India is ranked as the fourth largest start-up hub in the world, according to the Economic Survey 2014-15. The country has over 3,100 startups. However, as of now startups don’t have specific job portals catering to their demands and all the startups cannot afford to go for campus recruitment, considering the cost and logistics involved. Also, these young ventures are not in position to rely on the big job portals for they don’t provide assessed candidates. Thus, startups have to spend a lot of time and energy in shortlisting and interviewing the right candidate.
Vijay Sharma, former employee at SAP Labs, Bangalore, while interacting with many starts-ups realized that hiring and that too specifically at entry-level engineer is major pain paint for most of the startups. So he decided to do something to help companies get highly employable candidates and reduce number of poor hires to almost zero. This will of Vijay took shape of MyFirstCampus: India’s first Startup specific Job Portal.
MyFirstCampus takes care of entry-level hiring at Start-ups so that they can take care of their business. MyFirstCampus is part of SAP Startup Focus Accelerator. It is focused around tackling the major problems faced by Startups in recruitment including:
> Lack of brand : Startups lack brand value initially and so are not in position to attract brighter talent
> Bad-Hires : There is lack of quality methods to check candidate quality
> Time and Effort : It takes a considerable amount of time to close engineering positions
> Cost : A huge sum of money is required in logistics and process of hiring. On the other hand, online big job portals prove to be very costly and provides less Return on Investment
MyFirstCampus helps startups from any part of the country to find skilled candidates they might have missed otherwise using traditional channels of recruitment. “We are not just about displaying candidate profiles, we are about making the recruitment process smart and efficient” says Vijay in his talk with Techstory.
This is being done by creating a huge database of assessed candidates. For assessing candidates, company conducts assessment tests pan India using the best assessment methodology i.e. Computer Adaptive Test. Being a part of the SAP Startup Focus helps them in leveraging the best technology powered by SAP which produces accurate and equi-precise measure of candidate’s ability.
This strategy will ensure that startups are able to close their open positions within as low as 7 days of opening a position with high performance candidates. “Our USP is that all the candidates in our databases are assessed and profiled on more than 35+ Skills” Vijay explains. This is directly benefiting the employer as
- It reduces bad-hires to almost zero.
- It increases the conversation ratio of candidates called for interview.
Currently besides founders, the company has a team of 4 full time and 2 part time employees. As the venture has not yet open the portal, the revenues have not started coming in but it already have around 10 startups on board who will be starting to use their services once they launch. “However, this has not been an easy endeavor. Being the first generation entrepreneur everything is new for me as well. Whether it is conducting field interviews of startup founders regarding their hiring practices or building the most employer friendly job portal, sometimes these things becomes hard to comprehend and sometimes get frustrating but I see these challenges positively as part of learning rpocess” Vijay sighs.
As of now, being a Bootstrapped startup, most of the funds required have been managed from personal savings and friends/family borrowings. One of the most critical challenge venture faced was to approach as many startup founders as they can and discuss with them their recruitment strategy. The Company is accomplishing this task by making a huge list of startups followed by approaching them for an interview, and collect all the observations then. “While doing this, we realized that the major reason startups are not able to attract talent is due to lack of brand, so in MyFirstCampus job portal we have put a lot of focus on building a startup brand” Vijay elaborates.
Doesn’t it seem like a tough mission? Well! The whole scenario is still very bright. As per IDC estimates, online job portal market is USD 25 billion – USD 30 billion globally. Moreover, all of the statistical indicators also tell a story of exponential growth and expansion in the prevalence, popularity, importance, and profitability of the online recruitment industry. MyFirstCampus is all set to grab this opportunity and play its role in start-up segment.
MyFirstCampus is expected to be launched by end of this month starting from Bangalore and then it plans to expand to other cities throughout India in coming months. It aims to bring more and more startups and candidates on MyFirstCampus portal. It is also planning to bring candidates from more specializations other than engineering on job portal.
Currently, MyFirstCampus is attentive towards building a sustained source of revenue and later on seek funding to scale up its operations and reach. It is also committed for building awareness in candidates regarding job opportunities in startups so that they realize the potential which lies ahead of them and get all excited to work in a startup.
MyFirstCampus is also putting very much focus on the job-seeker experience and thus doing a lot on that front. “We are striving for a superior job-seeker experience and collecting their feedback” Vijay concludes. With all its strategies falling in place, the company is expected to roll out many more features very soon at India’s first Startup specific Job Portal: MyFirstCampus!