RecruitLoop – StartupSmart

RecruitLoop is an online recruitment platform, giving employers flexible recruitment support, including innovative new technology for recorded video interviews.

 

The Sydney-based business was founded by Garry Visontay, Denis Zubkov and Michael Overell, who promise to provide employers with a stress-free recruitment process.

 

Overell talks to StartupSmart about revving up the recruitment industry.

 

 

What inspired the idea for RecruitLoop?

The concept for RecruitLoop grew from one of the founder’s frustrations in recruitment over many years.

 

Even with a successful national business of 40 employees, Garry couldn’t justify the cost of using a traditional recruitment agency but he did know a consultant who would help him recruit for an hourly rate.

 

When many of his friends started asking for her contact details, it was obvious that many businesses felt the same pain.

 

This was the catalyst behind the RecruitLoop model, which gives employers flexible recruitment support from expert recruiters, charged at an hourly rate. This slashes the cost of traditional recruitment support by up to 80%.

 

Our online platform also streamlines many stages of the recruitment process to save hours of time for everyone involved. A major innovation is recorded video interviews, which allow employers to screen candidates in a fraction of the time.

 

When did you launch the platform?

We launched the site earlier this month after a three-month period of beta testing to refine the online product and grow our initial network of recruiters.

 

During the beta period, our recruiters helped more than 25 Sydney-based clients recruit new talent online.

 

We’ve done no marketing to date but a very positive sign is the number of referrals and repeat business we’re now seeing across our entire customer base.

 

How long did you work on it beforehand?

The concept itself had been in early development for roughly 12 months before we decided to actively pursue it at the start of this year.

 

From there, it was five months of heavy product, customer and early community development.

 

During this period, we had a full-time development team working on the online product, and actually engaged the support of a specialist recruiter to help attract and verify our first recruiters.

 

In that respect, we became the first client of RecruitLoop, using the exact model to “recruit” the initial recruiters. This gave us real confidence and excitement that the model worked, which was then boosted by feedback from our initial clients.

 

What was the biggest challenge? How did you overcome this?

The biggest challenge was probably very similar to any other business in a pure start-up phase – you’re trying to turn an idea into a functioning business.

 

There’s an endless list of priorities and areas to work on – everything from customer and product development, strategy, marketing, corporate structuring and administration.

 

The challenge is knowing what to tackle and when, and where a snap decision is okay versus something requiring more detailed analysis.

 

To overcome this, we’ve taken a bias to action. Make a decision and act on it early. The progress you make from moving quickly almost always outweighs the risk of making an irreversible mistake.

 

How did you fund the business?

We’ve been entirely self-funded to launch. Garry is an owner/investor in a number of other businesses so he brings a lot of experience to the team.

 

Beyond that, there have been countless hours of sweat from everyone involved. I won’t go into total start-up costs, other than to say building a custom web application from the ground up generally requires a considerable level of investment and commitment.