Press

Press Kit

Media Contact
Sydney, Australia (GMT +10)
T: +61 2 8448 2056

History

Beginning in 2003, Kevin Wilson (Founder and CEO) began documenting a better way to reach quality trades people as a result of commencing house renovations and becoming frustrated with the quality and availability of these people.

Often, these Service Providers did not return calls, were late or were generally not up to Kevin’s expectation of service. With an IT background, Kevin further refined and enhanced the idea, acting as a Client. At the start of 2006 Kevin became committed to turning this idea into a business. Kevin’s motivation has been accelerated due to the birth of his daughter in early 2006.

In 2007, Kevin commenced engaging seed programmers and consultants and at the same realised that in order to be successful, he needed to engage an executive coach to ensure successful delivery of the business. On engagement of the executive coach, Kevin quickly realised that a more thorough process needed to be engaged. All work was disengaged at that point.

By mid 2009 (with the assistance of his executive mentor), Kevin had completed all the necessary steps to ensure the new business has every chance of success by design rather than by hope.

In August 2009, Kevin engaged Spirit Media Australia to provide the web site development. By Jan 2010, Spirit Media Australia produced its first beta which lived up to initial expectations.

We expect Greatjob to be a growing business with revenues meeting its aggressive plan. Greatjob plans to continue to expand rapidly both nationally and globally whilst carefully investing in IT and its people to ensure a robust and resilient future.

Business Name and Logo

Coming up with a business name was more difficult than planned as much of it was centered on getting a good website name as well. One thought was "Mobile Workforce" and another was "Hire me". Kevin wanted one that people would be proud to be associated with. Amazingly, in deep thought during a morning teeth brushing session, the Greatjob name was born!

The Greatjob logo itself was also one of passion. Using a great team, we came up with many logos that needed to reflect what Greatjob is about. In some ways it’s a celebration of doing what you love and getting paid for it. It needed to show that it’s all about people being the best they can. Whist there were many designs, our current logo shows the essence of who we are and who we represent. And, if you are any good at reading logos, it also shows where Greatjob was born. Have a look at the people and the way they are lined up and forming an archway. Similar to a Sydney Icon?!

Executive Team

Kevin J Wilson

Founder and Director

Born in Sydney, Australia Kevin spent his schooling years at one of Sydney’s finest private schools, Newington College. He then studied at Macquarie University completing a Bachelor of Science Degree with a major in both Computing and Statistics. Whilst studying, he held a number of senior casual jobs at Grace Bros (rebranded Myer in 2004), Pizza Hut Restaurant and Mandalay Reception. On completion of tertiary studies, Kevin then worked for a small IT company for two year and left barely two weeks prior to the company’s closure announcement.

Kevin then spent the next 20 years working at IBM with a range of positions from programmer to Senior Sales Specialist. During those years, Kevin won many awards for his work - the highlight being a fully paid trip for two to Bermuda in 2005 to take part in an exclusive worldwide sales event for very high achievers at IBM.

Some interesting facts:

Kevin spent a few years in the late 90's and early 2000's as a casual model for MCTV. His best roles were for Qantas with a number of engagements over a two year period.

Kevin is a sailplane pilot with over 130 hours as pilot-in-command and has dabbled with power aircraft reaching student pilot-in-command status.

Paul Matthews

Advisory Board Member

Mr. Matthews has over 40 years experience in the global Information Technology industry. This experience includes
funding, marketing, building profitable companies including trade sales, trade purchases, a partner buy out and
divestment. He has travelled extensively and is very familiar with American, European and Asian business life and
culture. He has spent over 5 years in Asia mainly China, Hong Kong and Taiwan building relationships.

He is very familiar with business practices and extremely well known within IT globally. He keeps current with all the business and IT latest trends through his professional memberships and attendance at industry conferences.

Address and Contact Details

Greatjob Head Office
Lvl 20, Tower A
The Zenith
821 Pacific Hwy
Chatswood, NSW, 2067
Australia

T: +61 2 8448 2056
F: + 61 2 8448 2010

Greatjob Pty Ltd was founded in August 2009.

Concept

The initial business concept started as a set of detailed notes as to what would make the experience of finding a Service Provider not only a pleasant and easy experience, but one that is most likely to end with a satisfied client. As the internet has grown to become an ideal medium to deliver information on services, it became clear that this would be the ideal delivery platform to develop this new business. According to the Australian 2007 Connected Homes Report "Two-thirds of Internet users research information on products and services at least once a week".
(http://www.connectedhome.com.au/articles_marapr07_trends.php). Also, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Household Use of Information Technology 2008-09 report, 82% of people in the top household income quintile use the internet to purchase or order goods or services for private purposes. This also means that traditional methods of finding tradespeople via other avenues are decreasing.

What is vitally important is the "word-of-mouth" style aspect of finding Service Providers and translating that into an online web based service, servicing Clients. This could be accomplished via a feedback mechanism where Clients could provide an opinion of the services that was delivered to them. According to an AC Nielsen report (2009), consumer opinions posted online is the second most trusted source (70%) behind word-of-mouth (90%).

Secondly, the site had to be simple and easy to use. By leveraging concepts from popular search style websites this task could easily be accomplished (along with applicable usability research).

With the above concepts in place, the facts and figures had to be researched to determine if the concept would make for a viable business.

Based on Kevin’s experience and those of others, a familiar pain point is trying to find a reliable and available tradesperson at a fair price that accomplishes a task that you are happy with. That is why so much effort is placed on researching a quality tradesperson. There are enough horror stories that you have heard from your friends, blogs, Facebook and generally on the web that I don’t need to cover why this is an issue!!!

People typically look for the following pieces of information when deciding on a tradesperson:

Reputation
Quality
Professionalism
Previous work
Availability
Rates
What the person looks like! (an emotional response!)

There are a few sources where people can find this information (but not necessarily at once):

Word of mouth recommendation
Web
Telephone Directory
Local Paper

There are two pieces of information people want but cannot generally be found using the above sources… and that is availability and rates! In addition, there is no single source/supplier that lists ALL the pieces of information that a person needs to make a decision!

So the basic concept behind Greatjob was to provide a web based tool to provide clients all they need to know about a service provider before engaging their services and booking them online. Whilst trades people spring to mind, the web based tool is cross industry providing a live directory of a wide range of services ranging from students, apprentices, chefs, cleaners, electricians to business mentors, commercial pilots and tax consultants.

Why clients like it

No charge to use the service
Provides all the information they need about a service provider to make a services buying decision
Previous history of jobs
Ratings from their clients (based on reputation, quality, professionalism)
Instant online availability
Qualifications/licenses (if applicable)
Rates
Photo (optional)
Predominantly a one stop shop to find all the services they need

Why service providers like it

No signup costs or annual fees
No fees until Greatjob issues a quote request from a client ($1)
A minimal fixed fee ONLY when a job (issued by Greatjob) is accepted by the service provider
Not auction based (lowest cost wins)
Potential to increase per hour rate if ratings are high or schedule high.
Resource management with reminders

Why governments like it

Reduce youth unemployment (currently 12.8% October 2009)
Reduce dole applications (rose by 40% in the last year – Sept 2009)
Need to solve how to reduce the impending impact of baby boomers hitting retirement