By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Hired’s gift box to job candidates when they land their new job. Courtesy photo.
The company, founded in 2012 in San Francisco, opened an office at WeWork in downtown Austin about a year ago.
It now works with more than 150 local technology companies from startups to publicly traded companies and it has helped thousands of employees find jobs.
But Hired isn’t for everyone. It’s selective. Only five to seven percent of the candidates that apply to its site get accepted into its pool of talent. The new job candidates get sent out in a batch that is released every Monday and they stay on the Hired marketplace for a maximum of 4 weeks.
“Everybody accepted on the platform is curated for both quality and intent,” said Brett Hogan, Hired’s Market Manager in Austin.
Hired is really flipping the recruiting model on its head, Hogan said. No more filling out applications that get sent into a black hole. Instead, Hired sources top talent at scale and then enables companies to apply to those candidates via the platform.
Hired also has Talent Advocates who act like career coaches for the job candidates and help them through the process, offering advice on everything from profile polishing and interview tips to helping prioritize interview requests based on the candidate’s professional goals.
“Most agency recruiters have a sales relationship with candidates since they’re paid on commission,” Hogan said. “We’re focused on if the candidate actually has a good experience. It’s shifting the relationship from a sales posture to an advocacy role. No sales commission is ever involved.”
Successful job candidates on Hired’s marketplace receive a signing bonus of $1,000 and a celebration box filled with Dom Perignon Champagne and other goodies.
“For clients, our value proposition is simple and compelling. We provide a curated channel of top talent that refreshes each week,” Hogan said. “Ninety-eight percent of our candidates respond within the first 72 hours of a company reaching out to them. And in Austin, 60 percent of interview requests are accepted.”
Hired specializes in filling all kinds of engineering roles, as well as product managers, data scientists, UX/UI designers, sales and many others. Ultimately, it plans to expand into marketing, legal, banking and all kinds of knowledge-based industries. Hired also recently started filling contract positions.
In February, Hired raised $40mm in Series C funding and announced three strategic acquisitions that will help accelerate its expansion into Asia, Europe and Australia.
“We’re focused on the knowledge worker,” Hogan said. “We want to be the place where the best companies and candidates go first to find their next role.”
Top technology companies in town seem to be taking note. Austin-based Spredfast, with 450 employees, contracts with Hired to use the marketplace to find engineers, said Sam Baber, VP of Talent and Development at Spredfast.
“We were looking for solutions that were smart, made sense and teed-up talent we wouldn’t have found otherwise,” Baber said.
The best solution was Hired, he said.
“The main reason is that it’s a tool and a platform that was easy to access,” Baber said. “It provided fresh talent in Austin…within a matter of four weeks, we filled three top engineering spots through Hired.”
It really does reduce the time to hire dramatically, Baber said.
“With Hired in our back pocket, it makes me sleep easier,” he said.
Hunter Sherman, Lead Software Engineer at Vantage Point Analytics, landed his job through Hired.
It was discreet, efficient and effective, he said.
“It was the easiest way I’ve ever gotten a job,” Sherman said.
Sherman’s credentials and criteria for his next position went out with a batch of new candidates on a Monday. Shortly after that he got a salary offer from Vantage Point and then he interviewed with them. The entire process took two weeks, he said.
Vantage Point Analytics, a supply chain fraud detection firm with offices in San Francisco and Austin, plans to hire more engineers from the platform as the business expands, Sherman said.