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Sourcing as a Service

4 pointsaml18311 comments

I am a technical recruiter working on a startup idea which centers around making sourcing easier for both founders and later stage companies. Right now if you want to hire you either go through your referral network (good method for first couple employees), hire a recruiter (very expensive), or founder/HR does recruiting.

I always believe that companies should exhaust their personal network before hiring a third-party recruiter or internal recruiter. The founder can also personally recruit, but he doesn't have a lot of time especially to go through and add people on LinkedIn or Github. Recruiters typically cost 20% of first year salary and internal recruiters should be focused on building relationships with potential employees. They aren't dedicated sourcers.

That is where we come in. A company will tell us they are looking for a python developer with 3-5 years experience in Austin, Texas. They will pay $250 for a 100 name Excel Spreadsheet that comes with names, email address, current company, title, social profiles and (cost extra) rating.

This will save companies a lot of time by doing something they really aren't experts in and is much cheaper than hiring a full-service recruiter. Many large companies don't even have dedicated sourcing teams so I see this as something that can be used at a two person startup to a Fortune 500 company.

What are your thoughts? I have founded one or two other companies in space, but not super crowded. I'm sure I missed some details so feel free to ask questions and I'll answer.

If you can crack this, it will be a very lucrative opportunity but I am afraid that the space is too crowded and there is not enough of a value proposition for quality candidates to give you their updated info.

Also doesn't Linkedin already do this. They have a search engine you can use to filter out applicants based on school, past experience and location. I also believe they released a lite version to make it more affordable.

Some startups you should look at if you're interested in this space: Hired.com, Whitetruffle and Wayup.com (they introduced a way for companies to post requirements and get paid per qualifed applicant)

We are way different in the sense that Hired & Whitetruffle still charge 20%, but the company is doing the work the recruiter typically does. It's just a marketplace. WayUP is targeted towards student.

We only do sourcing. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-...

You need to connect with someone to get their contact info and you'd be surprised how hard it is to get emails of engineers.

So you are offering to gather names from linkedin for a price? As a tech recruiter in Chicago I could give you a list of 100 engineers in any various tech stack in 45 minutes or so by pulling directly from large name companies online. Why would someone pay me to do this instead of doing it themselves?

Edit: I like the idea i just dont think anyone would pay for it.

As you know, you still need to be connected with someone on LinkedIn to get their email addresses. I don't think many companies can come up with a list of 100 engineers in 4 or 5 hours with contact information. That is why tons of companies spend money buying databases. A comparable idea in a different space is: https://www.leadgenius.com/

With the personal network there is some assumption that the potential hire has some introduction and will consider (at least a little) the offer.

With the 100 emails in an Excel file approach, I guess most people will just send it to the spam folder.

Most people send recruiter emails to spam. If a founder or a corporate recruiter reaches out it has much more value.

I generally like the idea of automating recruitment. It "feels" like there ought to be low hanging fruit here.

I'm not sure if you'd have legal issues with selling on names unless they've specifically opted in. If not a simpler route to market would be just to bundle the names and sell them as data.

Would you be making sure that the listed names are actually available for work? Or are you simply exporting your LinkedIn contacts?

The low hanging fruit would be just to source in the beginning. As we expand and develop a "platform" we will start doing more recruiting as a service and try to replace the agency recruiter/assist the corporate internal recruiter

One option is to specifically target folks who are looking to move to an given area. I'm not sure how to do this aside from content marketing.

Interesting thought.

Looks like this is already being done: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/recruitloop-sourcing-as-a-s...

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