On 16th Jan 2016, Govt. of India launched an ambitious “Startup India” scheme to promote Indian startups ecosystem. The idea of a dedicated job portal for startups flashed while going through the finer details of the scheme on the internet. Many positive steps were taken toward easing out the legal compliances, providing debt/loan facilities, lesser paper-work, taxation relief etc. However, hiring challenge remained unsolved. We know that after funding, next main reason for startup failures is inability to hire the right people at the right time. Lack of employer branding, office infrastructure, compensation paying capacity, no proven company track records are few hurdles in attracting great talent. Strangely, this critical aspect wasn’t addressed in Startup India scheme.
It was no brainer that startups are different in their nature, finances and resources. Hence, a dedicated job portal for startups is the need of the hour. Saving cost is one aspect but reducing founders efforts in hiring a resource is another important dimension. The million dollar question remains- how to save the time of startup founders and leaders time so that they can focus on their business problems.
I strongly believe that ultimate solution to aforesaid problem lies in automation of end-to-end recruitment-life cycle. With the advancement of information technology, many new armour has come in our hands which can be employed for automating it. Likes of Artificial intelligence, Blockchain, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and Robotics have interesting applications in recruiting space. We, at Startupjob.in, intend to use a few of tech marvels with bit by bit and will keep on innovating and adding till recruiting has become automated. Stay tuned with us for exciting features!
Incorporation
After brewing and iterating the idea for several months, the company was finally incorporated on 15th May 2019 as a private limited company. The initial team was recruited in a couple of months and started offering services to startups as “Cloud Recruiter” i.e. Recruitment Process Outsourcing Model (RPO). A dedicated recruiter-cum-account manager is assigned to startup client and charges are fixed monthly plus a small commission of CTC on successful joining. We learnt a lot during initial pilot projects and optimised the operations & processes so that clients are able to save the costs plus efforts. Finally, our startup clients are able to save 50-60% of the cost as compared to other paid alternatives.
IIM-Lucknow Incubator
After figuring out a basic service model which is a good market fit, we looked for mentoring and guidance to take it to the next level. In the hunt of the incubator, we realized quickly that IIM Lucknow’s incubator (my alma mater) was a perfect fit. On 8th December 2019, we had pitch day in IIM Lucknow’s incubator. We were among the 6 shortlisted companies for founders’ discussion on 16th December 2019. As it turned out, ours was the only company to see through the end of tunnel.
New Year- New Beginning
On January 1, 2020 (New Year), we moved on to IIM Lucknow Noida Campus incubator. Indeed this new year brought a new beginning! Along with us, 7 other companies were operating from the incubator. Few other have already grown and taken larger office outside campus. Few unfortunate ones couldn’t survive the test of the time. The serenity of green lush campus and collective IQ floating around on campus in the form of faculties and students is really motivating in itself. At times, it push you to challenge yourself to work harder in quest to live upto newly found higher set of expectations. We planned the first quarter (Jan-Mar) for developing the website’s MVP and launching it on the first week of April 2020.
Corona Pandemic
First two months went smooth – job portal website work achieved every planned milestones. By 15th March, development team completed 70% of the website’s deliverables. But then God had other plans for the world which obviously included us. The COVID-19 virus hit the world. Starting from China’s Wuhan it spread to the entire world including India. Rest of the chronology is well known to all of us. All of sudden, our website development work halted. Things crawled.
Website (Beta Version) Launch
Though our MVP version of job portal was 85% finished yet we decided to launch a beta version on International Labours Day i.e. 1st May. At the same time, we took a pledge to help 10,000 people in getting their jobs back by 31st December 2020. For a few, it sounded a big target for a newbie like us. Honestly task in hand is big; but we strongly believe that everything is possible when a good intent is backed by restless hard work & team play.
Mission 10K
For achieving the mission of 10,000 laid-off employees get back to their jobs. We started focusing on outplacement services in the form of career advices, resume writing tips, interview handling, changing career and work from anywhere modalities. But the most important part remained to get more jobs on job portal so that we can connect employers with candidates thereby completing the loop. We also launched three specific campaigns on war level – a. Career Tips b. Master-class Series c. Virtual Job Fair.
- Career Tips – Our team started researching and writing articles related career and job search topics. We have extensively written on the post-COVID scenario, fresher jobs, resume writing, work from anywhere, career changes etc. All the articles are available here on the blog section.
- Master-class Series – In this weekly master-class, we invite industry expert in a video interview format where they share expertise on specific topics. It was further divided into two themes – a. JobX is for jobseekers b. UpX is for employers and recruiters.
- Virtual Job Fair – The selection process can be easily made online with the help of the Cloud Recruiter.
The work-flow goes like:-
Employer post jobs on our portal -> Candidates apply on the position -> Cloud Recruiter screen the resume -> Company HR/Founder shortlist -> Group discussions are arranged through zoom/google-meet -> Interviews (Video/audio) are set-up by cloud recruiter -> Selections are made -> Offers are extended by employers.
Everything is free of cost for employers and candidates both. The services of our cloud recruiters are complimentary to achieve the mission 10K laid-off employees get back to jobs.
We launched the website ver 1.0 on India’ Independence Day i.e. 15th Aug 2020 with #AtmaNirbharStartups message. Our intent was loud and clear that we want to see all the startups becoming self-reliant (Atma Nirbhar) when it comes to hiring. There should be no need to spend crazy costs and hours in hiring. Rather things should be automated. We also started to offer Cloud Recruiter services on a monthly rental basis with full flexibility. Our customer loved the fact that we were saving almost 50% costs and 70% time in comparison to existing alternatives.
Road Ahead
We are not another job portal in the town. Rather, we are going to revolutionize the complete recruitment life cycle by using latest technologies. We intend to automate more and more tasks of cloud recruiters, candidates and interviewers in a short span of time. The work is already in progress and the team is working hard to create the “wow” experience. Just stay tuned with us!
