What's up with the HR-Tech folks? Anything cooking in this industry
Recruitment is a 200 yr+ old industry
Anyone who can help get insights?
The problem is not that start ups have not tried it, the problem is the massive mindset shift required in the recruitment tech market. There are a few core challenges building in this space:
HR adoption: HRs are by default vary of technology, not talking about the new age ones but the ones at top have gotten too accustomed to the age old process which is barbaric and well highly manual which they want to justify to build a massive team( it's a typical ego show at top orgs for leaders to show the team size they manage) Even at the bottom down funnel, HRs have been traditional and changing their usage behaviour remains a challenge.
Recruitment is a classic chicken and egg problem, meaning every time you focus on either candidates or the recruiter, you are bound to either screw up your candidate supply or your recruiter buy in. Keeping both sides happy ends up baffling your biz model irrespectively.
Hiring Mindset: It's almost uncanny to see the hiring Mindset in the Indian ecosystem. Indian employers unlike global counterparts are not bothered with employer branding, candidate experience etc all they care about is volume of hiring and your basic BS of pedigree, title etc. Anything that remotely challenges the status quo gets discarded as an ineffective solution in my experience.
Agencies have survived because there are benefits to having an agency and i have also heard of kick backs to various stakeholders that benefit from their high %. In no way that's going away unless we decide to really look at hiring ops with a more focused lens.
Apart from this, from a funding PoV almost every VC looks at this market as a small incumbent compared to wider HR tech products. The biggest in this field is Naukri, that does over 100mn USD just by selling data bases and surprisingly people don't want to move away from downloading these. Given that it dominates this market, VCs find it hard to invest on it.
The budget for most hiring teams is abysmal and that means very inconsistently low margins to build with unless you build yourself horizontally ( reason why Naukri has also started acquiring ventures that cater to the entire lifecycle)
I personally find the hiring market a big joke, it lacks depth and communication. Beyond that, people are still stuck with gauging profiles manually or with some off the bat ATS that can't even fetch data correctly leading to candidate loss even when relevant. This clubbed with the hiring obsession for pedigree for almost every role creates a bad precedent and sets the wrong bias that is hard to deal with
We really need to treat hiring as a pull mechanism to attract talent irrespective of where they are from or what gender they belong to, woo them with great experience and focus on building a brand that people can resonate with. Only with a more focused systemic change will you see start ups offering unique solutions to streamline this further.
HR is the biggest problem here... They don't want to change and want 10 years experience for tech invented 3 years ago else they'll be out of a job
It's true to some extent, I've literally heard spoken CHROs during research work and it baffled me that when I asked them what they look out for, a good 40-50% simply boiled it down to desperation for a job. This mindset is the hardest to change!
Imagine, if this is the CHRO then the belief system that trickles down eventually to the recruiters in the team.
As for the mismatch, it's not entirely on recruiters. Most operate on mandates from biz leaders, who either don't even want to spend 10 mins on crafting a JD or do research on what works best for their teams.
Though I agree, in the current landscape the HRs need to be made aware of the nuances of the technologies they are hiring for, they need to be trained on domain specific implications on business with who and what they are hiring for.
While this needs to be factored in as a hiring manager, this information isn't exactly passed down and then it's expected they will get the right candidates. Hence so much dependency on key words or other factors to ensure their funnel is relevant enough to get an optimal conversion %.
@MetalMan20 I agree withost of it but CHRO and recruiting there is hardly any conmect or triclendown. Seems like it is the same on the outside. HR takes care of employee life cycle and Recruiting takes care of bringing people in. Umfortunately , instead of working togther both compete , mostly HRs since the get to advice leadership holds the higher ground. To be frank this competition doesnt matter unless they work together amd mostly they dont. If HR took inputs from recruiting it would more relevant and scalable as it is the part in HR and brings outside perspective. Unfortunately the HR angle is built on what they or the leaders want it to be based on their myopic view of market sotring in the orgs.
@WittyFeed I've absolutely been resonating with your posts as well. And really humbled that you find my responses well thought and relevant 🙂 Made my day!
Well, I had been an early operator for multiple start ups across different domains. Last year, I was building my second venture which is in the process of an acquisition. Nothing exceptional, but a decent outcome in this current market that I have to live with.
At the moment, I'm planning my next stint and evaluating what suits me well. Had been deeply considering VC roles not investment specific but maybe more around auxiliary areas where I get to put my operator chops to use. Any tips or suggestions ? 🙂
Pondering if we have ran into each other (provided you're in Bangalore) or not? Wouldn't mind bumping into you and discuss the interesting things you've been coming across
Coming back again how are the companies https://www.turing.com, coffee.io
I've heard amazing things about turing and the business is profitable.
Also somewhere in hr tech space is a big behemoth like upworks waiting to be disrupted
It’s coffeee.io
Would love to know more about what's happening in different companies like Zoho. Seeing a few opportunities in the space esp with AI integrations.
What scale are you operating at? What are the challenges you're facing?
AI helps jobseekers makes resume basis the job that it has only has created, and then screens it for fitment 🤦♂️ Level 999999 Unlocked ... This is the "ultimate" dog-fooding
Meanwhile, you will also see more tech and AI in recruitmen...
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