- Many companies already pay bonuses to their employees for successful recommendations of hired candidates. It’s a good way to both earn and find a good subordinate. But from case to case — it’s not interesting ☹️
- It’s interesting when there is a place where such candidates could be found constantly. However, the question arises — why would good candidates come to such a place? 😉 This startup managed to find the answer to this question.
- And immediately it became clear that we are talking about a more general approach to the systematic solution of the problem of the shortage of qualified personnel. To solve which, you can create your own platform based on one of these examples:
Project Essence
According to recommendations from acquaintances, getting a job is 9 times easier than without them. At the same time, 82% of companies consider such recommendations as the most effective channel for hiring new employees. As a result, 70% of people find a new job through their professional connections and acquaintances.
But what about those who don’t have such connections and acquaintances? That’s where today’s startup comes in.
Tangent is a platform where people without professional connections can meet the right people from the industry to get a job recommendation from them.
The startup currently focuses on the technology product sales industry. With its help, you can find a job in a call center, sales department, or become a sales representative.
The “right people” you can meet through the platform are mentors. The mentor will explain to the candidate how their industry works, what competencies are needed for it, help create a resume correctly, and may recommend a candidate they like for a job in their own company.
Previous sales experience is not required from candidates, but general sales experience is welcomed. One of the popular career development paths through the platform is transitioning from a retail sales consultant to selling B2B products in a technology company.
The startup has already gathered over 400 mentors from British companies on its platform, as the startup itself is from the UK.
Candidates need to register on the platform first. It’s free, and the startup promises it will always be.
After that, the candidate independently completes a short online professional training course, where they receive basic knowledge about the sales profession. The goal of the training is for the candidate to understand if this job suits them and not to ask “childish” questions to their mentors. An important plus in the eyes of a future mentor is if the candidate receives badges for successfully completing tests and assignments in the course.
After completing the course, the candidate needs to record a video where they talk about themselves, their experience, and life goals. There is a special AI assistant on the platform that helps the candidate create a script for such a video.
The finished video needs to be uploaded to the platform — after which it can be seen by mentors on the platform. If a mentor likes the video, they will contact the candidate through the platform chat, ask questions, suggest scheduling a call, and may continue further communication.
If the candidate turns out to be normal, the mentor may recommend them for employment in their own company. There is no limit on the number of contacts with different mentors for the candidate, so ideally, the candidate can also choose who and in which company they want to work 😉
For companies, the platform opens up another way to get candidates through recommendations. Recommendations are good because candidates who come through recommendations work in companies for 70% longer than candidates who come from the street.
The trick is that many companies already pay bonuses to their employees for successful recommendations of new employees. However, ordinary employees do not have so many places where they can meet a large number of newcomers looking for work — but Tangent provides them with such an opportunity.
The size of such a bonus for employees usually amounts to 1–3% of the annual salary of the newcomer hired on their recommendation. This is more than ten times less than the 15–30% of the annual salary that companies have to pay to recruiting agencies. So, it’s not only beneficial but also profitable for companies if their employees register and show activity on the Tangent platform.
Tangent recently exited the beta version and, on this occasion, raised its first significant investment of 1 million euros. Before that, it raised small money once at the pre-seed stage.
What’s Interesting
If companies didn’t already pay bonuses to their employees for successful candidate referrals, promoting a platform like Tangent would be quite challenging. Because there’s nothing worse for a startup than trying to convince potential clients of something 😉
Instead, this startup simply provides companies and their employees with a tool to expand their existing practice. And this is a very right approach — finding something that’s already happening and giving a way to make it even more efficient.
So, the first general conclusion is — try to persuade less 😉 It’s better to make efforts to find something that can be referenced as “you’re already doing this.” Selling anything will be much easier this way.
It’s very important that the startup attracts candidates from the so-called “lower echelons of society” to its platform, who may find it difficult to find decent work. For them, Tangent can become almost the only option to break out of these lower echelons. And therefore, they also don’t need to be convinced that it’s beneficial and profitable for them 😉
At the same time, the market potential for the startup is very good. Because only 9% of employees in technology companies come from the “lower echelons” of society, while in the UK as a whole, the “lower echelons” make up 39% of the population.
It’s understandable that attention to this issue is partly driven by the fact that many countries have started promoting “diversity” policies — striving to have more representatives of different segments of the population, including women, ethnic, and gender minorities in companies.
But the main factor is still not politics, but economics! The problem is that the labor market in all developed countries continues to face a shortage of qualified labor. And poaching these qualified employees from each other is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive for companies.
To start systematically solving the problem of such a labor shortage, it’s necessary to find new places where “normal” candidates can be found in large numbers — from which at least over time, qualified employees can be groomed.
The first way is to start exploring the “lower echelons” of society, where recruiters usually didn’t venture before, and where it was difficult to break out independently. But where promising candidates are still found 😉 You just need to start looking for and selecting them. That’s exactly what today’s Tangent has done.
The second way is specific to technology companies. It involves attracting more women to positions such as programmers and other technical positions. The catch is that women make up only 4.8% of programmers, although they comprise half of the population. So, there is also room for growth here.
Another British startup, Code First Girls, took this path, about which I wrote in the fall of 2022. They organized programming courses for women and raised £4.5 million in investments for it.
The third path is more active hiring of people with disabilities, including people with disabilities who companies previously tried not to hire. And there is also great growth potential here — as in the USA, for example, 26% of the adult population has some health-related limitations.
The startup Inclusively, about which I wrote at the beginning of 2023, started working on the platform for hiring people with disabilities. After that, it expanded its audience to women, ethnic and gender minorities, as well as other “underrepresented” segments of the population. After my review, it raised $13 million in new investments, increasing the total investment in the project to $19.9 million.
The fourth direction is to find talent in other less developed markets where people don’t have as many chances to find decent work. But where they can be trained and prepared for remote work in more developed markets.
One such startup is Microverse, about which I wrote in the summer of 2021. It teaches programming to residents of Africa and Latin America and places them in American and European companies. This startup raised $19.7 million in investments, some of which it received after my review.
Where to Run
The general direction of movement is the creation of platforms to systematically address the problem of the shortage of skilled personnel. Starting at least from the level of “normal” personnel with basic training.
The most important thing is to find a place from which such personnel can be taken in large quantities. Possible options have already been mentioned above — the “lower echelons” of society, women (in areas where they are underrepresented), people with disabilities, and less developed countries and regions.
Where can such personnel be found for each sphere? How to select them? What basic level of training do they require? How can we spend less effort on selection and training? How to establish connections with potential employers? What support do they need when working with such personnel?
Of course, there are questions. But the problem is significant, and companies are already willing to pay for its solution. Moreover, there are already working examples — so there is something to start from, to avoid starting from scratch 😉
About the Company
Tangent
Website: jointangent.com
Latest Funding Round: €1M, April 18, 2024
Total Investments: €1M+, Rounds: 2