We caught up with Mehul Patel, CEO of Hired, to talk all things from Hired as a business to the future of Hired…
Why was the business started?
Hired was founded in response to a major challenge we saw in the tech industry — recruitment. We realized that by flipping the conventional hiring model on its head and having companies ‘apply’ to interview candidates, we could provide more value to both candidates and employers. We carefully vet every candidate before they join our platform to ensure we have open roles that align with their skills and experience, which creates a better candidate experience while simultaneously giving companies access to pre-vetted, high intent talent.
We’ve now grown into a go-to tech talent marketplace with a proven track record of successfully matching tech talent with jobs they love at the world’s most innovative companies, guiding both sides from the very start of the candidate search all the way through to the final offer. In the pandemic era of today, we’re deeply committed to helping both candidates and hiring managers navigate the new normal, especially with regards to remote work.
How are you different?
At Hired, going against the grain is in our DNA. First, we flipped the traditional recruiting process on its head by putting candidates in the driver’s seat by creating an experience that delivers value and saves them time. In late 2017, we made a fundamental change to our marketplace model with the launch of our subscription service. As a result of the impact we drove for our customers, companies were eager to partner with us long term for their hiring efforts. For our customers, a subscription provides them the hiring predictability that they need along with the ability to more quickly hire quality candidates, which reduces the cost of an empty seat and offers a better way to measure the financial success of their hiring efforts.
What have you learnt?
Because we’re in a unique position with full visibility into the hiring process from both the recruiter and candidate side, we have firsthand insights on the ever-changing trends in tech recruitment and employment. This allows us to help both sides best navigate the hiring process and tailor their resumes or job postings accordingly.
It’s also important to note that today’s businesses are dealing with a reckoning with regards to diverse hiring and fostering an equal and inclusive workplace. Our ability to parse proprietary data to identify where tech recruitment and employment is lacking in this arena is invaluable as companies look toward building a more inclusive workplace. For example, two of our most recent data reports, ‘The State of Salaries Report: Salary benchmarks and talent preferences,’ and ‘The State of Wage Inequality in the Workplace,’ provide completely transparent salary data illustrating the pay disparity between candidates of different ethnicities and gender, along with insights from candidates on what companies can do to close these wage gaps once and for all.
What are your plans for growth?
Hired’s methodology for whether we expand into a new market is based on analyzing demand and supply signals on both sides of the marketplace. We’re currently serving 14 markets globally, and as we partner with larger companies that have hiring needs in multiple markets we’ve started to serve the areas surrounding large tech hubs. We do have long term goals to increase our global presence, but we’re currently focused on delivering as much value to our existing ecosystem.
And of course, as remote work has become the norm during the pandemic, it’s become a high growth area for us as a marketplace. We are seeing a meaningful shift in companies looking to hire remote talent which not only greatly expands the talent pool, but gives companies access to more qualified diverse candidates.
