A slew of tech savvy startups are redefining the online hiring industry in India

With an increasing number of startups emerging into the consumer internet space, there is a demand for skilled and qualified talents. This triggers a huge number of opportunities for freshers and experienced candidates at all levels. The recruiters indulge in mass recruitment through employee referrals and walk-ins, which may or may not generate the desired results.

Here comes the role of a few disruptive startups (online assessment platforms, video assessment platforms, and networking platforms) which, by leveraging social media, digital media, data analytics, and big data, are dramatically changing business intelligence in the domain of recruitment.

Abhijit Khasnis, COO and Co-founder of Hiree, says,

Many of the companies are moving towards online hiring platforms for getting quality talent. Lot more intelligence is being provided by platforms using analytics engines and social signals, which helps making decisions faster, reducing manual effort and providing large efficiency.

Hiree has proprietary, smart-matching algorithm that identifies and matches relevant skills of job seekers as per the requirement in the shortest time and most efficient manner.

The recently launched Hiree Android App for recruiters enables to connect with candidates via calls, WhatsApp, SMS, e-mail and schedule meetings, on the move.

Hiree initially raised over Rs 2 crore from angel investors and IDG Ventures. It later raised Rs 18 crore from IDG Ventures as follow up series-A funding.

According to a report, there has been a 90 per cent increase in the number of users who use mobiles to look for job opportunities and 75 per cent increase in the users who apply for jobs through this medium. This would encourage a large number of employers to have mobile-optimised career sites and job postings.

Current scenario in the market

Hiring today is not only about sourcing, interviewing candidates, and getting the vacancy filled; it is about making the right match of the required job role to a candidate’s capability and vice versa. Organisations increasingly look for a quality talent pool for their open positions.

Given the numerous benefits and ease of usage, social media will gain importance as a sourcing channel. The surge in technology adaptability has expanded employers' reach to tier two and tier three cities to meet their hiring needs.

Mayank Jain, co-founder, Talentpad, says,

There is an increase in the number of tools such as video conferencing, asynchronous interviewing, and online assessments. These have enabled the hiring of quality talent to increase by 50-60 per cent.

New Delhi-based TalentPad (previously TalentAuction) has raised an undisclosed amount of funds from Helion Advisors. Currently, the startup is working with 150 companies, including InMobi, MakeMyTrip, Snapdeal, Myntra and BookMyShow.

The online hiring space has seen a surge of multiple players who are increasingly becoming the go-to platform for the job seekers and recruiters alike. Mobility has also played a significant role in cutting down the turnaround time and driving high efficiency.

Tarun Davda, Director, Matrix Partners, says, "India’s search and recruitment market is USD 1 billion and it is growing at 20 per cent CAGR. The key opportunities in online hiring are sourcing and matching of high quality, passive candidates to companies.”

Speaking on the same, Venkatesh Peddi, VP, IDG Ventures (India), adds, "Online hiring space in India has not seen much innovation or disruption in the last eight to10 years. But in the last couple of years, the industry has witnessed the entry of several startups which are working on different aspects of recruitment function, to bring in more efficiencies using technology and disruptive ideas.We estimate that overall spend on technology around recruitment in India should be about USD 1 to 1.5 billion in annual revenues and is expected to grow to USD 4 to 5billion by 2020.”

Meeting the demand-supply gap

The biggest problem corporates face today is the lack of quality skilled manpower. As per a 2014 Manpower survey, 36 per cent of recruiters are unable to find the right kind of skills they desire for their hiring needs. Another major challenge is the duration of the entire hiring cycle. The current standard time to close a position is five to six months. Whereas, these online startups provide the perfect balance for the recruiters as well as job seekers by expediting the hiring process and providing relevant data points for verified job seekers.

Abhijit says, "The Hiree Big Data Analytics platform is helping rank active and quality candidates that companies can go after."

Today, Hiree has an active job seeker pool of over 1,00,000. Around 14,000 employers and 800 paying customers have signed up with them. Over 50 per cent of its demand comes from the IT industry with the rest spread across verticals such as healthcare, retail, and financial services, etc.

The traditional “classifieds” approach of online job portals is not optimal for the job seekers. For recruitment, recruiters have to go through hundreds of profiles to select the 10 best talent for their startups, which is a redundant process.

Mayank states,

We are a platform with more than 200 plus startups in the consumer web space. We curate the demand and supply gap ensuring the right match of skills and job profile.

On the same note, Subhendu Panigrahi, Founder, Venturesity, says, "We've conducted over 60 hackathons so far with 150 plus hires. Our clients range from companies such as Oracle, Ola Cabs, Stayzilla, and Housing among others. In one hackathon alone (Stayzilla), the company rolled out 20 job offers on the day of the hack itself!"

The Bengaluru-based, two-year-old Venturesity has raised USD 2,50,000 funding from angel investors, Phanindra Sama, Jay Sethuram, Hemant Kanakia, Joshua Bornstein, Phanish Puranam and Ravi Trivedi.

To stay ahead of competition

Hiree.com works on subscription based model. The company plans to achieve a 15x growth by the end of this fiscal year. It foresees a more than 5X growth in revenue every year over the next three years, fuelled by enhanced customer engagement and pan-industry penetration of their platform.

Talentpad charges companies 10 per cent of candidate’s gross CTC. This is subject to a 90 days 100 per cent refund policy, in the case the candidate leaves the company.

Mayank says,

We are looking to cross USD one million as revenue. Already around 6,000 candidates are interviewed across 200 tech based companies. More than 1,400 companies and 40,000 tech and product candidates have registered in our platform.

Future ahead

Recruitment industry, in the future, is likely to rely on the online hiring platforms. The new platforms that are evolving will add greater value with intelligent ranking using data sciences, semantic data aggregation, online assessments, video assessments and more.

Venkatesh says,

The companies in the online hiring space get very rich valuation globally. Given the growth potential in India, we do expect these companies to become very big and generate significant returns. We see emergence of new players in most of the segments of online hiring space. We should witness some level of consolidation as number of players increase.

Startups in the online hiring space

• Delhi-based GrownOut was founded by Sumit Gupta and Harsimran Walia in the year 2014. GrownOut was founded with a vision of solving the hiring requirements of the industry using the latest available technologies.
• Founded by Sachin Gupta and Vivek Prakash in 2012, Bengaluru based startup HackerEarth helps startups find the right technical talent.
• HackerRank is based out of Palo Alto, California. HackerRank was originally founded as InterviewStreet by Vivek Ravisankar and Hari Karunanidhi. HackerRank is a Y Combinator incubated company.
• Started in 2014 by BITS Pilani alumnus Vijay Sharma and Sudheendra Chilappagari, Belong is a Bengaluru-based talent sourcing startup.
• MyRefers is a Delhi based referral recruitment company. MyRefers is working towards creating a skills marketplace powered by referrals and enabled by data intelligence.
• SpringRole is founded by Benoit Vatere and Kartik Mandaville. The US based company is a platform where anyone can refer someone from their network for a job at one or more of the companies listed on their portal, and earn incentives.
• Powered by patent-pending algorithms, ZLemma connects companies and technical talent. It's products ZSort and ZCloud analyse professionals with backgrounds in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math/statistics).ZLemma is based in Mountain View, California.
• Bengaluru-based Talview (formerly known as Interview Master) provides digital interviewing software as a service to its clients. It is a pioneer and leader in video based assessments.