Paul Slezak is co-founder of RecruitLoop, an online platform disrupting the recruitment industry by providing employers with a flexible recruitment solution charged at an hourly rate. In this interview, Paul explains how the platform upends the hiring equation.
1.When you were working in a recruitment agency, what were some of the processes and the culture around recruiting that you thought needed changing?
It’s been a few years now since I worked in a traditional recruitment agency environment, but even at the time it was clear that our clients (employers, hiring managers and business owners) were getting fed up with paying exorbitant placement fees.
Why? Because even at that time they were starting to be able to access the same recruiting tools that many of my recruiters were using (like LinkedIn) to source their own candidates. So it was getting harder for recruiters to justify charging excess of 20% of a candidate’s salary.
It was also becoming clear at the time that the ‘DNA’ of a successful recruiter was also changing dramatically. As a long-time manager of recruitment teams, I used to focus on previous (sales related) experience when hiring new consultants.
Whilst sales and customer service skills would always be critical, to be a successful recruiter it was becoming more important to be able to stay ahead of the game in terms of technology, and be far better networked in the virtual world – recruiters needed to become more like cyber sleuths.
2. What have you learned are the key ingredients of the RecruitLoop model? How have you refined the platform and experience since you launched?
One of the most important features of the RecruitLoop model has always been to provide employers with a totally transparent recruiting process. We decided to flip the traditional concept of recruiting on its head and in doing so turn recruitment into a professional service.
The RecruitLoop platform is constantly evolving. But the main premise is always there. Giving employers of all sizes access to expert independent recruiters available on demand. The hourly rate model saves them around 80% compared to using a traditional recruitment agency.
We have always known that ‘unbundling’ the process and purely charging employers an hourly rate for engaging an experienced recruiter to work on as much or as little of the hiring process as they required would help eradicate huge recruitment fees.
At the same time we wanted to help professional recruiters value their time and eliminate the need for the all too familiar ‘feast or famine’ lifestyle. Why shouldn’t recruiters be paid for their time like a lawyer or an accountant?
3.Who is your market of clients?
We offer businesses an ‘elastic’ recruiting solution. Our recruiters are able to help their clients with as much or as little of the recruitment process as required. This means a RecruitLoop recruiter can be engaged to purely help source candidates; we can help a company that has been inundated with applications to their own job ads screen candidates to help narrow down a shortlist; or of course our recruiters can run a full end-to-end recruitment assignment.
This means that we can literally help any type of business needing to grow their team.
We work with startups that are clearly very cost conscious. They need to grow their teams quickly (as a result of obtaining investment) but at the same time can’t throw all their money at a traditional recruitment agency. They often need to quickly grow their sales and product development teams and the founders may not have a strong background in recruiting.
SMEs (small to medium sized businesses) absolutely love the RecruitLoop model. Typically they don’t have an internal recruiter or HR function and often run a very ad hoc or reactive hiring process. Given that they also would prefer to avoid paying a $20,000 recruitment fee (but are totally comfortable paying $2,000), they can engage RecruitLoop to help them hire any role – from office admin, through to sales, IT, finance, marketing … and can relax knowing that they could hire 5 or 6 people in a year for less than the cost of one traditional placement fee.
Then there are the much larger enterprises – with robust HR and recruitment teams but often with too many vacancies that even the internal teams are at capacity. This is where they can engage a RecruitLoop recruiter at an hourly rate to help with the excess workload. There’s no need to add to their full-time headcount, but they have access to expert on-demand recruitment assistance.
4.Have you found there are certain types of people or specific roles clients are asking RecruitLoop recruiters to find?
It really depends on the market / city where the client is located. For example in the San Francisco Bay Area we are inundated with briefs from companies looking for software engineers and experienced sales people with a background in technology sales.
In other US markets our recruiters who focus on healthcare and digital marketing are also in high demand.
In Australia, it is our more ‘generalist’ recruiters who are being kept busy hiring for accounting, office administration, customer service, sales, marketing and IT positions as well as many blue collar and manufacturing roles.
5.Who are the people who join RecruitLoop as recruiters?
RecruitLoop recruiters are not our employees. They are all successful independent recruitment professionals running their own businesses. We provide them with tools and technology, a client pipeline, and community to help alleviate the isolation often associated with working along.
We have many recruiters who have really chosen to embrace the RecruitLoop model and who work on the RecruitLoop platform in a full-time capacity. These recruiters are even happy introducing their existing client base to RecruitLoop. Other recruiters prefer to just have their profile featured on the RecruitLoop website and wait for potential clients to find them and engage them for help with an ad hoc brief.
As independent recruiters, the fact that RecruitLoop acts as their personal sales and marketing engine is extremely appealing. Not to mention the fact that we can also handle their entire ‘back office’ function, allowing them to get on with they do best which is recruiting.
All the members are independent but they have embraced our model (after all they get paid for every hour they work!) but also contribute to our recruiter forums, take part in the professional development webinars we run regularly, and many of them have even formed ‘power groups’ sharing client leads and candidates with each other.
6.How do you think talent-finder marketplaces will disrupt traditional recruitment firms and processes?
There will always be a place for traditional recruiters – for example at the Executive Search level, or in very niche sectors.
It’s not so much whether a marketplace model like RecruitLoop could quickly replace traditional recruiters. It’s more a ‘reality check’ for traditional recruiters to adapt their offerings and what they are providing their clients in terms of added value.
RecruitLoop (and other talent-finder marketplaces) are already disrupting traditional recruitment firms and processes – much like Uber has disrupted the taxi industry and AirBNB has disrupted the hotel sector. They haven’t replaced them, they have just opened customers’ eyes to a much cheaper and transparent alternative.
RecruitLoop by the Numbers:
How many recruiters are there on the platform? 750+ recruiters servicing 60 countries
What are the top 5 markets you service? Australia, the USA, Europe, the Middle East and South Africa
