Name: Poolside

Legal: Poolside, Inc 

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: 2018

Founder(s): Maureen Burns and Rachel Brandenberger

Website: www.poolside.co 

Social Media Following: 67 Followers on Instagram, 141 Followers on Facebook,  723 Followers on Twitter, 59 Followers on LinkedIn

Industry – US Staffing Solutions Market

Size: $148.1B in 2018 (Source: Statista) 

Projection: $157.8B by 2020 (Source: Statista)

Introduction

Poolside helps restaurants find the right fit for their establishment. Its proprietary staffing platform helps restaurants attract and retain talent by building a connection between them and the talent they hire based on time availability, motivations, goals, and most importantly skills. In addition, it also provides restaurants a continuous pipeline of talent through its in-built marketplace.

The Product

Poolside is bridging the gap in the staffing solutions space specifically for restaurateurs and talent. It helps find the right fit for both parties through efficient staff scheduling to meet workflow requirements and the feasibility for employees. The platform helps the restaurants create job-postings based on best practices such as writing effective job posts and descriptions, explaining work culture, and other details. They match the job posting with prospective hires based on their individual goals, priorities, and availability. Poolside also offers a scheduling platform that understands the restaurant’s work requirements and the talent availability to promote smooth scheduling and mutual understanding of each other’s needs.

Origin and Founding Team

Poolside is co-founded by Maureen Burns and Rachel Brandenburger, who were former colleagues at Doblin, a design firm owned by Deloitte.

Maureen Burns is the CEO at Poolside, while Rachel Brandenburger serves as the VP of Product and Design at the company. 

Performance and Trends

Co-founder, Maureen Burns was one of the 10 women selected to participate in 1871’s WiSTEM 2018 Fall Class – a 12-week program that provides support to startup founders in the form of mentorship, introductions to investors, curated programming, and workshops.

The post Poolside – A staffing platform for restaurants to source and hire talent appeared first on Techweek.

Name: EngTal

Legal Name: Engtal Inc

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: August 2017

Founder(s): Christopher Atiyah and Mark Znowski

Website: https://engtal.com/

Social Media: 500 Likes on Facebook, 1379 followers on Instagram, 2258 followers on Linkedin, 1306 followers on Twitter

INDUSTRY –  USA Staffing Industry

Size: $142.8Bn in 2017 (Source: Staffing Industry Analysts)

Projection: $150Bn by 2019

Introduction

Talented engineers looking for employment opportunities across the American Midwest can now find an enabler in EngTal – Engineering Talent. This startup claims to be the “world’s only engineering staffing firm dedicated to placing the best engineering talent in highly regulated industries.”

The Product

EngTal’s vertical-specific network is its biggest strength. The startup’s exclusive talent network is made up of engineering candidates, primarily specializing in quality, manufacturing, product development, and design engineering. The startup’s specialist recruiters match candidates to openings in companies in the aerospace, automotive, pharmaceutical, and medical devices industries.

Since most candidates in this network are passively looking out for roles, EngTal claims it is able to take the time to find the right opportunity match for them.

Origin and Founding Team

Prior to EngTal, serial entrepreneur, Mark Znowski had already scaled several staffing and recruitment brands such as SEC Recruitment, Staffgroup, and Spacetech International.

Meanwhile, Atiyah, who was the erstwhile Sales Director of London-based SThree (one of the world’s leading staffing firms), had opened and scaled its Midwest Engineering Division by mid-2017.

Both industry veterans saw immense potential in the engineering niche. And so they started EngTal in 2017. Atiyah and Znowski collectively bring 30+ years of recruitment experience to the startup.

Performance and Trends

In August 2017, Znowski contributed $0.5Mn to EngTal’s funding, according to BuiltInChicago.

As a testament to its work culture, in May 2018, EngTal by being featured amongst the “Top 100 Best and Brightest Companies To Work For” In Chicago. It also won the “When Work Works” Award the same year.

Currently, the company has 11 employees. And according to ZoomInfo, it achieved revenues of $2.2Mn in Q1 of 2019.

The post EngTal – Engineering talent for the midwest appeared first on Techweek.

Workable was founded in 2012, in Athens by CEO Nikos Moraitakis and CTO Spyros Magiatis as Greece was still reeling under the influence of the Great Recession. The pair had worked together at Upstream and saw an opportunity to disrupt the $2Bn (annually) Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) recruitment industry which accounts for around 70% of total US hiring. The firm is now headquartered in Boston and has 100+ employees with local offices in Athens and London.

Workable and its Offering

Workable’s product is not just an ATS. Workable allows recruiters to integrate their candidate search with social media, match candidates to job profiles, schedule interviews, track a candidate through their recruitment cycle and make internal notes on candidates which can be viewed by other team members. The two-way sync allows recruitment team members to be aligned at all times with respect to a candidate’s prospects. Recruitment team members can access details about open positions, open candidates, prospects and reports through an integrated dashboard. While smaller recruiters benefit from the increased reach and streamlining the tool provides in managing the recruitment cycle, larger recruiters (who typically have recruitment teams) benefit most from the shared dashboards and internal documentation and tracking system.

The Workable software is available on Cloud as a SaaS with web and mobile versions (both Android and iOS). The scalability of the product immediately stands out. The company offers a 15 day free trial and has offerings starting as low as $50 per job per month. For larger customers, rates are negotiated and volume discounts are extended. (Summary of plans here.)

