[quote]Testing ideas we think will work and iterating as many times as we need to until we get it right.[/quote]
As co-founder and CEO of GetHired.com, Suki Shah is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded his first company in 2008. Statacor Biosciences, a disease management company specializing in nutritional therapy and dietetics, has since grown to a staff of 25 employees. During this growth, Suki discovered that the hiring process is one of the biggest hurdles in growing a company.
Posting open positions on job boards like Monster.com or Craigslist is time-consuming, expensive and may elicit hundreds of email inquiries per post. Employers must then spend time sifting through these resumes to find the best candidates, sometimes with no insight into who is really best for an open position.
In response, Suki launched GetHired.com to reinvent the way employers and job seekers connect in today’s digital world. GetHired.com combines the visibility of a job board with the functionality of an applicant tracking system. This allows employers to find and pre-screen candidates using audio and video, conduct interviews in real-time and manage the entire onboarding process. GetHired.com produces higher-quality candidates in less time and at no cost.
Suki is an active member of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) DC Chapter and the Capital Access Network, an angel investor group affiliated with the University of Maryland. He enjoys skydiving, track racing and hanging out with his family and friends. He is a graduate from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
What are you working on right now?
At GetHired.com, we’re re-imagining hiring from the ground up. As an entrepreneur, I understand from experience that the hiring process is often the biggest hurdle in growing a company. GetHired.com’s platform makes it easy for employers to empower job seekers to put their best foot forward in the hiring process–not only by generating qualified candidates, but also candidates who are cultural fits for their organizations. By asking customized pre-screening questions and enabling job seekers to differentiate themselves using video and audio, employers are using the GetHired.com platform to more efficiently pre-screen and track candidates, cutting the weeks-long hiring process down to hours. GetHired.com provides employers with the technology to connect with candidates instead of a stack of resumes.
GetHired.com also gives job seekers a leg up in the hiring process by providing them with the tools they need to differentiate themselves in the discovery process and to better control how employers receive their information. They can also tracking applications and interview requests in real-time.
Where did the idea for GetHired.com come from?
Prior to GetHired.com, I co-founded a nutritional therapy company called Statacor Biosciences. Statacor quickly grew to 25 employees across 7 states, but as it grew, I realized that one of the most difficult challenges of scaling a company is the “people process.” That is the process of recruiting top talent, sorting through resumes, facilitating interviews and hiring the best candidates for open positions.
Despite an underemployment/unemployment rate of around 20 percent in the United States, I was astounded at how many obstacles small businesses and entrepreneurs face in hiring qualified candidates for open positions. The hiring process costs employers thousands of dollars per open position, including the expense of posting an available job online, the time involved in sorting through resumes and managing the interview process. Even more shocking, I noticed that there was not one complete end-to-end solution for employers and job seekers.
And so, I recruited top development engineers, including our CTO and co-founder Naresh Patel, to create a platform that would help me to source better-quality candidates in less time and at no cost. Together, we created an 800-number that allows candidates to call into a designated phone line and automatically respond to an audio prompt. Simultaneously, job seekers can upload their resumes for background purposes.
The audio prompt alone cut down the number of applicants per open position at Statacor from around 500 people to 30 job seekers. I was astounded that only 30 job seekers would take the time to complete the audio application process. I can quickly narrow down 30 applicants to the top communicators with specific skill sets to invite to a one-on-one interview. This efficiency led me to continue to ponder how to make the process even more efficient.
Enabling video was the next logical step, so Naresh and I worked together to create a comprehensive video-based social recruiting platform and job board for Statacor. The platform drastically cut the time it took for us to hire top quality candidates. And, we realized its potential to help other business owners connect with top talent at no cost.
We decided to devote more time and resources to the project and founded GetHired.com to help employers, especially small businesses and entrepreneurs, find top talent for their open positions using video and voice as pre-screening and applicant tracking tools. GetHired.com is the first job board to embed video capabilities directly into its social recruiting platform so that job seekers can record and submit personal and dynamic responses to an employer’s most pressing pre-screening questions at the start of the hiring process. As a result, employers are able to quickly find top candidates with good communication skills who are cultural fits for their organizations.
What does your typical day look like?
I often say that entrepreneurship is a lifestyle and not a job. So while most people say you’re “working,” you’re really just doing what you have been designed to do, which is innovate and build. I guess you could say a typical day for me would be meeting with members of my team, going over numbers, planning and planning some more.
How do you bring ideas to life?
Testing ideas we think will work and iterating as many times as we need to until we get it right.
What was the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?
Going to elementary school (K-12) was the worst job I ever had because I felt like the majority of things that I was taught, and the methods that my teachers used to teach, were either boring, non-applicable to my life or both! I have lots of thoughts on this but that’s a topic for a different day.
If you were to start again, what would you do differently?
I would have moved to Palo Alto sooner!
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Listen, listen, listen to your customers!
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Merging healthcare with dietetics in a new way.
Tell us a secret.
I want to go to space with Richard Branson.
What are your three favorite online tools and what do you love about them?
Gmail, Dropbox and Evernote. All of these apps are free and change the way we work in a positive way.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson because it inspired me to start my first company.
What’s on your playlist?
An eclectic mix of everything.
If you weren’t working on GetHired.com, what would you be doing?
Working at my other company, Statacor Biosciences.
Three people we should follow on Twitter and why?
- @Suki_Shah
- @GetHiredInc
- @RichardBranson
When was the last time you laughed out loud? What caused it?
I laugh at just about everything.
Who is your hero?
All of my investors!
Connect:
GetHired Website: www.GetHired.com
GetHired on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GetMeHired
GetHired on Twitter: @GetHiredInc
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.