Innovation In Recruitment

The recruitment process in India has been smooth flowing for over a decade. Indians are a social people, so they set more stock by referrals than any other country.

About 65% of employee referrals in India are followed upon, higher than the 39% world average. This is in addition to the traditional ways of recruitment. Of which, the most prominent in today’s time is sifting through online job portals.

Easily the most affected by the lack of innovation in recruitment are the start ups. At its infancy, any company needs all the help it can get. The most flexible, potentially risky but also potentially the most profiteering and hands down the most important resource of any organisation, leave alone start ups, is the human resource. Other resources may be in abundance but they will not amount to fruition if the person utilizing them is not talented enough. This makes it all the more important for start ups to find a person who's the perfect fit for their organisation.

Start ups typically place a lot of emphasis on flexibility. As opposed to established jobs, start ups may require extra workload to be distributed among existing employees without notice. As such, the candidate that start ups look for is ideally someone who does not stick to the job description. In addition to the job description, the candidate, when they apply, should be ready for any changes, albeit minor, to the job description, as per the requirement of the company. In addition to qualifications and on-paper prowess, start ups also require people of impeccable mental mettle.

Thus, filling job positions in a start up may not always be consummately fulfilling through conventional methods of sifting through a job site. A number of start ups are changing this industry, revolutionising the recruitment process in their own way. The last such shake-up came in 1997, with the inception of Naukri.com. This is an opportunity the following seven online recruitment start ups have poached.

1. GrownOut - Sumit Gupta and Harsimran Walia, Gurugram. Website

The company has a network prediction algorithm which sources publicly available information into a job profile for the selecting a job profile for the candidates based on places where they have studied/worked using active/passive prediction rather than keyword search.

The system is far better than manual employee hirings through referrals as it is completely automated, removing any human error that could have been incorporated, had it not been so, while still working on the same principles as employee referrals.

2. Zlemma - Ashwin Rao and Madhav Halbe, Pune & Palo Alto, California.

This company was acquired by fellow California-based techie marketplace Hired, formerly known as DeveloperAuction. It had two products ZSort and ZCloud, that had algorithms which assessed candidates with backgrounds in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths connect with employers. The candidates are scored based on a lot of parameters, among them the level of activity on social media sites like GitHub and StackOverflow and are located and matched to companies looking for a profile matching theirs.

The Hired philosophy works exactly opposite to the usual way of  ‘candidates looking for jobs’. Hired is a platform where employers look for suitable candidates.

3. Recruitro - Neeraj Kumar and Chetan Chopra, New Delhi.

Recruitro offers a software that is essentially a consolidated Application Tracking System and a resume sourcing system rolled into one. It provides the companies an efficient, collaboration platform that offers accurate, relevant and contextual information about the candidate to the employer for a cost, thereby reducing the time and costs spent on the recruitment process.

Recruitro focuses on bridging the gap between the company and the candidates. It aims at servicing both the candidates needs as well as its companies. They currently have plans for the IT sector, moving on to banking and finance later.

4. HackerEarth - Sachin Gupta and Vivek Prakash, Bangalore. Website

The HackerEarth approach to recruitment is completely skill based. They offer a tool that gives recruiters, albeit unskilled in programming assessment to devise tests for comprehensive marking of candidates and decide their suitability for the organisation.

The ever-growing HackerEarth community routinely organises competitions meant to evaluate the programming and technical prowess of the candidates. These hackathons are of high import as the rankings given to candidates are coveted by recruiters. These rankings are displayed along with their publicly available coding data and any past education or work experience.

5. Talview - Tom Jose, Jobin Jose, Sanjoy Jose and Subramaniam Mani K, Bangalore. Website

Talview is an impersonal interview service offering candidates the opportunity to take part in pre-recorded asynchronous interviews which allow them to record their answers in response to similarly recorded questions by the hiring managers of the companies.

Previously known as InterviewMaster, Talview was started in 2012 with the aim of connecting alumni and industry experts with students for the purpose of training and industry feedback. In addition to the asynchronous interview system, they also offer hiring analytics, talent engagement and written assessment modules.

6. MyRefers - Lalit Bhagia and Kashish Bhagia, New Delhi.

MyRefers is an online referral follow up service. It gives users an opportunity to recommend the best suited profiles within their network for a vacancy every time a company posts it. Applications are sorted through big data intelligence.

Users who recommend are given a two stage reward system. The first, when they recommend a lead to the company and the second, when the candidate recommended by them gets hired for the post they recommended him for.

7. Venturesity - Prashant Koirala and Subhendu Panigrahi, Bangalore. Website

Venturesity describe themselves as a “peer learning and challenge platform.”  It offers “LearnUps” which are basically learning sessions organised by companies to help candidates learn and engage with them through hackathons learning and assessment sessions.

The company is seeing immense opportunities in the US and Southeast Asia with a plan to conduct over 1000 LearnUps in the next 12 months with indulgence in lateral hiring.

-Aditya Bhargava
Musician, writer and otaku, with a professional interest in gaming.
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