetly (i.e. the business name is hidden)
5. The start date for a clearly complex project is within 24 hours (discovery, scoping & pricing will easily require a few days, depending on how many consultants are invited to discuss a piece of work)

And, lastly, here are 5 things that will hold back the approval of an Expert account application:

1. The first and/or last name of the applicant is a single letter (again, why?)
2. The applicant’s email address is from a known throw-away/temporary service
3. The phone number probably goes something like 123456789
4. The profile title, description and/or skills are off strategy (not just off strategy, but completely misaligned to our systems & data services focus) 
5. Little to no commercial/professional experience (we require a minimum of 3 years of experience; our network averages around 10 years)

It’s not easy building a professional services marketplace in a way that ensures all participants win. We’re still some distance from achieving that, but we’re close.

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One of things we're doing increasingly well screening out the noise, the time-wasters. And boy is there a lot of it.

What do you think? Is this helpful to know? What did we miss? We know we can do better (and we have a monster roadmap to get there).

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Thanks for reading. We'd love to hear from you.

James