The main problem of today’s job market is the shortage of qualified employees. But this means that now it’s not the candidates who should be sending out their resumes to companies. It’s the companies that need to find ways to advertise themselves to suitable candidates. Here is a startup that quickly raised its first millions of dollars in investments for a simple platform that allows doing just that.
Project Essence
Found wants talented individuals to stop knocking on companies’ doors in search of jobs. Instead, companies should start offering them positions.
For this, a person must first register on the site and answer 5 simple questions describing their ideal workplace.
Then, they must take a competency game test, which, among other things, is intended to identify specific skills and abilities that set the candidate apart from others.
Next, the candidate will have an online meeting with a startup expert who will become their personal career guide. During the conversation, the guide will ask questions to get a more complete picture of the person and their needs and desires. This information will be added to the candidate’s profile to be considered when matching candidates with job vacancies.
Some of this information may not be explicitly reflected in the candidate’s profile but will be considered in the matching process. This could allow experts to more honestly and objectively “tag” profiles of candidates they have interacted with.
After this, the candidate can relax and start receiving offers from companies. Each offer is a video recorded by a company representative, describing and praising the specific position offered to the candidate.
From the company’s side, the process starts with a representative filling out a form describing the ideal competencies and characteristics of the employee they are looking for.
In response, they receive a list of people who best meet the described criteria.
The task now is to select the most suitable candidates from this list and send each a 60-second video describing the future position.
Ideally, a video is recorded for each candidate to not only describe the vacancy but also explain why this particular vacancy at their company is a perfect fit for this candidate.
If a video convinces any of the candidates, they can directly contact the company representative, after which the usual interview process and hiring terms discussion begin.
The startup currently focuses on three categories of employees – product managers, product designers, and software/cloud service salespeople.
For candidates, all of the startup’s services are currently free. However, they say that a paid membership level will appear after some time. This implies that the candidate audience will eventually turn into a community with a set of additional services.
Companies currently pay the startup a subscription to send offers to candidates found on the platform. It’s conceivable that the subscription cost will eventually depend on the number of offers sent or even be replaced with a premium for successful hiring.
Founded in October last year in Switzerland, the startup has since found a number of Swiss and European companies that have started paying for access to the platform.
Now, Found has raised its first investment of 2.2 million Swiss Francs (2.49 million US dollars).
What’s Interesting
I have repeatedly written about the problem of the shortage of qualified employees in the job market.
As a result, startups have emerged that train IT professionals for American and European companies in developing countries in Africa and Latin America – among them Propel which raised 2.9 million dollars in investments and Microverse which raised 19.7 million dollars. Or startups training women in programming – for example, Code First Girls, which raised 4.5 million British pounds. Or startups that deal with the employment of people with disabilities – for example, Inclusively which raised 6.9 million dollars.
The demand for such startups confirms the existence of a shortage that forces companies to look for new channels from which they can draw new employees. Despite this, job sites are still considered and perceived as places for companies to post vacancies, where job-seeking candidates should wander.
However, we should now be talking about a shortage of candidates, not vacancies. But this means that traditional job sites should “change orientation” – and become primarily places for posting resumes, where companies roam and persuade people to work for them 😉 This is the trend that Found wants to hit.
An amusing twist on the same trend I noticed last year in the startup market. The startup accelerator Neo, which appeared then, decided to change the format of demo days, where startups usually perform in front of investors. But at Neo’s demo days, startups began to perform not in front of investors, but in front of developers, designers, and other IT professionals – to try to attract them to work in their startup. That is, for budding startups, this turned out to be an even more important task than attracting initial investments!
Another interesting consequence of the same shortage I found on LinkedIn of today’s Found. In one of their posts, they write that they “discovered a growing trend.” Most of their clients have stopped looking for employees only when a vacancy opens up – because that way, they won’t find anyone talented quickly. After all, this can only happen in the rare case when a talent appears on the job market at the exact moment.
Therefore, companies have started to switch to a mode of constant talent search, independent of open vacancies in the company. This gives the company a chance to catch a talented employee just as he suddenly appears on the job market – because there might not be such an opportunity later.
In this sense, it’s unclear why then Found doesn’t have a mode of constant monitoring of newly appearing candidates on their marketplace according to the criteria set by the companies – so that they can send them their video right after the profile is published. Although this post was published by the startup just a day ago – so perhaps this new feature is already in the works 😉
Where to Run
The old ideology, which still prevails in the job market – creating platforms to help companies advertise themselves to attract top candidates.
It seems that the time has come to approach the task from the other side – and start creating platforms where talented individuals can advertise themselves so that top employers start approaching them.
Today’s Found also states that their task is to “identify specific skills and abilities of the candidate that set him apart from the crowd of others.” But this is written in small print, and it’s not very clear what exactly is being done here, and whether it’s being done at all. Maybe it was added just for the sake of a good word – although the word is important 😉
At the same time, there are startups that are making more understandable movements in this direction.
OnlyDust, which I wrote about in October, offers programmers to participate in the development of open-source software – to ultimately be noticed by companies and invited to work for them. This startup raised 3 million euros in investments.
Buildspace conducts acceleration programs for creating their own projects for various categories of creative people. At the very beginning, they focused only on developers, and their business model consisted of taking money from companies for the opportunity to observe the acceleration process – so that companies could hook the most capable and motivated participants. This year, the startup continues to find its place in the market, but for this, it has already raised 10 million dollars.
In general, the main direction of movement – creating platforms where talented people can advertise themselves so that top employers start approaching them. This can be sites with descriptions of past projects, places for active participation in side projects, or something else.
The main thing is that the emphasis on the job market is gradually shifting from “job search” to “candidate search.” And now you can very successfully fit into this trend.
About the Company
Found
Website: getfound.io
Last Round: $2.49M, November 20, 2023
Total Investments: $2.49M, rounds: 1