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As the Internet becomes a more useful tool for hiring and recruitment, one United Kingdom-based startup is banking on a factor that the big players haven’t thought of.

Referrals are certainly a popular way of hiring people and Zubka has created a web site and business model which could help hirers, recruiters, and referrers benefit from this age-old process of hiring.

CEO David Shieldhouse, a human resources expert of 20 years, realized about a year ago that the most important catalysts in the recruitment process, the referrers, never got monetarily compensated for their suggestions.

With this partner Armando Ruffini, Mr. Shieldhouse launched Zubka.com last month which is a part social networking, part hiring web site. Zubka’s unique selling point is that it helps hirers find the right people for jobs though suggestions from referrers registered on Zubka.

Think of it as an Ebay-sort of exchange marketplace, only for jobs. Companies can make job posts on Zubka’s web site for a small fee (about $40) while Zubka is hoping to create a large network of people, sort of like LinkedIn, who can refer the right talent for the job postings.

So far, this has been happening for free on sites like LinkedIn and OpenBC but Zubka intends to monetize the job referral process.

“People’s networks have an intellectual capital and the cherry on top is helping a friend get a new job,” he says. “I realize that the referrer has a critical part in the recruitment process and I am trying to cover the referral economy.”

For each referral a member makes on Zubka, he or she will get 80 percent of the total fee that the hirer is paying to fill in the post. Another 5 percent will go to the referrer’s referrer, essentially the person who has introduced the referrer to the network. Zubka keeps the rest of the 15 percent which is the way it makes money.

The average fee per job posting is about $8,500 or about 6 to 10 percent of the base salary which, according to Mr. Shieldhouse, is significantly lower than what recruiters typically charge. In the United States, recruiters charge 15 to 20 percent of the potential candidate’s base salary, and in the UK its about 20 to 25 percent, he said.

In effect, Zubka could be trying to eliminate the recruiters but recruiters can start their own businesses by joining the network, Mr. Shieldhouse said.

Since launching on August 15, Zubka has about 1,300 registered users on its network—a far cry from LinkedIn which was founded in 2003 and has 7 million users. Zubka has members across the globe in North America, Russia, Europe, and Asia, the CEO said. A day after launching the web site, Zubka had already made one referral.

Zubka might miss the personal touch that referrers usually bring to the hiring process as they usually are people you know. However, Mr. Shieldhouse intends to build an eBay-like rating system were referrers can be rated on their track record and the more genuine you are the better ratings you will have.

Although Zubka has competition in the form of several business networking sites, recruitment expert Jim Stroud said its advantage is it monetizes what people have been doing for free.

“Early adopters of Zubka will become power sellers just like the first few people on LinkedIn who have millions of connections,” said Mr. Stroud, who works with companies like Google and Microsoft for recruitment and runs a recruitment blog by his name.

One thing, however, that Zubka will have to be careful of is if competitors like LinkedIn start copying their business model, Mr. Stroud said, and losing users to them. To avoid that, Zubka will have to compensate its users and create a loyal user base as soon as possible.

“Zubka should focus on keeping its users loyal and creating benefits for power users, that should be their mantra,” Mr. Stroud said.