Hiring and Recruiting Software
Hiring and recruiting is a huge and complex part of a start-up. From the beginning of a venture entrepreneurs struggle with who to trust to help them create their idea. This struggle never ends but there are a few tools that can help entrepreneurs worry less about hiring and recruiting. I have heard that the key to building a successful company is to hire great people with great culture but also be prepared to fire quickly. The problem is how to make the hiring and recruiting process as efficient as possible so that entrepreneurs can focus on creating products and solving problems. There are many recruiting tools that claim to make the hiring process more efficient. I will try using 7 software and write about my experience.This will help you entrepreneurs choose which tool works best for your start-up allowing you to be faster and more efficient at hiring. I will be comparing companies such as Ziprecruiter, staff.com, Hirevue, Workable, Upwork, and Instagram.
We will start with how I found out about these tools. I found staff.com, Hirevue, and Workable from my Technology for Entrepreneur’s class Dr. Keyhani list of software for entrepreneurs. I heard of Upwork and Ziprecruiter while listening to an entrepreneurship podcast. Instagram is something that I use regularly. The reason I added Instagram to the list of Hire and Recruiting tools is because of the power of leveraging people that you know. As an entrepreneur it is important to work with people you know and trust. Who do you know better than friends and followers on your social media accounts. The first time I wanted to build a website, I just asked on my instagram story “looking for someone to build a website for me”. Within one day I had several direct messages from followers letting me know they have the skills to make a website or they passed me to a friend who had the skills. That is the power of leveraging those you know. It is something I would recommend to any start-ups, leverage the people you know first, plus it’s free.
When it comes to the other hiring and recruiting tools, I started by creating a free account to learn about them. Websites such as Ziprecruiter, staff.com , and Upwork allowed for an easy set up of a free account. These three websites asked questions such as company name, address, email, how many employees you have and are looking for, how often you hire, your company’s website, and your phone number. I thought those questions were reasonable, especially if they want to make sure you are a real person with a real company and truly trying to hire people. Upwork allowed me to create a job post right away without ask for a credit card, unlike Ziprecruiter. Ziprecruiter did not allow me to post anything until they had a credit card to start the 14 day trial. According to Ziprecruiter, the trial includes a distribution of the job posting to a 100+ job boards. After the trial, the fee for the standard service is $249 USD per month. The premium version costs $399 USD per month. This includes distribution to 100+ job boards, premium placement in 25 million emails, and access to Ziprecruiter’s database of 16 million resumes. As you can tell this is not a cheap service but they claim that the cost is so high because they guarantee great candidates within the months. From what the owner said on the podcast, they are doing such a good job matching job seekers with jobs that their clients do not stay on their website for long.This is thanks to their matching algorithm and their artificial intelligence that learns from candidates you interview and like. From what I have seen the cost is worth the value. Upwork on the other hand allows for a free job post since it is a freelance website.This means that freelancers from across the world go to Upwork to look for quick jobs although you can hire them indefinitely. On Ziprecruiter, you are looking to hire for your company. During the job post creation, Upwork asks for a description of the job, the skills a candidate needs, the country the freelancer is from, the language(s) the candidate speaks, how much will you be paying for the job, will it be a paid for each milestone made or pay once the job is done. It is a lot of questions to answer but I liked it because it forces you to think about the job you are posting and what you need to get it done. It allows Upwork to filter through all their freelancers and offer only the best. Freelancers start applying for the job post as quick as in the same day. Then you would have to go through all the applicants and select candidates to interview further. Eventually leading to a potential hire. This whole process is done without any cost which is what I really like about Upwork. Not only that but if you are not sure how to create your idea, talking to freelancers in that profession can really help you understand the most efficient way of proceeding with your idea. Which is one more benefit of Upwork as a recruitment tool.
When it comes to the other websites, I was a bit disappointed. Staff.com ended up being a website that helps manage your employees if they work remotely. It is not a software to hire and recruit but instead it is a website to track the work time and productivity of those you have hired. After playing with it a little bit, I started to understand that a tool like this is very important since more and more start-ups use remote workers as employees. This tool would be very useful to make sure that your money is allocated properly and that employees are actually working and benefiting the start-up.
Hirevue was a very complicated website. There is no trial but they have a “see a demo” function. Once I pressed to see the demo, I was taken to a registration page when they asked for my name, phone number, company’s name, and company email. The weird thing about the email, is they did not accept any from gmail or hotmail. This made the whole sign up experience annoying, since you needed a special business email to be able to access the demo. For these reasons I did not pursue registering for Hirevue. However, they had a list of customers that had used their software to hire and they had some big names on there. Companies such as Vodafone, Urban Outfitters, Intel, Kohler, and Singapore Airlines were just a few of those companies. This would suggest that their services and software is more successful in supporting large companies. None of those companies were new startups, most of them were very old and established companies.
Workable was very similar to Hirevue. Instead of offering a trial they offered a demo request. After filling out their registration form, they said that they would be in touch with me. I had to give them information much like the other softwares, but I had to wait a few days before being contacted. Even then I did not receive the demo that I wanted, they wanted more information from me. It was too much of a hassle.
After going through all these different softwares that are built to help hire and recruit new employees, I can honestly say that different websites will work for different companies. However, as a entrepreneur starting a new start up I would recommend to start by leveraging your friends and family first. Talk about what you need to those close to you because you never know what skill set they have or who they know. Once you have done that, then you should leverage your social media following. It is as easy as asking for a web developer on your Snapchat or Instagram story. It is free and very easy to do. At this point I would recommend using another free tool such as upwork. It is free to create an account and post a job. Following this you can communicate with freelancers around the world. I would recommend discussing your idea with many of them and asking them how they would approach to solve the problem in hand. Often times, this will help you polish your idea. They may give you options you have never thought about and you get all their expertise for free. Once your idea is polished and you know exactly what you are looking for, you can then hire some freelancer’s from Upwork or go to Ziprecruiter and hire someone full time for your company that will fulfill your needs. Hiring and recruiting is a stressful process for entrepreneurs because we love our company and want to make sure whoever we take on board cares just as much. The reality is that will rarely be the case, but one thing that these hiring softwares can do for you is make sure the people you are recruiting have the skills and are good candidates for the job you have posted. The rest is up to you. Like Gary Vaynerchuk once said “ hire fast, fire faster”.
