The startup idea is to establish a platform that will provide companies a set of validated and highly qualified assessors for conducting job interview assessments. It’s about crowd-sourcing HR interview to experts. Market Definition In many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist five or ten years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate in the coming years. There are about 3 billion people in the global labor pool; this set of workers will be the first to witness disruption. As per a recent report by World Economic Forum, the top 100 MNC employers in the world collectively employ about 13 million people globally. Competitor AnalysisIT hiring has seen innovation, and we saw the growth of hack camps find the best coders, most of the large enterprises have moved to simulation based hiring. IT was the easiest nut to crack because it relies on the principal of mathematics and 1+1 is always equal to 2; this is the not the case with other professions, where personal discretion defines the quality of output. Hacker rank is one of the fastest growing testing companies for IT based jobs; it has over 1000 companies on its platform and has attracted investment from the Recruit, the largest job board owner in the world. They have not yet ventured into hackathons for other verticals. Pain Point & Target Audience As on date, the companies have to bear with unskilled interviewers for conducting the job interview. Most of the line managers are not trained or functionally competent for assessing the candidates. Due to the paucity of time, mostly, the interviews are delegated to the junior most person in the team, thereby diluting the talent edge. Additionally, different interviewers have different interviewing styles and more often than not the questions asked during the interview, are not fail proof or the best ones to test the candidates ability. By on-boarding semi-baked talent, the attrition rate goes up, as with the time, the candidates are unable to deliver on the metrics. This gap is being currently filled by the recruitment consultants, who are not adequately equipped to do this role, their specialization is sourcing and not assessments. The target audience is an MNC/ service based company, which is expanding very fast and most of the leaders are busy in the client facing roles. Value Proposition This platform will enable companies to outsource technical interviewing to experts, who will ask a set of validated questions to each candidate. By outsourcing the technical interview, the businesses can focus on interviewing for cultural fit, which is one of the biggest factors in driving retention and productivity. Secondly they will have a third party unbiased view about the candidate, thereby limiting potential law suits on discrimination in hiring. Business ModelDepending on the seniority of the interviewer, the prices for every interview should be fixed. The interviews can be divided into three categories, reflecting the level and depth of their experience. The platform will keep a 20 % commission on the fees paid to the interviewing panel. Way to marketThe first step would be to select a set of companies and run a market research for figuring out the extent of pain and areas of pain in the interviewing process. After that select a panel of interviewers for a particular specialty and conduct an offline pilot. This will give you the input for designing the online module plus you are in touch with customers from day one. MilestonesThe first milestone in this business is to identify the jobs where it is difficult to find good interviewers in the company and then skim the market to find those interviewers and impanel them. The second significant milestone would be to sign up with three – four companies to do a pilot program. Investment Needed For PrototypeFor testing & building the prototype, pitch for raising $100K- $250K from angel investors or incubators like 500 startups. There should be no office rentals or salary payout; the entire budget should be apportioned for customer acquisition and technology. You can also contact cloud players like AWS, Google or Microsoft for hosting credits. Team CapabilityYou would need to have a Human resource and a tech expert as co-founders. The HR expert will bring his expertise from the hiring industry to help the tech expert in creating the platform. It may be a good idea to get someone who has expertise in developing assessments. In addition to this, you would need an expert on employment law who can train all the experts on nuances of employment law in regards to equal employment opportunity and discrimination. Investors / Expert TakeHR Tech has seen active interest from investors, pouring in over $2.4b in 2015; the major investors in this domain include a16z, 500 Startups, NEA and Matrix Partners.HR Tech startups saw investment jumping by 60% over 2015 numbers; even the deal volume increased significantly in 2015 touching 400 deals when 2014 had ended at fewer than 300 deals as reported by CB Insights. The investment in HR Teach is skewed towards the early-stage (seed/Series A) deal with 3 of the last four quarters of 2015 seeing these stages account for at least 65% of deal share. This is good news for startups looking to venture in this domain.