Workable claims to have 6000+ clients including Decathlon, Porsche, Ryanair, Sears, M&S, Dominos, Make-A-Wish, Fnatic and Upwork (to name a few). Verified customers on Capterra and G2Crowd have rated the software a healthy 4.5/5. In general, the negative reviews of the product seem to be centred around a few quality–of-life improvements in navigation and customizability of features, but overall the product certainly seems to have delivered on its promise of streamlining the hiring process.

Workable’s revenues are estimated to be in the range of $3M to $4M. Among its major competitors, Jobvite, founded by President & CEO Dan Finnigan, is estimated to rake in revenues of $22.5M while Lever and JobScore’s revenues are estimated at $5.5M and $3M respectively.

Funding History

According to Crunchbase, till date, Workable has raised $84M in six rounds of funding. In early 2015, it secured $5M of additional funding from its existing investors 83 North, the Openfund and some angel investors. Immediately after this round it went into partnerships with Portfolium – a college campus recruitment tool and Checkr – a software for facilitating background checks by employers. Later that year, it secured $27M of Series B funding in a round led by Balderton Capital with the participation of Notion Capital. A little over one year after this round, in 2017, the company announced its pivot to a platform strategy by releasing a Workable Developer site and a Developer Partner program. Workable released its APIs for integration within other, more niche, talent hiring software. This platform strategy unifies the entire recruitment process and gives Workable a window into the end-to-end recruitment cycle. It allows them to assess (and improve) the user experience of their end user through a holistic lens. If history is anything to go by, the latest round of $50Mn capital infusion led by Zouk Capital is setting up for interesting times ahead.

Interesting Times

With LinkedIn announcing the launch of its ATS in 2019, all firms in this space have their work cut out for them. Strategically, the social media integration with LinkedIn for existing software may soon be a thing of the past as LinkedIn would look to cement its own position as the prime recruiting tool of choice. Workable’s strategy to pivot into a user experience focused, seamless API provider for overseeing the end-to-end recruitment process for smaller firms may prove to be strength in this challenging market. Workable processes over 25 million candidates a year and the monetization and use of this data to develop better matching algorithms for its clients may be central to its growth strategy. The fresh infusion of $50M indicates that the firm may have a few more pivots up their sleeve, but it would be surprising to see them move away from their core philosophy of prioritizing user experience and design.

The post A Workable Solution for SME Recruitment appeared first on Techweek.

Artificial Intelligence and jobs don’t mix well. People often discuss that AI will be a disruptive force in the job market. Yes, up to 15% of today’s jobs may disappear in the decade. But, a similar number of new jobs, if not more, will be created. Moreover, AI can drastically improve the recruitment process leading to more work satisfaction and productivity.

It is only prudent to believe that fewer people will engage in jobs that they dislike once the AI transition is complete. Pymetrics is already working to make that future a reality.

Hiring Process across most of our companies is broken. On an average, a job opening receives 250 applications, but the recruitment process fails to select the desirable employee up to 50% times. An overwhelming majority of candidates rate the recruitment experience poor and never hear back from the companies. Besides, filters based on people’s resumes can discriminate against suitable candidates who don’t have a great background to show for.

Founded by two women entrepreneurs in 2013, Frida Polli & Julie Yoo, Pymetrics uses neuroscience and artificial intelligence to a matchmaker between companies and job seekers. Pymetrics allows companies to assess talent objectively, getting rid of all biases including the personal, educational and professional background. Interestingly, this startup has gamified the recruitment process.

Watch Frida talk about AI’s power to reveal what we don’t know about ourselves.

A company can invite all its top performers to play set games. These help judge personality traits as well as cognitive and social skills. This helps create the ideal persona for a new hire for specific roles. On the other side, candidates can play the same game to apply, instead of putting in a resume. Based on the data gathered during these games, Pymetrics’ AI matches an opportunity with the perfect talent.  Recruitment is usually a time taking process. Companies can save valuable time by using the existing applicant pool. Beyond the initial hiring, Pymetrics also helps companies identify opportunities for internal movement of employees.

As Pymetrics is based on objective analysis to deliver the best possible opportunity talent match, it allows for diversity to naturally appear in the final selection numbers. In absence of any bias (think name, gender, color, age, race, class or education brand), commonly associated with the traditional recruitment process, no one starts at a disadvantage.

Pymetrics is focusing on making equal employment opportunities available for close to 5 million Opportunity Youth. That’s one-in-seven young people who are disconnected from the economy. This group is made up of young adults, 18-24-year-old, who are not in school or at work. Unemployment rates for the group are extraordinarily high at 12%, nearly triple the national average. Lack of an educational and professional background makes it difficult for Opportunity Youth to enter the workforce. A recent report by Harvard Business School found that employers are demanding a four-year degree for jobs that previously did not require one. This practice does not only make it harder for companies to find affordable talent but also prevents at-risk individuals and opportunity youth to find jobs.

The startup has received a $150,000 grant, awarded by The Rockefeller Foundation under their Impact Hiring program to unlock additional employment opportunities for disadvantaged youth. Pymetrics is working with 4 companies in their efforts to hire Opportunity Youth and diversify their workforce.

In September ‘17, Pymetrics closed an $8 million round to grow the team of 45 employees across offices in New York City, San Francisco, London, and Singapore. Since its inception in 2013, Pymetrics has raised a total of $17 million. According to the startup, 50 companies across the world and 500,000 job seekers use its services.

Would you like to try a game and find a perfect job for yourself?

The post Everyone has a fair shot at a job with Pymetrics’ AI appeared first on Techweek.