With so many new recruiting- and human resources-related companies sprouting up (perhaps about one a day), we thought we’d do a little roundup of some recent and upcoming startups that we haven’t covered yet on ERE. Here are some video interviewing, employee referral, and other launches, including the ambitious launch of an outfit called willbeHired.
Zao Like Wow
We were double-checking how to pronounce “Zao,” and asked CEO Ziv Eliraz. He said it’s pronounced “like ‘wow,’ as in what we hope people’s reaction to our platform will be.”
The system helps you match a job description to the friends of referrers; track referrals; collect notes from references; and, it serves as a free little applicant tracking system, too. Pricing is explained here.
Eliraz started the company while working in Palo Alto but has now moved back to Israel, where he wanted his four kids to grow up. He says that unlike some other referral sites, this one is based on “people you trust” rather than being an open marketplace for referrals, which contradicts the whole purpose of an employee referral in the first place.
Zao just completed what Eliraz calls a “nice size round” of angel funding (including from some fairly high-profile investors, like one who also put money into Chegg). It’s in beta, invite only, with that changing in a couple of weeks. It has nine employees: salespeople in LA/Newport Beach, with the CEO and R&D in Israel. Zao, says Eliraz, isn’t going to disappear any time soon. “Even if we don’t make a dime,” he says, “we have at least a year and a half, maybe more. We have companies using us and a business plan that makes money.”
Square One
Foursquare recruiter Morgan Missen is starting a company of her own called Main. For entrepreneurs, it’ll help them recruit tech talent; for employees, it’ll help them with the hiring process, such as negotiating pay.
New Video Service
Joining a long list of video-interviewing companies is enRecruit. Candidates get an email telling them to answer three of your questions, and then respond with two-minute video responses.
Willbelaunched
June 7 brings the launch of willbeHired, founded by Thor Culverhouse, previously the CEO of a company bought by HP. Its target market is mid-size companies, and for them, it plans on doing a little bit of everything. Managers can “follow” jobs, so they know where the process is at any one point. Recruiters and managers can coordinate interview schedules. You can score interviews, and make notes about how they went.
You can create job descriptions, with video if you want, and spread those around via social media. You can interview people online. And, get all kinds of analytics. Future plans include “collective intelligence” — analyzing the characteristics of successful hires to suggest future hires (kinda like Netflix or Amazon suggest products you may want to check out based on past habits). Pricing’s listed here.
The year-old Denver company is angel funded, and has four full-time employees and a number of outsourced vendors working with it; for example, it has a couple engineers on staff and others working through outsourced firms. A summary’s in the PDF below.