Tasker matches engineers and tasks (without looking at a CV)

By Marit Koopmanschap

Tasker brings companies and hardware engineers together without looking at anyone’s CV. Clemens van den Berghe from Tasker, tells us more about it.

What is Tasker?

” Whenever a company has an engineering assignment, they can post that assignment on our platform. The unique thing about that is that that assignment is not shown, because we want to protect the company’s information. When the assignment reaches us, we propose an engineer who has signed up with Tasker to handle the assignment. The company pays once a match is found for the result that the engineer delivers and not for the hours. Tasker is not operating as a platform where you can scroll on your own looking for engineers or assignments, it is not a job board. We match behind the scenes.”

How did the idea of Tasker come about?

“Over a decade ago, I started a small consulting firm aimed at improving productivity and quality in high tech companies. And from that, companies would often ask me: ‘Do you know someone who can help me solve this problem?’ What I noticed is that companies – and I actually always did this myself too – try to find someone within their own network. So you call people up and ask them if they know anyone who knows anyone, and they in turn know someone else, and so on. A circle around where they live. This is how you try to find someone who can help.”

“But that is a very slow and painstaking process. And often unsuccessful. What I notice is that there are actually always engineers on hand to solve problems, except you don’t know where they are, and whether they have the right kind of qualities. So in effect, it is an information problem. Tasker is the platform where that information converges. The moment someone comes in with a question like that, we can immediately see where the right engineer is who has exactly the knowledge and experience needed to work on that problem.”

How is matching done on your platform?

“When an engineer signs up with Tasker, we create what we call a Skills Passport. Not a classic CV, but skills that really matter. Age or gender, for example, is not known; what matters is the expertise and knowledge a person has built up. When someone delivers good work, it should not matter who they are or where they live. The inherent value is what you have created. It’s about what an engineer can do and this is how we look at what a company needs. Tasker is there for every hardware engineer, whether you are just starting out or have years of experience.”

What does the future of Tasker look like?

“Sales are starting to pick up nicely now. The first big step that we want to take is to become active in America. There’s a very big market there. And then we want to expand it to other countries as well. We are convinced that when we have a lot of Skills Passports from lots of engineers, we will be able to develop a kind of online world map where we can see exactly which knowledge and expertise is located where and also where it is needed.”

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