Every titan of industry has an origin story, as do candidate mapping and recruitment collaboration startups like us. Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on our story.
The Challenge of Hypergrowth
Back in the day when VMware was the talk of the town, I had the honor of helping the Japan team with their recruitment. Here’s a fun fact: search for VCP (VMware Certified Professional) in Japan, and you’d find a whopping three candidates. And guess where all three worked? VMware. No prizes for guessing.
There was a high benchmark for candidates and management were always looking for the type of talent Scott Keller of McKinsey points out is up to 800% more productive than your average player. Yikes!!
So there I was, mapping out high performing talent from major players like HP, Dell, and Oracle was the game. But with my “revolutionary” spreadsheets, we had to sift through thousands to find the gems. Efficiency? Not so much.
The RPO Dilemma
Fast forward to my own recruiting firm. The vision? Drive “proactive referrals.” The reality? Not quite the same. We faced the same three challenges:
Relationship Strength: Contract recruiters often lacked the rapport to genuinely engage with client teams. Solution: There needed to be a simple way to engage.
Data Validity: Tailoring prospect lists to each employee was a Herculean task. At best, only 30% of prospects were known entities. Solution: What would help is an algorithm that did the matching to improve those odds.
Work Disruption: Asking overburdened professionals to spare an hour for prospecting? Face to face, Zoom or Teams? Good luck with that. Solution: The collaboration tools needed to be fast and minimize disruption.
Enter Referable
An epiphany struck: what if we could make talent mapping seamless? What if teams could identify prospects with a few clicks, anytime, anywhere, on any device and in any language? What if the data could provide HR with competitor talent intelligence?
Upon some industry chatter, I found big tech giants had already built similar solutions. But manual candidate mapping? That’s so 2013. With the advancements in web data and software, for 2023 the game had to change. Enter Referable, our solution to automate the wide end of the talent funnel and get sourcers working on high value activity like engagement and attraction.
If these big guns were building high quality talent pipelines through candidate mapping and smooth collaboration, then maybe we could take that to the rest of the market. You know: to the recruiting teams that don’t have the $500K budget and dozens of engineers at the ready.
What if we could make talent mapping seamless? What if teams could identify prospects with a few clicks, anytime, anywhere, on any device and in any language? What if the data could provide HR with competitor talent intelligence?
Partnering Up
With the blueprint in mind, my search led me to Konstantin, the brain behind Interviewy. His expertise? Priceless. As a full-stack developer I have been in awe of his ability to read between the lines and find solutions to the myriad of technical challenges we faced building the platform.
The Road to Adoption
Our MVP had its hiccups. Bugs? Check. Skeptical teams? Double-check. But every startup faces these teething issues. What was important was that field trials went exceedingly well: both recruiters and other employees confirmed Referable was super easy to use and produced the quality talent pools we were after. We are ready!
With me joining my family back in New Zealand, distance to Japan and changing market dynamics meant we had to change tack. We have to focus on the ANZ market, as much as, or perhaps more than Japan.
Our ideal customers are companies focused on candidate mapping and recruitment collaboration to identify top-tier talent through referrals or recommendations. With Referable, they can:
- Improve direct sourcing efficiency, enabling the sourcing team to prioritize engagement.
- Collaboratively access company-wide talent insights without disrupting daily operations.
- Establish enduring talent pools, ensuring a ready list of the top 20 candidates for every new vacancy.
The Future of Referable
Our focus now? Japanese startups and the market Down Under. With the influx of investment in in-house sourcing in Australia, the time is ripe. We’re launching Referable at ATC2023, aiming to revolutionize talent intelligence, candidate mapping and direct sourcing. Why do things manually in 2023?
